Sunday Sermon: Challenging Perfection.

A central tenet of Christianity is the claim that Yhwh is a perfect being. If he is perfect, then it should follow that he is unchanging, as having to change one's policy indicates that there must have been some flaw in the previous policy that made it inadequate, and required the change. In fact, Yhwh himself tells us that he doesn't change in Malachi 3:6.

Since Yhwh is unchanging, he wouldn't declare that he has enemies whom he hates, and whom he will do ill to (Hosea 9:15; Leviticus 20:23) but declare that his followers must love and do good to those who hate them (Matthew 5:44), right?

Sunday Sermon: The Devil is in the Footnotes.

The vast majority of (English-Language) Bibles are full to the brim with footnotes. In some instances these footnotes are more or less irrelevant. For instance, anyone who's ever sat through the never ending stream of "sermon on the mount" sermons knows that "Raca" is an aramaic expression of contempt, that doesn't translate directly to any word in english (Matthew 5:22). In this instance, the footnote is more an explanation of a foreign word, that doesn't effect the flow of the story.

In other instances, however, the footnotes have some substantial influence on the story. Consider Mark 1:40-44, in the typical telling of the story, a man has leprosy and asks Jesus to heal him. Jesus is "moved with compassion", heals him, and tells him not to tell anyone about it, but to go straight to the priests so they can declare that he is "clean". If you read this version of the story you tend to get the image of "gentle Jesus, meek and mild" who sees a sick man, pities him enough to heal him, and is humble enough to ask that he not going around singing Jesus' praises.