I am painfully aware that to many of my fellow Christians, especially those who have walked some way along life’s road with me, my rejection of the inerrancy of Scripture and of a Penal Substitution understanding of atonement has seemed like an abandonment of my faith. I also realise that many take my criticisms of certain theological positions quite personally. And I need to warn such readers that this post might well be received in that way. But here is what I wish they would see: I reject these doctrines not because I am rejecting God, nor because I intend to insult those who see God through the lenses of those doctrines, but because these doctrines (the doctrines, independent of the people who hold them) are not worthy of God. I am not rejecting God, but inferior ways of seeing God, and even then, not on a personal level, but one a meta-level. In essence, I am making the broad case that we need to choose the God revealed in Jesus over the “God” revealed in the Bible. And they are distinctly different.
Now I have no doubt that when the authors of the various texts that comprise the anthology that we call the Bible penned their words, they absolutely believed that God had inspired them to do so. But be that as it may, when you compile the composite picture of God from the various authors’ descriptions, what you get is – to put it mildly – disturbing. Please pardon me if I get a little facetious in the examples to follow, but I assure you that my intent is not to mock God, nor those who hold to the Sola Scriptura way of thinking. It’s just that sometimes we need to see exactly how silly an idea is – especially a deeply entrenched one – before we will accept the necessity of abandoning it.
How concerned should we be, for example, that the God of all the universe, who can countenance all manner of atrocities, like the cutting off of the thumbs and big toes of the kings opposing Israel (Judges 1:6-7) cannot tolerate the sight of poo (and, I suspect, the writer doesn’t fully trust God not to inadvertently step in it either. After all, it is very dark, and who knows what God’s response would be to that… )?:
12 Designate a place outside the camp where you can go to relieve yourself. 13 As part of your equipment have something to dig with, and when you relieve yourself, dig a hole and cover up your excrement. 14 For the Lord your God moves about in your camp to protect you and to deliver your enemies to you. Your camp must be holy, so that he will not see among you anything indecent and turn away from you. (Deuteronomy 23: 12-14)
The God depicted in many places in the Biblical texts seems suspiciously human in his outlook. He (and my regular readers know by now that I only use the masculine pronoun for problematic God-constructs)also has a number of very human failings. For example, God seems very poor at planning, for an omnipotent deity. A perfect illustration of this can be found in a story beginning in 1 Samuel 9:15-17, God comes up with a brilliant plan to rescue Israel from the Philistines:
15 Now the day before Saul came, the Lord had revealed this to Samuel: 16 “About this time tomorrow I will send you a man from the land of Benjamin. Anoint him ruler over my people Israel; he will deliver them from the hand of the Philistines. I have looked on my people, for their cry has reached me.”
It seems fair enough: God sees the plight of the people and unequivocally raises a leader to sort things out. Only, Saul turns out to be a complete disaster. Shortly after Samuel has warned Saul that: “He who is the Glory of Israel does not lie or change his mind; for he is not a human being, that he should change his mind.”(1 Samuel 15:29), we learn that God does precisely that: “the Lord regretted that he had made Saul king over Israel” (1 Samuel 15:35). And not long afterwards, Saul is killed by an Amalekite/commits suicide by falling on his sword (depending on which of the accounts in the Bible you wish to believe is inerrant: 1 Samuel 31 or 2 Samuel 1), and in 1 Samuel 31:7, God’s rescue plan collapses entirely: “when the Israelites along the valley and those across the Jordan saw that the Israelite army had fled and that Saul and his sons had died, they abandoned their towns and fled. And the Philistines came and occupied them.”
God’s plan to raise up a king to rescue the Israelites from the Philistines is an epic fail. Perhaps it is not surprising that God cannot cope with military might of the Philistines, because he had previously had difficulty getting to grips with sophisticated weaponry:
“ The Lord was with the men of Judah. They took possession of the hill country, but they were unable to drive the people from the plains, because they had chariots fitted with iron.” (Judges 1:19).
In fact, if the Bible is inerrant in its depiction of God, then God has a fairly well-established problem with both the planning and the execution of his schemes. Quite early on God starts to suspect that the whole Creation thing was a mistake to begin with: “The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.” (Genesis 6:6), so he devises a solution that entails destroying the world in a flood, saving the only ‘righteous’ man – Noah and his family – so that he can start again. God does not seem to have factored human nature or sociological and cultural forces into the equation, because things go pear-shaped again relatively quickly.
In the book of Exodus, for example, we see God about to throw yet another temper tantrum (I know it sounds like I am being blasphemous, but if you used the same description to convey the responses of a four-year-old in that situation, that is precisely what God’s actions would amount to), but fortunately Moses is there to talk God out of actions God might later regret:
9 “I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. 10 Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.”
11 But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. “Lord,” he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. 13 Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’” 14 Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.
It seems to me like a God who is not in control. And even if the people are a bunch of ungrateful whingers, how is it justifiable to counter challenges to Moses’s leadership by burning dissenters to death (Numbers 16:35) or inflicting the whole nation with a plague that kills 14700 people (Numbers 16:49), for example?
But these levels of extreme violence should hardly be surprising. This is the same God who gives permission for people to sell their daughters into slavery (Exodus 21:7), to beat slaves to the point of death (Exodus 21:20-21), who encourages the Israelite men to essentially rape the women of their conquered enemies (Deuteronomy 21:10-13), who sanctions the slaughter of the Canaanites and Amorites under Joshua, who “left no survivors” and “totally destroyed all who breathed, just as the Lord, the God of Israel, had commanded” (Joshua 10:40), who commands the wholesale extermination of the Amalekites and a whole host of other assorted -ites (the books of 1 and 2 Samuel, Joshua and Judges). This is the God who was content to kill David’s son as a punishment for David’s crime (2 Samuel 12:13-23), who thought nothing of sending a couple of bears to maul to death some boys who jeered at Elisha, calling him “baldy” (2 Kings 2: 23-24) ,who would without hesitation wipe out the firstborn children of an entire nation (Exodus 12:12). This is a God whose responses to being offended seem grossly out of proportion to the offense, and who is completely at ease with shows of extreme violence. Yet this is also a God, as we have noted earlier, who cannot abide to look on human poo.
Forgive me for the lengthy quote from Deuteronomy 28 that is to follow, but persevere with it; it really does give you a fabulous sense of the God we are dealing with here:
15 However, if you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you:
16 You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country.
17 Your basket and your kneading trough will be cursed.
18 The fruit of your womb will be cursed, and the crops of your land, and the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.
19 You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out.
20 The Lord will send on you curses, confusion and rebuke in everything you put your hand to, until you are destroyed and come to sudden ruin because of the evil you have done in forsaking him.21 The Lord will plague you with diseases until he has destroyed you from the land you are entering to possess. 22 The Lord will strike you with wasting disease, with fever and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew, which will plague you until you perish. 23 The sky over your head will be bronze, the ground beneath you iron. 24 The Lord will turn the rain of your country into dust and powder; it will come down from the skies until you are destroyed.
25 The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You will come at them from one direction but flee from them in seven, and you will become a thing of horror to all the kingdoms on earth. 26 Your carcasses will be food for all the birds and the wild animals, and there will be no one to frighten them away. 27 The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, festering sores and the itch, from which you cannot be cured. 28 The Lord will afflict you with madness, blindness and confusion of mind. 29 At midday you will grope about like a blind person in the dark. You will be unsuccessful in everything you do; day after day you will be oppressed and robbed, with no one to rescue you.
30 You will be pledged to be married to a woman, but another will take her and rape her. You will build a house, but you will not live in it. You will plant a vineyard, but you will not even begin to enjoy its fruit. 31 Your ox will be slaughtered before your eyes, but you will eat none of it. Your donkey will be forcibly taken from you and will not be returned. Your sheep will be given to your enemies, and no one will rescue them. 32 Your sons and daughters will be given to another nation, and you will wear out your eyes watching for them day after day, powerless to lift a hand. 33 A people that you do not know will eat what your land and labor produce, and you will have nothing but cruel oppression all your days. 34 The sights you see will drive you mad. 35 The Lord will afflict your knees and legs with painful boils that cannot be cured, spreading from the soles of your feet to the top of your head.
36 The Lord will drive you and the king you set over you to a nation unknown to you or your ancestors. There you will worship other gods, gods of wood and stone. 37 You will become a thing of horror, a byword and an object of ridicule among all the peoples where the Lord will drive you… 53 Because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege, you will eat the fruit of the womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you. 54 Even the most gentle and sensitive man among you will have no compassion on his own brother or the wife he loves or his surviving children, 55 and he will not give to one of them any of the flesh of his children that he is eating. It will be all he has left because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of all your cities. 56 The most gentle and sensitive woman among you—so sensitive and gentle that she would not venture to touch the ground with the sole of her foot—will begrudge the husband she loves and her own son or daughter 57 the afterbirth from her womb and the children she bears. For in her dire need she intends to eat them secretly because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of your cities.
58 If you do not carefully follow all the words of this law, which are written in this book, and do not revere this glorious and awesome name—the Lord your God— 59 the Lord will send fearful plagues on you and your descendants, harsh and prolonged disasters, and severe and lingering illnesses. 60 He will bring on you all the diseases of Egypt that you dreaded, and they will cling to you. 61 The Lord will also bring on you every kind of sickness and disaster not recorded in this Book of the Law, until you are destroyed. 62 You who were as numerous as the stars in the sky will be left but few in number, because you did not obey the Lord your God. 63 Just as it pleased the Lord to make you prosper and increase in number, so it will please him to ruin and destroy you. You will be uprooted from the land you are entering to possess.”
You can be forgiven for scoffing in derision at the irony in David’s claim, the same David who habitually left no enemy alive – man, woman or child – in the towns he destroyed (1 Samuel 27:11), that God’s “steadfast love endures forever” (Psalm 136:26). Call me a hopeless romantic, but isn’t it missing the point to have to threaten somebody into loving you? Imagine receiving that Valentine: “Dear Peter, I love you unconditionally. But if you do not believe me and accept my love, and if you do not love me in return, I will cut you into a million little pieces and torment and torture your family for the rest of their miserably short lives. And I will enjoy doing it. Love God”. Are you convinced? I sure as Gehenna am not.
But then I do not believe that what we see in the Bible is God; no, what we see in the Bible is human perceptions of God. The problem with seeing the Bible as the inerrant Word of God is that you have to reconcile all of these disparate and contradictory depictions of God into one cohesive whole, and the result is a God who is needy, petty, vindictive, capricious and mentally unstable. The doctrine of the infallibility and inerrancy of the Bible diminishes God, and locks you into a way of relating both to God and to other people that is rooted in the bigotry and violence of the cultures through which those texts were generated.
But if you are willing to abandon that doctrine, which is not one that was held until the Reformation anyway – you will be abandoning a relatively recent doctrine, not an age-old one – you will be free to see that these disturbing pictures of God have been drawn by people who were confined by the limitations of their times. Like all of us, the way they understood God and how God was at work in the world, was limited by their contexts, their daily struggles. We can only ever make sense of the invisible and unfamiliar through the filters of what is visible and familiar to us. We conceptualise God, whom we cannot see nor know, through the frameworks of what we can see and what we do know. That is why the writer of Deuteronomy, who had probably spent a large portion of his life in military encampments, developed a picture of God as a zealous, masculine warrior who desperately wanted to avoid stepping on turds at night. We cannot blame him; we always construct a God who can relate to us.
So I do not think that we should automatically accept that it was God who acted or spoke simply because a Biblical author believed that to have been the case. But nor do I believe that we ought to dismiss everything that those writers have to say just because they happened to be limited in their understanding of God by their contexts. I think we still need to accept that although these writers may have occasionally completely misrepresented God, that they were nevertheless – in their own ways – spiritual beings, searching after truth. Like us, they did not have perfect understanding. Like us, their prejudices and circumstances occasionally got in the way of revelation. But we also need to accept that they sometimes had moments of astounding clarity.
Theology is a collective journey, a pilgrimage. And like any field of knowledge, it grows and shifts over time. When it comes to understanding God, as Michael Hardin constantly reminds us in his writings, we are a pilgrim people, always on the road. We can learn of the pitfalls along the way from those who have gone before us, just as those who will come after us will learn from our mistakes. We will also learn from their wisdom, just as our children will benefit from ours. We cannot dismiss David and Moses, Augustine and Constantine, Calvin and Zwingli and Luther, for example, simply because they framed God in their own images. We all, invariably, do that. But there are other insights in the Biblical texts too – and it is why I insist on a Jesus-centred rather than a Bible-centred theology – that frame ways of seeing God that are far more helpful in moving us along the road towards our ultimate destination – not the discovery of the secret formula for entrance into God’s divine presence (I thought that Jesus made it pretty clear that we were already in God’s presence – Matthew 28:20), but – through the transformational work of the Spirit in human hearts – the restoration of the world to what it was always intended to be: a city where the structures and systems have not been shaped by our sinful (hate-driven, fear-filled, exploitative) ways of relating.
But the destination is a way off still, and if we are to get there, we need a change of heart, a transformation of the mind. Contrary to what much of our Modernist-informed, post-enlightenment personal-Jesus theology would have us believe, we cannot get there alone – personal piety is more or less meaningless when the primary goal of a godly Kingdom can only ever be realised through loving relatedness. It is likely that such a change of heart will necessitate reshaping the way you understand God, that you will need to leave unhelpful God-concepts on the side of the road. And I know that they do not go willingly, and that sometimes your fellow travelers will try to persuade you to pick them up again, afraid of how those God concepts might react to separation. I know that when you have carried them for so long, it can feel unnatural to set them aside. I know the emptiness. I know the anxiety. But you are not alone. And anyway, I have a helpful tip I have gleaned from my studies of the Scriptures: if you are battling to shake off a violent and xenophobic God-construct, I am fairly reliably informed that iron-clad chariots ought to do the trick.
Vapors In The Wind 
You always write beautifully.
However, I suspect that if the Old Testament God was portrayed in such error-ridden ways as you believe, that Jesus himself would have had things to say about it, knowing the scriptures completely, as he would have. Instead, we only hear him affirming scripture. Come to think of it, all that you yourself know about Jesus, is probably based on what you have gleaned from the error-ridden bible…
I for one, am not persuaded by your take, although I love the way you write. There are many things that I don’t understand about God; I accept that I am simply not able to fathom everything at this point, and likely never will. Faith like a little child is what transformed my own life, and the sanctification that God continues to work in me, by his grace, has turned my life upside down for 27 years now. Though I am constantly aware of how much work the Holy Spirit still needs to do in my life, I can honestly say that the relationship I have been given with God, discovered through the Holy Spirit applying the truth of biblical Christianity to my heart, has not turned me into the homophobic, racist, bigoted tyrant that I often pick up from your writings. No. The Holy Spirit living in me, (oh the wonder of that truth!) has softened me in ways I would never have believed possible, to my fellow man. He has made me see that I need to treat everyone with love and I need to live a life of self-sacrifice. He constantly attacks my pride and selfishness, and walks with me in every situation pointing me to way to live to glorify God.
I am humbled by the fact that I cannot understand all of scripture. The truth of it, the power that is evident in the way the Holy Spirit brings to life and applies the writings of Old and New Testament to my heart, is what I live by. And though it may sound too simple for you, and academically fraudulent, I can only be amazed at the miracle that has changed me fundamentally and continues to do so, as I journey towards my death.
I’m OK with penal substitution- God giving Himself for me; I’m ok with the things that don’t make sense. I’m ok with it, because the truth of transformation of heart that by God’s mercy, he has wrought in me and (countless others,) gives me profound peace and joy as I am constantly challenged by the bible to live to love others. When I fail (- frequently, daily- ) I am able to ask forgiveness and I know it is granted, from all I read in scripture. And, because of that recurrent forgiveness, I owe all my hours of life that are left on the earth, in gratitude, to love and serve others.
I know you have heard all this before. And that you differ on many points. I’m not trying to argue with you- my intellect is much lower than yours, and these sort of arguments are not going to change your mind; God alone can do that. I was simply responding to the beautifully written article.
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My friend, it makes me glad to hear that God is transforming your heart and filling you with peace and love. I think we both know that these are the mark of the Spirit’s work in a person’s life. And it will never be my aim to rile people, or to challenge the legitimacy of anyone’s faith. I try very hard to make ways of thinking about God the subjects of my critique, not individuals. I do not doubt you for a second when you speak to how your wrestling with the Scriptures has not made you bigoted or homophobic. Indeed, I am convinced that any encounter with the living God will have precisely the transformative impact on lives that is evident in your own.
That said, I feel that I cannot be true to my faith in Jesus if I do not speak out against the doctrine (not the people who hold it) of Biblical inerrancy because it all too frequently does legitimise hatred of all sorts, and I do not believe that any godly doctrine could produce such fruit. Yes, the very Jesus I devote myself to is only accessible to me through human texts – and I do believe that they are error-ridden. But that does make them less valuable, it simply means I need to approach them appropriately. I do not believe that a text needs to be error-free to have enormous value. And I think Jesus challenged Scripture all the time. Whenever he quotes it, if you go back to the original text he quotes, you will see that he habitually leaves out all references to God’s violent judgment. For example, his omission of the reference to God’s violence in Luke 4 is what almost gets him killed. Or his claim in Matthew 5:44-45 that God sends rain on the righteous and unrighteous alike is a direct contradiction of Deuteronomy 11, which he is referencing. Jesus does not unquestioningly adhere to Scripture at all. He deeply reveres it – as I do, too – but challenges the problematic perceptions of God that it sometimes contains too.
I feel I need to reiterate this point, because so many misunderstand me on it: I do not think we have to choose between an infallible Bible or nothing at all. All texts are fallible, especially those where humans in their finitude are trying to comprehend an infinite and invisible God. But that does not mean that they invariably fail to capture something of God’s revelation. I think we just need the wisdom to discern how much of the revelation is self-projection and how much is God. It is not as simple as a choice between one or the other. I think the Bible is both.
And my friend, you are welcome to argue with me any time. I do not think that when it comes to matters of trying to comprehend an infinite God, IQ has much to do with it. We are all blind and ignorant and limited in our understandings. But I think we grow in faith when we challenge our own beliefs and try to sift the self-projections from the revelation, and arguing through our own understandings can only ever benefit us when we do it with that aim in mind – not to prove we are right, but to further understanding. You can argue any time. You are certainly under no obligation to agree with me, and I welcome any effort to win me to your point of view because I do not have answers. I have lots and lots of questions, a multitude of strong opinions (all of which I am prepared to dump in a heartbeat if I can see they make no sense), and a longing to know the God of love. Like you. I can only ever grow from engaging with you, even if that growth is simply in the form of a more loving relationship between us.
I appreciate the gentleness and humility of your response – many Christians do not respond to me with anything approaching love. It is often hostile and condescending, and you are neither. I thank you and I hope that you will free to comment as often and as fully as you like in future. If I argue passionately, it is not because I intend to belittle anyone. For me, the world looks like this: there are people searching for connection to something greater, and many dangerous ideologies that they often inherit, sometimes choose, and which compromise their ability to connect to one another and God. And for me, if Jesus is the full revelation of God, and practised only sacrificial love and forgiveness of enemies, and if this is – as Jesus claims, and with which I agree – the only way to know God, then it is my responsibility to challenge those doctrines within the church that stand in the way of that. It is also my responsibility to search after truth, and I believe that is only ever done collaboratively, so I write and love the responses. Shalom, my friend.
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Because Insanity severely moderates my comments I am also posting my response here …. just in case.
We only have reality to base anything on. Thus, genuine historians – and by genuine I mean any historian that has no presuppositional religious beliefs – will countenance supernatural claims.
And because our hosts constantly moderates my comments depending on what side of the bed she gets out of, I shall put this comment on you blog as well.
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Will NOT countenance supernatural claims.
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Thanks for the response, Arkenaten. I would argue that everybody has presuppositional religious beliefs. I think beliefs are dynamic, not static. They are journeys. So when I talk about presuppositional beliefs, I am talking not of the state that one currently finds oneself in, but I reference the entire journey. And because part of that journey invariably involves encountering various forms of religious belief and responding to those in some way, even if it is rejecting them, I would argue that nobody comes to history blank. There is always a presuppositional belief system that underpins one’s engagement with other’s narratives. And so by your definition there could be no “genuine historians”. My second point would be this: I think it is problematic to write off the entire body of an academic’s work simply because they have “presuppositional religious beliefs”, which is what I think your argument does. All academics are flawed, all have preconceived notions, but that does not render their work any less valuable; it only means that we must factor the impact of those beliefs in when we consider their work. I don’t think it is an all or nothing equation. If we needed to discount academic work on the basis of the subjectivity of the scholars, we would have no body of academic work. All research is subjective. I will give you an example: there was a time when Richard Dawkins made the claim that it was likely that Jesus never existed at all. I know he later retracted that, but the point is that this was a religious presupposition that underpinned an historical claim that came from an atheist. I do not believe that it renders Dawkins’ other work any less valuable. I cannot write off the entire body of his work on that basis, but I cannot regard him as objective simply because he does not believe in the supernatural. By “reality” we can only ever mean somebody’s perceptions of reality.
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Every religious person, yes.
Non-religious not so much, if at all.
The only presuppositional religious beliefs a non-religious might have are those that were initially indoctrinated. Thus, once they realise this most will eventually walk away.
Those that don’t ,even in the face of evidence, usually hold on for a variety of reasons, but all are to a point , a form of delusion.
I, for example, once believed that Moses was a genuine historical person, due to indoctrination. Not overt, but simply based on cultural mores.
I disagree and the evidence supports this. In context a genuine historian is one that does not give credence to supernatural claims.
Again …. in context, a historian who happens to be a devout Christian investigating the life of Jesus, for example, will automatically assume in the veracity of the resurrection.
If one has the option of the findings of someone such as NT Wright or a non religious /Christian then the latter is the one who will more likely offer a view untainted by their faith.
Dawkins claim is not an example of a presuppositional belief but rather based on evidence he considered valid at the time. In fact, this particular view seems to be gaining ground once more. and cannot be simply written off as a crackpot theory.
Sorry, but we all acknowledge reality, and I don’t wish to delve into semantics.
Those that don’t accept reality are usually deemed to have mental health issues of some kind.
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Arkenaten, it seems to me that your argument is that people who claim no religious affiliations see the world neutrally while everyone else does not. That doesn’t make sense to me. And perhaps I need to explain my comment on reality to provide clarity. I wasn’t for a moment trying to play semantics – for me it is a key philosophical position that underpins my thinking. What I was trying to say was that while there may be a reality in the objective sense, no human being is ever capable of knowing that reality neutrally. On a purely physical level our senses limit our engagement – there are spectra of light and sound, for example, that we are incapable of perceiving. Add to that the fact that our educations, our experiences, our emotions – a whole plethora of intangible variables – distort the way we interpret the world, and it is clear to me that it is absolutely impossible for any human being to see the world objectively. there is plenty of neuroscience available to prove that our brains interpret the world for us, filling in gaps and making sense of the unfamiliar through the filters of what is familiar to us. So to me your claim that anybody – religious or not – can see the world neutrally makes no sense. I acknowledge that people who are Christian will be predisposed towards interpreting events in that light. And as such, their judgments must be subject to question. But I think the same is true of every single human being. And for me, it does not follow that simply because people are subjective and biased we must discount everything they say (which is what the non-genuine historian label would suggest). Knowledge, as I understand it, is not either right or wrong. Truth, for me, given that we are all limited in our capacities to engage with the universe, and that our brains are hardwired for interpretation, is always constructed and always narrative. Truths are the stories we tell ourselves to help us make sense of the world. And all stories are at least partially fictions. For me that does not invalidate them altogether.
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I think it would be better to back this up somewhat.
The thrust of the initial post was regarding religion and whether a historian could ever be truly objective regarding Christianity if they were Christian, and my contention is no, they cannot.
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Agreed then 🙂
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Excellent!
And talking of delusional people ….
Crystal Palace? Really?
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I know. I ask myself the same question year after year. They were awesome in the late 80s and early 90s, when Ian Wright and Mark Bright played together. They came out here as the first touring team after isolation and that cemented it for me. Sometimes I make them sleep on the couch but I keep letting them back. I figure when it comes to football we all actually hate our teams as much as we love them – I see it with my friends who support teams who actually win, too – so Palace it is 🙂
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Well Ayew has signed a new contract, so that’s a good sign and maybe they can keep Wilf? But Benteke? Never rated him to be honest.
Rodgers did a pretty good job last season so you never know?
Where in South Africa you from?
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I doubt they will keep Wilf, but his leaving for a bigger club was always inevitable. The talk of Everton puzzles me though – a bit of a sideways move. Not sold on Benteke either.
I grew up in Joburg, lived in KZN for a decade or so and now am in Centurion. You?
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Jo’burg, Been here since ’79. Came out from the UK on a 12 month contract. Been here ever since.
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South Africa is a hard place to leave, I find. It may have a lot of dysfunction but there is something alluringly real about it too, a willingness to connect. What made you decide to stay?
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Guess!
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Reblogged this on Vapors In The Wind and commented:
I want to repost this as a supplement to the latest post. It will save me repeating the argument later.
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