once, really, upon a time


so...


one night Jesus had a visitor. He was a pharisee, a teacher of the law. And years later -- ironically well after everyone knew the story, Jesus' friend John tells the story.


and...

once upon a time I was going to teach a Bible study and decided to teach through the gospel of John. When I came to John 3, I thought I was so familiar with the story. Then I read it with an eye to teach. I stumbled over a very disquieting discovery: I had swallowed like pablum what ever I had heard in sermons, never thought for my self about what John 3 ~ all of John 3 ~ was about and skipped to 3:16. "For God so loved the world..." easy to understand, right? What was starkly apparent to me was that I did not have a clue what I really thought happened between Nic and Jesus. I do love when honest ignorance is the beginning of ken.


(ok...digression: don't you love that word? ken :Perception; understanding: complex issues well beyond our ken. Range of vision. to know, have knowledge of or about, or be acquainted with (a person or thing) )


So I read the story, really read it, stopped and realized I had begun to feel that either someone had re-written my Bible or that I had never actually READ this before. I thought: "wait: John is a great ~ a GREAT ~ writer. ... but this reads like a half finished story, a story that is simplistic : too simplistic to be believed, or in places a bit like gibberish. WHAT???" No, no! go read it -- like it is the first time you have EVER read John and be honest!


I am too tired to finish this blog tonight, but as a "teaser"...

1) Jesus and Nic seem to be having two different conversations, or HUGE bits are left out (as if John were listening at the door and only got bits and snatches) Why would a really good writer do that : especially when he had to have known Nicodemus and gotten the full story from him by the time the Gospel of John was written??????


2) Either Nicodemus was as stupid as drift wood, or all the sermons on how Nicodemus was hopelessly simple and daft regarding basic science and biology, and thought Jesus was asking him to go back into his mother's womb are ... well to use language in keeping with the fact that I am reportedly a lady and a Christian ... ummm misinformed and wrong.

Comments

  1. EddyJanuary 10, 2010 at 11:29 PM

    I do like the Word Ken... not as much as you do, but I also like that you like the word Ken so much.

    ReplyDelete

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