Month: May 2022

God’s Wrong Grammar 

Occasionally, one comes upon a Bible verse with an awkwardness as if the writer must have made a mistake.  One such verse to me was Genesis 11:6.  As a young Christian in school, I felt grammatically uncomfortable each time I read that verse: “And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language.…”  How could “the people,” a plural subject, take a singular verb “is” instead of “are”?  Could God speak such wrong English, I wondered?  Or maybe the transcribers of the Bible didn’t know enough English, I concluded.  I was, however, careful not to think that too loud for fear of committing an unpardonable sin.  I was to accept much later that the expression was an emphasis on how strongly those rebels of Babel had become united, losing their distinct pluralities into a strong and seamless oneness.  I ceased to bother my young school brain with that Middle English of King James.

Read more

1. He Spoke in my Ears 

Sometime ago, while I waited to take the podium and speak at a Christian meeting, the master of ceremonies began one of those elaborate introductions and designated the upcoming speaker as a “man of God.”  Almost at once, an acquittance by my side whispered into my ears, “the man of the great God.”  He meant to correct them in my ears.  They probably had been too carnal and vainglorious in their spiritual protocols.  They probably were nearly blasphemously promoting mere mortals when they should meekly have been upraising the mighty God.

Read more

It seems to have been my strange lot lately, to be confronted with troubling insights into scriptures, especially passages that, to all appearance, are a contradiction either to themselves or to long-held religious ideals. One of them, Revelation 19:11-13:

Read more

Now the gates of Jericho were tightly shut because the people were afraid of the Israelites. No one was allowed to go out or in (Joshua 6:1, New Living Translation)

Read more

The New Testament parable of the Prodigal Son provides insights into the process and principles of forgiveness, or of securing forgiveness. In that parable, a junior son demands his inheritance from the father, and promptly goes off to a very distant land where he wastes everything in debauchery.  Sometime later, the hammer of hardship forces his eyes open.  He realises his trespass and takes steps to make amends in the frittered relationship with his father.

Read more