Bill Maher on Christian Violence

There is so much going on in this one that I don't know where to begin.  As atheist rants go this is a pretty good sermon.  BTW for those of you who read this blog with your kids, some foul language follows if you press play.  Let me know what you think. (HT to TB on FB)

Brick-A-Brack 01/12/10

• Claude Mariottini gives a concise and very helpful argument that God did not command genocide in Joshua and Judges
• Loren Rossen cites three historical Jesus scholars on why the non-canonical gospels are not admissible for historical Jesus research, "Two of them are secular liberals, so it's not as if plain sense flows only from Christian bias." 
• TVNZ reports on "a former atheist who found God and like many Christians he's trying to make the world a better place."
• Darrell on the modern and hypothetical ancient Greek word for blog.

And something to get you in the Christmas mood, 

A Question About Benny Hinn

Seriously, how come no one ever pushes him back?  I'm not exactly macho, but if he tried it on me, it wouldn't be the pomme who ended up wriggling on the floor like a reject from Britney Spears' dance troup.

The Religion of Violence

Kim Fabricus, in a typically bombastic post suggests the following bon mot to respond to an antagonistic atheist:

—Religion is inherently violent.
—You mean violence is inherently religious.

Which is a very interesting way of putting it.  Acts of violence do appeal to some essential understanding of the universe, whether it is the will to power, the right of self defence, or the reasonable response to unreasonable provocation, that holds some other thing more valuable than the command to love your enemy.  It is a decision, even if just for one special instance and under irrisistible pressure, to disobey Christ and serve another god entirely.  The iconoclasm of disfiguring a bearer of the image of God with violence is thus at once a moment of sacrilege and of idolatry.

round em up cowboy

• John Byron on beer drinking  in the Bible
• Nijay Gupta gives his book away
• Pam thinks about faith sharing and accountability groups
• Cynthia asks for Christian posts on violence
• Ali continues his series for a better evangelical response to homosexuality
• Quotes from Moltmann on universalism and Childs on Christological reading of scripture
• Mike Bird on the ethical indicative and imperative, a subject close to my own heart
• Fake Christianity is on CNN

The Sword that Heals

This weekend I found a battered copy of Martin Luther King jnr's book Why We Can't Wait, (Signet, 1963).  I am amazed at how moving it is to read, even despite my cultural, geographical, and chronological distance from the events.  Expect plenty of quotes over the next while:

Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon.  It is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it.  It is a sword that heals. (p26)

The Negro turned his back on force not only because he knew he could not win his freedom through physical force but also because he believed that through physical force he could lose his soul. (p34)

Acceptance of nonviolent direct action was a proof of a certain sophistication on the part of the Negro masses; for it showed they dared to break with the old, ingrained concepts of our society.  The eye-for-an-eye philosophy, the impulse to defend oneself when attacked, has always been held as the highest measure of American manhood.  We are a nation that worships the frontier tradition, and our heroes are those who champion justice through violent retaliation against injustice.  It is not simple to adopt the credo that moral force has as much strength and virtue as the capacity to return a physical blow; or that to refrain from hitting back requires more will and bravery than the automatic reflex of defence. (p37)