Gay Bible Parody Tentatively Named After Princess Diana

Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto has a running feature he calls "Life Imitates The Onion," comparing actual news headlines side by side with "fake news" headlines that have run in the parody newspaper. This story feels like an Onion retread.

There's this film producer in New Mexico, see, and he's writing a sci-fi comedy, in which the whole world turns gay and the religious people burn all the King James Bibles. (If you need a moment to reattach your hind quarters after laughing at those burning bibles, go right ahead before reading on.)

Inspired by his own comic inspiration, writer Max Mitchell decided to retranslate the Bible itself into gay. From Genesis, we have the story of Aida and Eve (and you were expecting Adam and Steve):

"And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Aida, and she slept:
and he took one of her ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from woman, made he another woman, and brought her unto the first. And Aida said, 'This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of me. Therefore shall a woman leave her mother, and shall cleave unto her wife: and they shall be one flesh.' And they were both naked, the woman and her wife, and were not ashamed."

While I'm not sure whether he's thought out how to resolve all that early business in Genesis of begetting, I am sure I don't want to know. Even more problematic with Christians is the planned gay New Testament, where things will surely progress from mere sacrilege to outright blasphemy, making us long for the good old days when the big outrage was a certain movie depicting Christ with Mary Magdalene.

Says Mitchell, "There are 116 versions of the Bible, why is any of them better than ours?" The glaring answer, of course, is that Mitchell's rewrite is neither a modern translation or revision of the text but a complete lampoon of what's in the Bible, which is not going to give any comfort to those gays and lesbians searching it for real answers.

Mitchell is calling his book the Princess Diana Bible, ostensibly because of "her many good works", but more likely to cash in on the capital of her good name for free at the sales counter. It remains to be seen how that will play out with the Royal Family and the princess's estate.


More on the "Princess Diana Bible":

• Story in the Guardian
  
  
• Princess Diana Bible site
  

Hebrews 6:4-6 Explained

Author's note:  I have noticed in recent months that this early post of mine, which I wrote awhile ago when I was still nondenominational protestant, still garners a lot of visitors.  It is important that I point out that this was born out of a subjective opinion of mine as I was trying to make sense of a biblical passage that deeply troubled me.  It is NOT necessarily the opinion of the Catholic Church.  I am currently searching the Catechism to find our Church's opinion on this issue.


As a child you were taken to church on occasion, but lost interest during your teenage years. You never read much of the Bible, but instead focused on styles, trends, dating, and school. While keeping God at a distance, you even questioned His existence from time to time.

But in your early 30’s you begin to take a renewed interest and return to church. You even join a Bible study in which you learn about different passages and their meanings. But one evening while perusing the Book of Hebrews you come across a chapter that sends chills up your spine: Hebrews 6:4-6, which your pastor or priest and your Bible study group appear to avoid like the Plague. You read it and wonder to yourself, “is the Apostle Paul referring to me?”

(4) For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, (5) and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of of the world to come, (6) if they should fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put Him to an open shame.

Your apprehension at this point is more common than you realize. But since you think you’re alone, there is a danger that you’ll keep your concerns to yourself, and simply show up less frequently at church until no more. Thinking that you “fell away” in your youth, you are convinced you won’t be spending eternity with the Savior, but instead will be thrown into the Lake of Fire.

My own situation was even worse. I was angry at God for years after my best friend, Dean, who was saved at age 16 and working on turning me to Christ, got cancer at age 19 and later died a very cruel death in 1983, only two months after turning 21. I spent much time with him that summer while he battled the disease, and drove him to and from hospitals in Rockford, IL. But a month after I left for college, he sought help at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN where he was told he should’ve come much sooner. When the cancer entered his brain he was sent to the psych ward, where he could be heard screaming that he was the Devil. After being told his last days were near, he came home the Monday before Thanksgiving to spend his remaining days with his family. But when I came back into town on Tuesday night from college, I was told he couldn’t recognize his old friends, that he was too tired for visitors, and that I should try again tomorrow. When I called the next morning, I was informed that he died during the night.

For years I was in denial about the effect that Dean’s fate had on me, and in anger I turned my attention away from God and toward secular distractions. During that time I pushed everyone I could out of my life through alienation and volatile displays of anger. I lost some good friends (recently retrieved two of them, two and counting), lots of acquaintances, and promising careers first in radio and then finance. When asked my religion I would during this time often refer to myself as an agnostic or even an atheist (when I was really angry), in spite of intermittently seeking God’s intervention in times of crisis.

Years later, when I got over most of the anger and turned my attention back toward God, I read Hebrews 6:4-6, and asked myself the same question that many struggle with: “Have I ‘fallen away’ to the point of no return?”

Although I didn’t feel like I had, I wondered if I’d crossed some invisible line and was fooling myself into thinking I could come back. After all, how does one ignore such a passage in the Bible? One doesn’t. Instead, one examines the context under which such a passage is presented. For that one must read the verses previous to this one once more. Let’s back up a bit to Hebrews 5:12-14 and 6:1-3.

(12) For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. (13) For every one that useth milk is unskillful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. (14) But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

This passage presents us with two types of Christians, spiritual infants and spiritual adults, or those who are new to their salvation and those who have matured spiritually. Let’s read on:

6 (1) Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and faith toward God, (2) of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. (3) And this we will do, if God permit.

Whether or not one moves from infancy to perfection (or maturity) appears to depend upon the permission of God. Reading further into verses 4-6 we find that it is in part based upon whether or not one has fallen away.

With that in mind, let’s look at John 12:39,40.

(39) Therefore they could not believe, because that Esaias said again, (40) He hath blinded their eyes and hardened their heart; that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them.

After making the choice not to believe, the hearts of those people were hardened by God to make their choices permanent. Therefore it would appear when taking these verses into account, that if God has not chosen to harden your heart permanently, then you may not have fallen away. And you most certainly have not fallen away if you are then able to move on into spiritual maturity.

Now how do you know when or if you've reached spiritual maturity? According to the Life Application Study Bible KJV, TuTone (x), one way to evaluate spiritual maturity is by looking at the choices we make. Are we teaching others rather than just being taught? Are we developing depth of understanding rather than struggling with the basics? Do we desire spiritual challenges or simply entertainment? Several others are listed but you get the point.

What happens if those who already have spiritual maturity lose their faith? If one can fathom such an occurrence, then one must consider the following: Infants are usually allowed to misbehave to a certain extent. We don’t punish them harshly because they don’t know any better. Adults, on the other hand, know better and are held to a much higher level of personal responsibility. It is therefore the same with spiritual infants and spiritual adults. A spiritual infant may not fully appreciate the ramifications of behaviors and decisions that a spiritual adult may. I’ve been a spiritual infant most of my adult life and have only recently moved to spiritual adulthood. Had I been spiritually mature and then declare myself an atheist, there would’ve been hell to pay, literally.

Besides, God knows far better than we do what’s inside our own hearts. Hebrews 4:12 says:

For the word of God is quick and powerful,…and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

But does a person always know when his/her own heart is hardened? It seems like it would be obvious since a person with a hardened heart wouldn’t be on his/her knees praying to God. But in fact some do. And we can see this in people who claim to follow Christ but do not live according to His Word. I’m not talking about perfection here, for we all fall short in the eyes of God. But how a person talks or reacts to the world around him/her could be an indicator of whether or not they are true believers, or pretenders, or even liars unto themselves.

John 15:15 If ye love me, keep my commandments.

Matthew 7:17,20 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit… Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

If you are still worried then consider Ezekiel 36:26, 27

(26) A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.


Now if you are still worried then perhaps you should read The Confessions of St. Augustine: Books I-X, in which he describes his long spiritual journey through sorcery, eastern religions, promiscuity, and other sinful transgressions, before returning to the religion his family had tried to instill in him: Christianity. Now he's a saint. Go figure. God works in mysterious ways...


Now don’t you feel better?

Lost Credibility

Book review

Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
By Bart D. Ehrman

When I purchased this book at Borders in Philadelphia during the summer of ’05, I had been looking for an analysis of the Gospel of Thomas and other apocrypha, because I was curious as to why some books were canonized into the Bible and some weren’t. I grabbed this one because it looked like a comprehensive study not only of different gospels, but of the different faiths surrounding them.

But as I read through this book I discovered some new truths. First, just because someone refers to himself as a “Bible scholar” doesn’t always mean that he believes in the Bible. Most people would be surprised to learn that many religious studies classes at public universities analyze the Holy Bible purely from a secular point of view. Second, no matter how hard the most educated scholar may try to sound objective, he will invariably give away his political position if he is allowed to espouse long enough. This author, in fact, does just that.

Let’s start with P52, which is a credit card sized piece of papyrus thought to be the oldest surviving scrap of scripture of the Gospel of John. Mr. Ehrman repeatedly declares that it was found in a “trash heap in Upper Egypt.” In fact, Mr. Ehrman declares this every time P52 is mentioned. To paraphrase Ralph Manheim, “It is the half educated writer, without clear ideas, who generally feels that to say a thing only once is rather slight.” Mr. Ehrman is much too intelligent to be doing this by accident. According to Dr. Bruce Metzger, to whom Mr. Ehrman dedicated his recent book, Misquoting Jesus, that fragment “was purchased in Egypt as early as 1920, but sat unnoticed for years among similar fragments of papyri” (see interview in Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ). Hmmm, I thought a trash heap was a mountain of garbage one finds in a landfill with vermin crawling about and seagulls flying overhead. Mr. Ehrman has altered its definition to include any stack of papyri containing Holy Scripture.

While Mr. Ehrman gleefully tears apart any possibilities that most of the apocrypha could have any credibility (he claims nearly all of them are fakes or forgeries, and probably correctly), he nonchalantly mentions off the cuff that all but seven of the New Testament books are forged as well (those seven themselves also being tampered with). The latter is, I believe, the real purpose for writing this book. Lacking the courage to make this the focused topic, he covertly slips it in. Since then he has gathered enough courage to make it the focus of the afore mentioned Misquoting Jesus.

Another gutless tactic he employs is to present a hypothesis very distasteful to Christians, laying out all of the best arguments to solidify the point, then in the final sentence saying that he doesn’t actually believe it himself, without offering any facts to back up his late contradiction (which means he really does believe it!). It is truly a coward’s way of arguing a point, (pretending to disagree) which he does more than once. It is done most notably when relating the story behind the naked man in sack cloth who flees when Jesus is arrested (see Mark 14:51, 52). He presents the claim of some “Bible scholars” that “missing chapters” detail a relationship laced with homoerotic overtones between Jesus and the naked man. How can one take an author like this seriously?

The tendency for conspiracy theory to emanate from Mr. Ehrman is common. For instance, there can be many reasons why so many more recently hand copied manuscripts of the New Testament differ from the oldest ones. Mr. Ehrman points to large political movements most often while ignoring some more obvious reasons.

Case in point: the Gospel of Mark. He says the earliest copies show Jesus reacting angrily to just about everything that confronts Him. Reasoning that the oldest surviving versions must be the correct ones, Mr. Ehrman assumes the newer copies were purposely changed by scribes in order to sound more like the other three gospels. But could it be possible that these oldest copies survived because it was known back then that they were wrong? Consider the likely possibility that a scribe or two might’ve thought a “compassionate” Jesus was rather weak and so rewrote Him to be angry all the time to show a more powerful God. These “angry” copies were then set aside by church elders from the other more often handled “compassionate” copies and preserved for any number of reasons, perhaps as examples of bad behavior by “foolish knaves,” while the correct copies were handled so much they fell apart and were discarded. Just look at your own bookshelf. The books that last the longest are the ones read the least. It is an incorrect assumption on Ehrman’s part that the oldest known copies in existance today were the only copies written at the time.

Regarding the differences among the four Gospel accounts: If scribes were so prone to change the Gospels to make them more uniform, why after 2,000 years and countless hand copied manuscripts are there still differences in accounts of events, such as when Jesus died in relation to the timing of the Passover meal or what garments were found in the tomb after the resurrection?

Also, could some of those “lost Christianities” which competed with what Mr. Ehrman refers to as the prevailing “proto-orthodox” views (as shown in today’s Holy Bible), have failed the test of time simply because they were wrong? And if history is suspect anytime it is “written by the winners,” should we also be inclined to doubt the holocaust or the failure of Soviet Communism? Perhaps Mr. Ehrman thinks that slavery didn’t get its fair shake from an historical perspective. Maybe he’ll start rooting for the Chicago Cubs. One can only wonder.

In defense of Mr. Ehrman, I will say that his writing style is engaging and lively, and not totally without fact. And while he is no Dan Brown, who stands behind utter falsehoods to bring Jesus down to our level, Mr. Ehrman’s transparent agenda forces me to question his credibility. It is not uncommon these days for secular Bible scholars to attack the KJV simply to shake the foundation of the “religious right.” After reading this book and hearing him interviewed on NPR, I think that’s exactly what he’s doing.

On Amazon.com there are several glowing reports of this book submitted by “secular fundamentalists” who applaud anything that contradicts the New Testament, rejoicing in having NO God looking over their shoulders telling them with whom they can and cannot sleep.

I think it's quite possible that Mr. Ehrman may have committed apostasy since leaving the Moody Bible Institute. Only he and God know for sure. Mr. Ehrman needs our prayers (whether he wants them or not).