THE HOLY BABBLE
hades wrote:
Those 'hate your family' passages are pretty deluded if taken literally.
Or out of context.
The context goes something like this:
Jesus turns up for dinner to this Pharisee dude’s house -- these guys are the law makers and politicians of the time. Some sick guy’s there and Jesus asks if whether it is lawful to heal on the Sabbath. Noone answers. He heals the dude. Then he asks them if they’d save their son’s life if there were a threat to it on the Sabbath. Again, noone answers.
All the invitees then scramble for the best seats in the house and Jesus says, “You shouldn’t do that just in case the guy who invited you likes someone better and humiliates you by asking you to move. Instead, choose the worst place, and then you will be shown favouritism when you are asked to move closer.â€
“For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted."
Next, he turns to the host. His lesson for the day is that he should not invite people to dinner who will pay him back, otherwise, what has he given? Instead, he should invite those who cannot pay him back and thus be “repaid in the resurrection of righteousness.â€
Some guy exclaims, probably after a long sip of wine, "Blessed is he who will feast in the Kingdom of God!"
This sets Jesus off again. He tells a story of a dude who prepared a fantastic dinner and invited all his friends. Every one of them made an excuse:
“Gotta tend to the fields, man, sorry.â€
“Bought new livestock, gotta make sure I got my money’s worth, yeah? You understand.â€
“Are you kidding! I just got married. I’m going to be busy fucking my new wife.â€
So, the wannabe host commands his servant to go and search out the poor, maimed, blind and lame from the streets. His house gets filled, one way and the other and he (the host) says: if any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. Yeah. If you are one who is not suffering and can repay what I give, then you have nothing to learn from me. For which of you, unlike my friends who turned the invitations down, were in a position to sit down and calculate the cost of building stone monuments before commencing lest ye be ridiculed by your neighbour should you not complete it? What king does not first sit down before battle and figure out whether or not he can kick the other army’s arse -- or whether it is better to draw up a treaty? Oh ye of little love, righteousness, suffering and faith, you cannot eat my food unless your stomach is ever empty. He says, "Salt’s great but when it loses its savour, with what shall it be seasoned? It does nothing for the soil or a shit-heap, but men toss it out, anyway." Too much of a good thing, I guess.
By now, the Pharisess are gossiping about the fact that Jesus eats with criminals and sinners. So Jesus tells another story. Something about a shepherd who leaves his 99 sheep to find the one that went astray and, upon his return with the lost sheep, rejoices. And here’s the punch line. Here he draws the parallel:
In this same way does god rejoice over a single sinner (sufferer) who
repents.
Interesting. They cannot come to the host's dinner unless they hate their mum, dad, kids, brothers -- yes, their very own life -- and when they do, they must repent or else they cannot be his disciple: they will learn nothing from and do nothing with the fact of their suffering.
Course, he goes into a whole other story about a bad son who blows a man’s fortune and -- after having done so -- repents and returns home begging his father’s forgiveness. His father rewards him with a party and a fat cow (or something) on a spit much to the good brother’s dismay. The good brother complains that he has done the right thing the whole time, yet not once did the Dad dude throw a party for him, complete with cow on a spit! And Daddy dear says unto the good son, “Thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine. It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.â€
So, because we’re talking about the Pharisees (lawmakers/politicians), we next get into the idea that it is easier for heaven and earth to pass than for a law to fail. That which men hold as high is an abomination in God’s (godly, in my interpretation) eyes.
Then, there's a story about a beggar that dies at the feet of a rich man who ignored him. Beggar goes to heaven, rich man goes to hell. Man in hell begs man in heaven to go and speak to his brothers. Get them to change their ways. Guy in heaven says no-can-do-it. Cannot cross the chasm between us. If one cannot hear (and I take this to mean understand) the “word of God†when it is spoken to him, even if one who was dead and resurrected spoke to him the Pharisee yet would not believe it.
It’s all there in the Bible. What’s the problem?
