Back Pain

June 20, 2024

About two days ago, I strained my lower back, and I have had to learn how to sit, walk, and stand ever and always responding to what is causing the most pain. Using my walker usually helps. It’s funny, but writing essays for two years or more, I have been learning from the responses I receive what causes the most pain in my readers’ perceptions.

Yet, when I try to clarify what I wrote, I am accused of many kinds of underhanded and devious devices. Damned if I do, and damned if I don’t.

When I attempt to use the Bible to clarify the Bible, I am accused of “circular reasoning” or some other deviant debate strategy. I guess we can throw out all non-fiction books now — like Chemistry Textbooks and Biology Textbooks…

Anyways, people don’t want to hear what they don’t want to hear.

The Bible is a textbook, but when it is presented as something otherworldly or “holy,” its status as non-fiction is reduced to fantasy and fable.

Nevertheless, it is truly a historical text which has recorded individuals’ lives in a context of a nation’s life. Good and bad, the evil times as well as the faithful times, the downcast as well as the uplifting. There is poetry, wisdom, prophecy and its fulfillment, and personal testimonies of God working in both individual lives and in all societal dynamics.

All the same, as an illustration of my psychic back pain, below is my response to someone’s response to my response to someone else’s response… (Note: my response follows each point the other person is alleging…)

You speak as if there were no other scriptures in the world besides the Jewish/Christian Bible.

I think that you define “scripture” in its most basic use as MerriamWebster.com — “2 : something written”

Perhaps, even as “ 1 b : a body of writings considered sacred or authoritative” The latter begs the question, “Who is doing the considering?”

You speak as if the J/C Bible did not speak strongly against being judgemental, and indeed your comments, above and below, are unbearably judgemental.

This statement you are trying to enforce is also dependent on definition. Jesus stressed not to be judgmental in a condemning way, but also stressed we are to be “… as sheep in the midst of wolves; therefore be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves.” In other words we are to use our heads, our good judgment, our God-given faculties to think and to discern. The letters of the Apostles all condemn certain behaviors.

You speak as if the writers of the 66 books of the Bible were all in agreement and that they all agree with your bloodthirsty delight in consigning people whose behavior you deplore to everlasting pain and suffering.

Sorry. Now, you have turned the table. you are now, ironically, judging me. You have read my innermost thoughts without personally knowing my heart. At any rate, I have heard these accusations, not of me (that’s a first), but of God, Jesus, and the Bible. If you were familiar with my entire conversation with Mr. Masters you might see me a bit differently. Even so, I couldn’t give a cat’s meow about another’s sexual choices, except for warning about the consequences of individual choices. In other words, to bend a phrase, “I don’t ask, because I can’t tell.” Besides, there have been people in my life who I respect and who have been a benefit to me in other dynamics of life’s ways — intellectually and whatnot.

You speak as if you have a direct line to God and to correct interpretation of the Bible. Not likely, friend!

You won’t believe what you choose not to believe and then, there’s this: “For there will be a time when {people} will not endure sound teaching, but according to their own desires, having an itching ear, they will gather around them teachers to suit themselves,” 2 Timothy 4:3. This is also a basic, natural human trait in our psychology — we want reassurance through confirmation by our social groups both large and small.

Micah 6:8: ‘what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?’

Now, I find it rather odd that you have decided to use a quote from the Bible you otherwise choose to denigrate… So then, what does the Bible say about justice? About mercy? About humbly walking with God? If you read the entire Bible and keep everything in proper context, you might change your thinking — at least a little.