For those shocked with biblical violence especially the apocalyptic sort found in Revelations one can contrast it with modern cinema violence and the justification for it as being "cathartic," as a sublimated replacement for actual violence. Biblical violence associated with the divine intervention for the "good guys" who need justice served a cathartic purpose for the communities who generated such texts. One should appreciate that the Bible had to be all genres within one book in contrast with the radical separation of genre common to the modern era.
Aphorism of the Day, October 30, 2025
To make biblical writing so other-worldly as if they were somehow the direct finger of God writing is to make them unbelievable as if theology were not anthropology, meaning people had non-human experience of the divine. This is absurd to imply that human beings could stop being linguistic being and understand the divine as the divine understands the divine self.
Aphorism of the Day, October 29, 2025
The New Testament represents a variety of writings of people in different places within the Roman Empire during the first and second centuries who were drawn because of mystical experience co-extensive with exposure to a significant social and personal identity paradigm which centered around the charismatic person of Jesus, who became better known in different ways after he was gone. In the afterlife of Jesus, the Christ was celebrated as a patron deity for the ecclesia or local clubs/guild which gathered around a sacred meal and committed themselves to promulgating how they had become constituted by their Christ identity. Being like other such guilds would account for how Christ-guilds could interweave with existing social practice. The growing diversity of the Christ clubs threatened the social political coherence for the further success of the movement necessitating the rise of leaders to declare what was "right" or orthodoxy and what could not be accepted, heresy or heterodoxy. The Emperor Constantine saw the necessity for the church leaders to gather and standardize the teachings of a pan-Church with conforming local churches. The plan for an Empire wide orthodoxy took over a century to become "mostly" successful.
Aphorism of the Day, October 28, 2025
Becoming comfortable with the ALL of BEING being a Person, means that one has the experience of knowing such a Person as seeming to be a stranger and aloof from the specifics of one's own existential Angst and dark nights. If God is one's Person, such a Person, might have to suffer being in the role of being one's stranger.
Aphorism of the Day, October 27, 2025
When people respond to new textual or archaeological finds by saying this "confirms" the Bible, they usually mean it "confirms" the specific way in which I find the Bible as the only meaningful way for me. The Bible does not need to be "confirmed; its existence as a textual document in many various forms and use in many different communities over the centuries is its own confirmation. And many people and communities have confirmed varied meanings of the biblical words in different ways without needing anymore "proof" to be discovered, however interesting they might be for historical studies.
Aphorism of the Day, October 26, 2025
Scriptures as all texts should be understood literarily, not literally since everything humanly and socially meaningful does not have to be something which can or could have been empirically verified.
Aphorism of the Day, October 25, 2025
Should mercy be felt toward the people who are greedy and powerful and who rob the people of the earth of the distributive justice needed for this world? Is it a reverse justice to feel sorry for those who "have" to be in evil roles, and admire those who are good and kind but oppressed. The transvaluation of experiential values of the Beatitudes seems to an implication that it is better to terribly wronged in life than to be "cursed" to be in the role of the oppressor. The ethics of doing what can to survive oppressing situation can be reconciled with the ethics of defending the vulnerable with all one's strength for the practical cause of realized justice.
Aphorism of the Day, October 24, 2025
"Waiting on the Lord," seems to be a familiar trope in the Bible. Such probably could be retranslated as "waiting for coming to a sense of favorable providence in the circumstances of one's life," because in writings like the Psalms the actions within nature itself seem to be attributed to the Lord, and human waiting means that we are not getting our preferred outcome yet.
Aphorism of the Day, October 23, 2025
Parable or story is a participatory and indirect way of teaching forcing the hearer/reader to project one's own meanings on the elements of the story and then having to assess the motives which drive those projections.
Aphorism of the Day, October 22, 2025
Contrition needs to be distinguished from poor self image where self contempt seems to the unhealthy response to life. Contrition needs to be based upon "real guilt" and not "false guilt" where one seems to be perpetually apologizing for existing.
Aphorism of the Day, October 21, 2025
Every criticism of the Bible or any piece of ancient literature is really a judgment about the mostly unknown writers in their writing situations, or it is a critique of the many readers and interpreters in their settings in how they have used the ancient words to constitute their own personal and social subjectivity.
Aphorism of the Day, October 20, 2025
The tax collector of the parable of Jesus who in self contempt did not list his accomplishments vis a vis others but merely said, "God be merciful to me a sinner," was the recommended model of contrition. Jesus and John the Baptist recommended the humble mode of always looking in the direction of what is left yet in the future in lives always on the path of perfectibility. Such a posture does not allow one the luxury of quitting the path because one is too bad nor does it allow one to gloat for being too good, or at least good enough to berate others for not being good in the way that one is.
Aphorism of the Day, October 19, 2025
Prayer as the continual request for justice in a world that is often unjust is the holy nagging that we are called to.
Aphorism of the Day, October 18, 2025
Christians should ask themselves if the ideals of the American Constitution are more inclusive than the kind of love which their own Christian group proclaim and live.
Aphorism of the Day, October 17, 2025
The sea of probability is life is so vast and historically the rise of science became a better statistical predictor for how to live with better prediction of future outcomes than did myth or religion. However the preponderance of the influence of myth and religion has become part of the equation in the field of probability in determining future human actions. Apocalyptic fatalists can live in such a way as to guarantee their own outcome even though it may just end up being in compliance with the all too natural entropy of global death.
Aphorism of the Day, October 16, 2025
Religious and community paradigms are constellations of cultural practices which are inherited because we are human language users taking advantage of the pollination of traces of the past that we have access to now to engage in what we think probably will occur with hope of influencing outcomes with our agency while remaining vulnerable to what we don't know and can't control.
Aphorism of the Day, October 15, 2025
The Bible is a collection of writings with the varied experiences of people in different times and places including agony, ecstasy, losses, triumphs, successes, and failures, kept for the ritualizing of human experience vis a vis their relationship with the divine as the providence of the free conditions of total probability.
Aphorism of the Day, October 14, 2025
There is no visible way to count the number of interior invisible hidden invocation of the divine whatever for aid, intervention, and comfort. The parable of the widow seeking in a nagging way, justice from the unjust judge presents prayer as something like an interior energy of "power votes" to influence the scales of justice toward what is just in a visible world where even those who have the office of justice are unjust.
Aphorism of the Day, October 13, 2025
Big questions like the meaning of life and death remain in our modern context as they did in the many various biblical contexts, though the cultural context shape how the question are framed and answered. The truth is that many ancient contexts are permanently "deleted" for us today which leaves us often presuming to know too much when we don't have the humility to say that we really don't know what was meant.
Aphorism of the Day, October 12, 2025
Polytheism in practice did not mean people worshipped many gods because people would choose one or be born into the area which had a "contractual" relationship with a certain god or goddess. In the Hebrew Bible, polytheism really means that people were choosing other deities beside the one which the scribes were at the time calling the supreme God, namely, the one for us to build our identity around. One could note that the modern and postmodern era has made so much information available that one is face with such a smorgasbord from which to consume an "identity," while also having the freedom of so many choices, it happens that one travels and slides on a poly-identity continuum. One can note a clash between those with more settled identities and those who find the human psyche more fluid.
Aphorism of the Day, October 11, 2025
There is an arrogance of saying that all our stuff is original and we have borrowed nothing from the past. It is also arrogant to say we have updated the past in original revelatory and inventive ways thus surpassing the significance of former stuff still held in respect by others. Can we not just humbly admit that we repurpose the entire field of inherited metaphors in the now and be thankful that heuristic occasions occur for us that can contribute to the metaphor pool for the future.
Aphorism of the Day, October 10, 2025
Being well and healthy is regarded to be what is supposed to be "normal" about life and when "abnormal" conditions of "not feeling oneself" occur, the quick or gradual return to "feeling more of oneself," seems graceful. Biblical heroes were often associated with the grace of coming back to health.
Aphorism of the Day, October 9, 2025
Perhaps the central point in the presentation of the healings of Jesus is the communal dimension. Those who are sick are not to be socially shunned but sought after by the community. Christ is presented as the seeking healer of those who individually and communally might feel isolated by their affliction.
Aphorism of the Day, October 8, 2025
Sometimes it seems as though any notion of orthodoxy is but one group saying that they have the best version of the Sublime beyond words, even while they are limited to word products to be able to make their claims.
Aphorism of the Day, October 7, 2025
Briefly speaking for humans, wisdom might be called the finding of the most appropriate generation of language products for life situations.
Aphorism of the Day, October 6, 2025
How might a person or humanity as a group be related to what in AI is called a large language model? A person or the entirety of humanity does not have the capacity to access the vast collection of data which is and will be stored by AI data bases even though human production of language products have created the very possibility of AI's large language models. Since no human or community is capable to collate the vast collection of human data, AI's large language model is the timely advance to help limited humanity navigate in targeted ways the vast amount of human data that has accrued and been collected for public use, and potentially for human creative advance to live and hopefully survive the complexity of problems which face the people of our planet.
Aphorism of the Day, October 5, 2025
When claiming that the mercy of the Lord endures forever, perhaps this is descriptive of the fact that mercy might be the endurance of some kind of life forever. The continuing sustenance is proof of mercy.
Aphorism of the Day, October 4, 2025
Believing that empirical verification is not valid for the life of senses even in one event which occurs in space and time, means that one is vulnerable to lots of suggestive falsehoods in popular culture.
Aphorism of the Day, October 3, 2025
The Deluge of world knowledge and information means that to feel safe and unthreatened by so many contrary views, many people are choosing to live within micro-communities which effectively censors what they want to know about their lives.
Aphorism of the Day, October 2, 2025
The Bible is used most often as a book to guide personal devotion assuming that the way that I understand the translated words of the Bible can provide me and others with insights for how to live well.
Aphorism of the Day, October 1, 2025
The textual origins of biblical writings is like the discovery of an old family quilt with pieces of scrapes from many the clothes of family ancestor but without adequate knowledge of the family member and when and where they wore the item of clothing which eventually provided scrapes for the quilt.
