A ruptured rapture

There have always been religious “nuts” predicting the end of the world. But what I will never understand is why so many gullible and naive human beings believe these “nuts.”

Those using the bible as their source of information for the rapture are totally ignorant and illiterate regarding biblical literature. Many are “self styled,” so-called “ministers” who still believe that the bible is the “infallible word of God,” even while they are reading an English translation. So, considering the fact that the bible was written in Hebrew and Greek, this would mean that over several thousand years, you would have needed thousands of “infallible” translators in order to infallibly reach you today in an infallible English translation. And considering the fact that in any biblical book store you have a choice of dozens of translations, all different in the use of language…well, you can ask the clerk on duty, “which is the translation that is infallible?” The clerk will promptly change the subject. So, you finally choose one you think might be infallible. What good is it? Unless you can find an infallible reader… who can infallibly read the infallible translation.

Most churches like to advertise that they have bible “study” groups, which is pure nonsense. What they really have are bible “reading” groups with the blind leading the blind. In my 40 years of church experiences I have never seen a bible “study” group in any church.

A “study” group would have to include all of the complexities of the Greek and Hebrew language, plus thousands of years of translation and transmission problems, combined with the historical religious, archaeological and sociological implications of the times that produced the material, plus an exhaustive exposure to comparative mythologies.

You can rest assured that you will never hear about any of this from the pulpit of your church on Sunday morning. If he, or she, does not share current scholarship with you, it is deceit. If he, or she, does not know current scholarship, it is pure ignorance.

Christian radio host, Harold Camping, who predicted the “rapture” and end of the world for May 21, 2011, is among the most ignorant of the ignorant. Now he has moved the date up to October 21… and once again, the gullible and naive will believe that baloney and hogwash. Lets call it BS.

The word, “rapture”, is an old English word, which means to be “caught away.” The word is NOT in the King James Bible. But the phrase “caught up” is used several times. An example: “the Lord will descend with a shout, the dead in Christ shall rise, then we which are alive shall be CAUGHT UP with them in the clouds and so shall ever be with the Lord.” 1 Thessalonians 4:16.

Going all the way back to the 17th century, the date for the end of the world, combined with the so called “rapture,” has been predicted by the biblical illiterates hundreds of times. Religious “nuts” are not new to our time and our century. And neither are the naive and gullible. The 18th and 19th centuries were filled with the biblically ignorant making “rapture” predictions.

Lets face it. Biblical literature is archaic. Read more

The language of life

During the month of May, continuing into June, at my Sunday Symposium at the Palm Springs Tennis Club, we are celebrating “The Language of Life” and the life and works of the poets who have given us this language.

I started on the first Sunday with JOHN NEIHARDT, whose bust is in the rotunda of the state capitol in Lincoln, Nebraska. He was the Poet Laureate of Nebraska, as well as Missouri, the author of the classic Black Elk Speaks, the author of many books of poetry including An Epic of the West, and some of the most beautiful love poetry ever written in A Bundle of Myrrh.

The next Sunday I presented STANLEY KUNITZ, twice Poet Laureate of the United States, who spoke “the language of life” in a profound use of language. Next, I used the work of BILLY COLLINS, as he also was twice Poet Laureate of the United States. The troubadour, BOB DYLAN was also a part of the poetry of that Sunday.

I think of all the topics I have presented at my Sunday Symposium, this is my favorite subject for the same reason that Bill Moyers put into words: “Poets live the lives all of us live, with one big difference. They have the power to make the experience of life both magical and real. The life they reveal is our own.”

Poetry is language in its most exalted, delighted and concentrated form. Maya Angelou has said, “Poetry is music written for the human voice.” Poetry readings are concerts of sheer joyous sound. The “soul of Mexico,” Octavio Paz, put it this way: “when you say life is marvelous, you are saying a banality. But to make life a marvel, that is the role of poetry.” When you listen to poetry being read well, you are a witness to the marvel, you are experiencing the marvel.

The New York Times recently had something to say about this subject. “Poetry readings have moved out of smoky cafes to become a staple of the cultural scene.” Poetry readings are held at over 150 places in the New York area alone. The renaissance of public poetry is over the entire nation. The Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle schedules 70 readings a year, and the poets of our day are putting powerful energy and new idioms into our language.

Against the vulgar images of advertising that daily infect us, against the barbaric rhetoric of politics, poetry stands as a beacon to human feelings and senses, as well as the human imagination. Read more

Functional illiterates

“Functional illiterates” is a phrase coined by the late Robert Hutchins, who was dean of the Yale University Law School at age 28. He was appointed chancellor of the University of Chicago at age 32. He was obviously brilliant.

One of the most important events of his life took place when he was a teenager. He never forgot it. His father was a professor of philosophy at Oberlin College in Ohio. Hutchins went to his father one day and started to give him his “opinion” on a particular subject. His father stopped him with these words: “Son…let me remind you, before you proceed, that you do not know enough about the subject to even have an opinion.”

Would to God that every Tom, Jane, Dick and Harry going around giving their “opinions” about religion and the bible would take that to heart. As Dr. Fred Denbeaux put it in the Layman’s Theological Library series, “The person who is unwilling to study linguistics and literary distinctions and to differentiate between prose and poetry, history and mythology, legend and folklore, will not ever understand the bible.”

There is an enormous amount of confusion as to what it means to be religiously educated. There is a vast world of difference between training, indoctrination and education.

Let me illustrate: I had an acquaintance at Oklahoma State University who had a Ph.D in Poultry Science. (I do wish they would stop calling those degrees “Doctor of Philosophy.” He was not a philosophy major. He was a Doctor of Poultry Science) He knew all there was to know about chickens at that time. But outside of chickens he was one of the most ignorant, uninformed, poorly read, unlettered men I have ever known. A total “functional illiterate.” He could function in the area of chickens and that was the end of his knowledge and his “opinions” of religion, Christianity and bible were about as enlightened and informed as those of my dog.

And yet people assumed that because he had his Ph.D he was “educated” when nothing could have been further from the truth. He was a “trained” technician or “specialist” in poultry science and nothing more. Read more

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