Speadsheet Bible Sliced and Diced Into Statistics and Profits for The New Ignorant Classes in America Courtesy of the Oligarchs, FOX NEWS, GOP etc.

Spreadsheet Bible Jesus Riding Pet Dinosaur "Spike"

Of course you cannot deny the existence of the bones of Dinosaurs, but since the Earth is only 6,000 Years Old in a Perfect Market Economy Capitalist world, and you are on your own foraging for food and seeking shelter under decaying infrastructure underpasses etc., it is highly likely that Jesus, who defends Free Market Capitalism rode a Dinosaur according to homeschooled children's coloring books. 

Jesus would not take a grimy little poor people's socialist funded bus to his preaching gigs. He saved up and used a Cadillac Chariot.

Jesus looked ahead, invested with his local financial adviser in a 401K heavily leveraged into a hedge fund, looking forward to a fat retirement fund.

He believed in this, in the hope that God would bless him and lift him out of his poverty if God thought he deserved it. 

This in case his dad did not ask him to commit joint Patricide/Regicide/Suicide and save everybody from hell etc.

http://thisculturalchristian.blogspot.com/2014/02/spreadsheetization-of-bible-in-global.html

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Jesus Died on the Cross to Make Black Friday Possible - Amen - I Am The Way The Truth and The Reduced Item Sale on Aisle 4 !

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Medieval Stained Glass - St. Michael's Cathedral Coventry UK

I ran into one of those strange finds in life.  One thing led to another researching one thing on the net and then ran into a remarkable find of Medieval stained glass, over five years hundred years old, that had been taken out of Coventry Cathedral in England for protection at the beginning of WWII and before the infamous German fire bombing of Coventry in November 1940 and the destruction of St. Michael’s Cathedral as part of the destruction in the city and loss of life there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coventry_Cathedral

The glass by medieval glazier John Thornton has been in a vault since.  The collection is of course not all the stain glass of the lost church.  A small part of a whole, the oldest and perhaps the best in terms of art was saved.  Salvation and now resurrection.

A recent need to raise a million pounds for emergency repairs on the still standing memorial shell of the old cathedral has arisen and the glass is to be exhibited to help raise needed cash.  They built a modern cathedral next to the lost one.  A mixing of the new with the old gives a certain continuity to the St. Michael community.

http://www.digitalhen.co.uk/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-15694422

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Pathways and Roadblocks to Salvation

An unfinished thought occurred to me the other day in a previous article and I did not go with the flow. A lot of talk, thought being stirring up in the religious press because of Brian McLaren who knows that Christianity is doomed if it chooses literalism over flexibility in a world exploding with technology and knowledge. Many interesting stats, that by 2050 America could be a nation with a majority of non-believers. Rather a soul-less world so to speak of or envision. Kind of like France.

Viewpoint: Not every brand of Christianity can be the right one

In an interview with Christianity Today, Brian McLaren said "I don't think we've got the gospel right yet. What does it mean to be 'saved'? When I read the Bible, I don't see it meaning, 'I'm going to heaven after I die.' Before modern evangelicalism nobody accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Savior, or walked down an aisle, or said the sinner's prayer. I don't think the liberals have it right. But I don't think we have it right either. None of us has arrived at orthodoxy." ("The Emergent Mystique," Christianity Today November 2004).

In Mclaren's case I guess I don't know where he thinks the saved go after they die. He can't seem to define what it is to be saved, he has no "right" gospel message to give. Someone is wrong.

Why Christianity Must Adapt -- Or Perish

…A literal interpretation of the Bible offers regressionism and leaves little room for progress. This is exactly where McLaren finds the inherent problem with modern Christianity, and the exact thing that must change: the Bible is a ballast.

What of a new Bible, one that makes more sense examining the past and is pro-human when applied to the future, releasing past dogma for improvements and corrections? As you may have guessed, it is not necessary to replace the physical work and words of the Bible; it is sufficient to have it become a new book via a fresh reading.

The thought I had started the other day had to do with looking at bible passages and rather than accept them literally, to look at them in terms of human energy and or the energy of the Universe, a force of God. Of course that energy could also be represented not only by human words but also by simple symbols or common elements.

Except a man be born again of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God [John 3:5].

I think the above is one of the most perplexing quotes in the new testament. It also is a keystone of modern evangelicalism and their “born again” agenda as a marketing selling point.

Maybe, just maybe, the birth of water and the spirit is a birth of soul out of water and fire.

Very basic symbols but think about it. If you are mediocre and conform or never think much about passages in the bible or how they might be reapplied in a modern age or modern situations, maybe your way to heaven is a very dimly lit corridor on the other side of life.

But if there is a maximum of energy spent in the conflict between thought and non-thought, belief and non-belief, water which is life on earth and fire which is the fire of the spirit of God, the final victory over life is in having more fire in life to withstand the water of living of your everyday life.

The spirit, the soul, the divine spark within must dominate over the water of the perhaps drudgery of life which if in proper balance could be the kingdom of God on earth – to reflect the fire which should be within and recognized, cultivated and multiplied.

Life is a balance of yin and yang, water and fire, thought and soul, actions improper and proper. Life after death is a reflection of a life lived by your input and manner.

Salvation can mean much more and mean many more things than any sentence of words in black ink on paper from John.

To be a prisoner of words sometimes means being a prisoner locked away from truth, light, freedom and rebirth here and forever.