Literary Discussions

I think Lura is on the right track in asking that we see the Bible contextually in the light of bygone centuries and try to re-evaluate what is needful in our own times. Some might be puzzled as to why I bring up things like the movie Zentropa (Europa) or Jorge Luis Borges and accuse me of being somehow off topic BUT the views of modern and even postmodern thinkers are essential if we are to engage in the reevaluation which Lura suggests is needful.

Here is a true story regarding my first wife. She was raised a Protestant in Rockford Illinois. She attended one year at a college which was not (what is the word, recognized, sanctioned... I forget...  AHA, ACCREDITED) but it was a religious college where all the males became pastors and all the females became wives of pastors. Her best female friend majored in music and married a man who became pastor of a church. She directed the choir. They had several children. Each Christmas she would send out a mimeographed (ok nowadays it is xeroxed) letter to all her many friends detailing the highlights of the past year. One Christmas a letter arrived saying that the pastor had been attacked and beaten.  Later the news broke that said pastor had been frequenting a park lavatory and soliciting sex so as often happens he was beaten on one occasion and ultimately he was arrested by under-cover police. Of course the pastor lost his job at the church. My ex-wife tried to contact her girl friend but the woman was so humiliated that she would not respond.  How said that this man was born with a same sex attraction but was so conditioned to find it wrong that he did the ultimate to distance himself from his inclination by becoming a pastor, only to succumb to his desires in a furtive and destructive fashion.

My wife converted to Old Calender ultra-conservative Greek Orthodoxy because that was my background and she was content in that for 13 years.  She once remarked that on one side of Rockford there was "The Church of Christ WITH Music" , a congregation which did not see pianos or pipe organs as sinful, while across town there was "The Church of Christ WITHOUT Music" which of course sang only a capella, realizing that musical instruments are ungodly.