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Re: shoofly pie

> anyway, to answer your question, i meant that many of my questions are
> not necessarily ignored, but oftentimes met with an uncomfortable look
> and some kind of "that's not important" answer. when you ask questions
> about the validity of the resurrection, or the virgin birth (that's a
> hot one), so many youth group and bible study leaders will say, "well it
> doesn't really matter...that's a technicality. jesus christ was the son
> of god." what kind of answer is that?

Eight years ago, when I first began to get the urge, and a troubling urge
it was, to look into historical-Jesus scholarship, I had a youth pastor
whose motto, whenever he came across a magazine headline that read "Who
Was Jesus?", was to reply, "No, the question is, 'Who *Is* Jesus?'"

I knew this pastor was a fairly bright guy, and interested in scholarship
issues, so when I came across a book by Burton Mack (who I have since
learned is regarded by even skeptical scholars as one of the most
skeptical scholars of all) called _The Lost Gospel: Q and Christian
Origins_, I handed it to my pastor and asked him to read it first, and to
make notes in the margins if there was anything I should know when I got
around to reading the book myself.  Now, if you knew me, you'd know that
that was a big deal, and a sign of my desperation -- at the time, I
absolutely *hated* getting fingerprints on my books, let alone *writing*.

But when my pastor returned the book, he had read only the first and last
chapters, the intro and the conclusion; the rest of it was irrelevant, he
said, because Mack had played his hand and shown himself to be a skeptic.
That was one of the bigger letdowns of my life, and over the next two
years or so I found myself growing further and further distant from that
church -- and I've never entirely hooked up with any other church since
then, though I attend when I can.  I discovered the internet about a year
and half afterwards, and found lots of other Christians, post-Christians,
quasi-Christians and other supportive types that I could discuss these
issues with openly.  Also, in the summer of 1993, I heard about a lecture
by N.T. Wright at Regent College on the subject of the historical Jesus,
and I attended, with some trepidation.  To my delight, he approached the
issue from a fully historical perspective, and engaged many of the
questions I was asking at the time.  To the extent that I still have a
Christian faith, it would probably not be going too far to say that
Wright, along with Terry Scott Taylor (frontman for Daniel Amos, who I've
listened to since c. 1985) and a few others, is responsible for that.

Which is just my verbose, roundabout way of saying that I think I know
some of the frustration you allude to here, when church types get
dismissive of legitimate questions or go searching for easy, pat answers.

> i accept agreements to disagree on issues like politics and abortion
> rights, not the fact that mary might not have been impregnated by the
> holy ghost.

Really?  You would actually demand that there be no difference of opinion
on the virginal-conception issue?  One of the things I've always liked
about Wright is that, while he accepts the virginal-conception stories as
historically authentic, he's never been one to make a big deal of them.

http://www.topica.com/lists/dadl-ot/read/message.html?mid=2000665361

--- Peter T. Chattaway --------------------------- peter at chattaway_com ---
 "I detected one misprint, but to torture you I will not tell you where."
      Winston Churchill to T.E. Lawrence, re Seven Pillars of Wisdom

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