angrymnk wrote:
When you say base understanding of the bible, I assume you mean barely any understanding at all ( get it? base? hello? ).
Base as in "starting point", yes. You must have missed when Joph pointed out that it doesn't actually require much biblical knowledge to be able to correctly interpret the passage in question.
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I am not sure how you can possibly expect me to take gospel reading at a mass for anything other than "Christianity for dummies - mass edition ".
You've never been to a Catholic mass, have you? In addition to the stock ritual stuff, there are always three readings. One from the Old Testament, one from the New (but not a Gospel), and one from a Gospel. The three all have a common message/theme and are actually set by the church ahead of time (seriously, they have big fat books they publish which tell you which readings to do each week of the year). You will get the same readings on a given day no matter what church you attend mass at anywhere in the world. After the readings, the priest will typically spend 5-10 minutes talking about the readings, explaining what they mean and usually how they relate to us and the world around us. Some are really good at this, some are pretty crappy, but the point is that if you spend enough years attending mass, you will eventually hear every single Gospel verse there is (because there's only four books), most of the NT stuff, and a good sampling of the OT stuff. You will also receive some explanation of these passages as well.
And that's in addition to any bible study classes you may take along the way. So yeah, when you ask me what experience I have which allows me to interpret that particular Gospel passage, saying that I spent most of my K-12 education in Catholic schools as well as attending Catholic mass is a perfectly valid answer.
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I also LOOOOVE how you trot out "here is how you should interpret it"(because you know, the bible may be saying something else altogether and heavens forfend if the unwashed masses try to read the bible for what it is ).
You're free to read the bible "for what it is", but that's not what you did. You cherry picked one line, took it out of context, and attempted to argue that you know better than 2 thousand years of scholars what that passage really means.
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Thank God we have priests to interpret the secret word of God to us, mere mortals.
Which is funny given that you are showing us all exactly why having priests to interpret the bible for us is important.
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I also disagree with your conclusion. If the bible is inconsistent about the message...
It's not though (at least not this passage). You just misunderstood it.
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... maybe, just maybe, it is because it was written by some random people ( and not, like Qur'an, by God himself ) and not because I am not understanding that the hilarious argument of the ineffable "God [that] moves in mysterious ways".
Um... Er...
it was written by a guy named Matthew. It's right there in the link. It's called "The Gospel According to Matthew". No one's actually confused about who wrote it. Before you just sling random anti-bible attacks, maybe stop and think about whether they make any sense first?
The authors of all the NT books are known. In most cases, their names are in the titles of the books themselves. Again, this is the kind of stuff you only need a "base" understanding of the bible to know. It's really not rocket science.
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But then, what do I expect, critical thinking is not a part of most K-12 schools
The irony here almost strains belief.
Go tell Nexa that you're bored.
When he's being a d-bag, I tell him to go argue with people online.