It must be sin. For that is what you call it.

But it would seem to the casual observer at least, you simply protesteth too much.

As such, you have told us that you are not married. Never have married. You don't like women. You avoid them. Hate it when they talk in church. Hate their hair. And the horrors of actually touching one. But if you are so horny , and you simply can't help it . . . then marry one . . . but so much better if you stayed single like me.

But you also tell us that you are doing something . . . practicing something . . . you hate. What that something is, you are coy . . . give hints . . . but never say. To horrible to say. But it is a thorn. It is in your flesh. It is a messenger from Satan to buffet you . . . to keep you from exalting yourself.

You don't understand what or why you do it. You don't do what you would like to do, but do the very thing you hate. It is that Law thing. Confessing is good. So now, it is no longer you that is doing it, but the sin which dwells within you. You say, again, you practice the very evil that you do not wish to do.

You joyfully concur with the law of God in your inner man, but you see a different law in the members of your body. . . waging war against the law of your mind, making you a prisoner of the law of sin which is in your members.

You cry out "Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?"

And in another time. Another era. Your cry is heard again.

It is heard in a context that only a few can understand. And even then, with a sense of angst.

The hammer of that Law. That same Law that condemned you to certain death. The very commandment that promised life to you proved to be the death of you as well. At least you said that. You said the devil made you do it. Those fears . . . those fears within your flesh . . . your members . . . your bodily appendages . . . and which of your appendages can contain sin? An appendage . . . under the influence of a gland that does not always obey the mind of the person . . .

You confess to us you have a hidden aspect to your life. You live in shame. You call yourself an imposter. One who yearns to be true. Through dying yearns to be alive.

But you are also a zealot. You proudly boasted of your allegiance and adherence to the Law. Enough so to try to violently destroy a threatening religion. Destroy something that threatened you . . . to your very core.

For that very damnation of a Law that condemns you to death . . . is the very crutch you use to absolve yourself. Take that law away . . . and you fear of your shame. And those Christians . . . those yammerers of grace . . . were a threat you could not bear.

Things changed.

No. You didn't get caught in the men's room at the Minneapolis airport.

But your testimony is like those who are. Repressed homosexuals. Railing against the evils, the despicability, the disgust of it.

The duplicitous life of deceit and hypocrisy.

And there are some of us, Teh Gayz that is, that would call you a sommamabeech of a bastard. And some of us, Teh Gayz that is, that would not.

But as wretched as you say you are . . . you too were given a gift.

And that gift inspired you to say things about love. That love is patient. That love is kind. That love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. That love does not insist on its own way. That love is not irritable or resentful. That love does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. That love bears all things. Believes all things. Hopes all things. Endures all things. That love never ends. And when it comes to faith and hope and love, the greatest of these is love.

Paul. Welcome.

To come out of the closet is to be free. A God-willed freedom from the bondage of hell.

And as a child of God . . . made in the way you are . . . you too are loved.

The Refectory Manager

"Go to the [salmon], you lazybones"

The article by Ron Osborn in Adventist Spectrum started off:

There is a great theological dilemma with theistic evolution that biblical literalists have been quick to cite as reason why the true fideles must embrace young earth creationism. This dilemma is the problem of theodicy, or defending God’s character in the face of evil. How could a loving God use as his method of creation a mechanism as cruel as natural selection, which requires massive amounts of suffering, predation and death?

The theocons on the site were wrapping their knickers in knots over this one. When their premise revolves around the total incompatibility of science and religion, it is impossible to defend . . . and still claim to be rational about it.

But.

"Go to the [salmon], you lazybones; consider its ways, and be wise." Proverbs 6:6

For most of my life, I rooted for the bear.

Dumb, stupid salmon.

Being spawned way up in the headwaters of crystal cold creeks, swimming for miles on end to the dirty, old, salty sea. Wallowing around there for a few years. Swimming against horrific odds . . . natural and manmade . . . back to that crystal cold headwaters of a little mountain creek. And horrors! Just to do "it." That embarrassingly nasty act called "it." And then die. What a stupid waste. Goody for the bears . . . just slap'm and grab'm and feast'm. Anything as dumb as a salmon has it coming.

And such as I saw how things were supposed to be.

The "predator" is the winner in the end . . . the one with the fullest belly.

Somewhere, somehow, I was hit by an epiphany.

Maybe Mother Nature knows what she is doing after all. And it is not wise to fool, or ignore, Mother Nature.

That crystal clear little stream, high up in the mountains, obeys the law of Gravity. Ancillary to that obedience is the ability to collect run-off from the surrounding hills . . . run-off rich with leached nutrients. And those nutrients are hustled to the deep blue sea.

To the casual observer, it is a one-way trip. A net loss. Too bad, old baldy mountain top. Just what you deserve for being at the pinnacle of things. There would seem to be a poetic justice, a moral lesson of sorts. Perhaps.

But those big old fat, sex-driven salmon, hell-bent on hanky-panky if it is the last thing they do . . . head back up the downward flow of nutrition. To engage in "it."

And even before some of those salmon can spawn, and start that cycle all over again, the bear slaps a driven salmon, shredding it with razor sharp claws, ripping it apart with razor sharp teeth. And the predator devours its prey. Over and over again.

And with belly full, wanders away from the creek bank.

And poops.

And replenishes the soil with nutrients . . . nutrients washed away. Harvested by salmon in that big old deep blue sea. Carried back as their very being. Metric tons of nutrient-rich biomass. And in their death, bring life again to plants and animals high up in a nutrient starved ecosystem.

Perhaps "predatory" is just a "perception." Nothing more than just a point of view.

"Go to the [salmon], you lazybones; consider its ways, and be wise."

Maybe the salmon is totally opposed to science. Yes, it is "in-salmon" to be devoured by the cruelty of claw and fang. There is no justice. Something truly evil is working against salmon. It would seem the deity of salmon must be incompetent, incapable, impotent. The notion of spirituality is fraught with unanswerable questions. A saving must draw nigh.

Maybe the salmon sees itself in a parallel system. Yes, there is still the devouring by fang and claw. Evil is. But there is transcendent experience to it all as well. A meaning. A purpose. But in no way, can the separation demanded by parallelism ever intersect the harsh reality of certain death with salmon immortality.

Maybe the salmon, after eons of this seemingly endless cycle, come to a dialog, a dynamic interplay, learning from the science, yet evolving new understandings of the scientifically informed religious perspective. A comprehension that Mother Nature knows what she is doing.

"Go to the [bear], you lazybones; consider its ways, and be wise."

Maybe the bear is totally opposed to science. The fang and claw are the gifts of the gods. But that damn dam down river interrupts my dinner. Something truly evil is working against the bear. And the huckleberries were not as plentiful this year. The deity of the bear is incompetent, incapable, impotent. A saving must draw nigh.

Maybe the bear sees itself in a parallel system. Yes, there is no salmon today. Evil happens. But the bear understands. The empty belly is one thing. But there is still a purpose. A meaning. And with bare-faced banality, hunkers on. Next year. Perhaps. The salvation will draw nigh.

Maybe the bear, after eons of this seemingly endless cycle, comes to a dialog. To a dynamic interplay. Astute enough to learn. From science. To react, to evolve as it were, to a new reality. To a new understanding of purpose.

Of a scientifically informed religious perspective.

That:

1. Salmon, that bears, that human beings are all an integral part of nature.

2. Humankind's responsibility is to preserve and sustain the natural world.

3. The religion of the future will be a scientific story with mythic dimension and significance.

4. That both reason and reverence will prevail.

5. Affirm the values that help to make our lives more fully human . . . transforming from a shallow life of fear, greed, hedonism, and materialism to a meaningful life of love and caring, gratitude and generosity, fairness and equity, joy and hope, and a profound respect for others.

"Go to the [predator], you lazybones; consider its ways, and be wise."

For in the gift that we know as the cycle of life, the predator is but only a perspective.

The Refectory Manager

"When it Rains, It Pours"

And to be a naked young man in the presence of Jesus, the pouring becomes salty indeed.

At least if you think a "Secret Gospel of Mark" might hint of homosexual rituals as in being initiated into the discipleship of Jesus.

The old white-bearded probers of biblical scholarship got their knickers in knots over this one.

"Forgery!" "Forgery!" They screamed!

And poor old Morton Salt Smith, perplexed, perturbed , persecuted, planted, pilloried, preserved, perpetuated may yet get the last lick at this salt block.

What a delightful point, counter-point, counter the counter-point, and point the counter . . . all to establish that salt both savors and festers the delicacies of mind-made-up man.

The November/December 2009 issue of "Biblical Archaeology Review" arrived a few days ago. Seated in the throne room of my house, I started perusing the pages. Casually opening it to "An Amazing Discover."

Neat!

To discover the juicy is to slobber with anticipation.

Like the wingnuts of today who are writing a "conservative Bible," the wingnuts of yore pulled the same tricks. The wingnuts of yore being followers of Carpocrate, a bunch of "Gnostic-Christians," who according to the church Father Clement of Alexandria, "wandered into an abyss of carnal and bodily sins." These supposedly debauched Carpocrates had swindled a copy of "the Secret Gospel of Mark" and supplemented scurrilous bilge into the document, in effect, as Clement called it, mixing "holy words with utterly shameless lies." When the good and bad are mixed, per Clement, it is "like salt that has lost its savor." Adulterated salt.

Somebody by the name of Theodore wanted the truth. Teddy wrote to Clement for the low-down on the what's up.

And in Clement's letter back to Theodore, he takes two quotes from the "real" Secret Gospel of Mark to establish authenticity.

But first, one needs to back-pedal Mark.

According to Clement, about the time Jerusalem was being sacked by Rome, some guy identified as Mark, located in Rome itself, wrote the simple story of Jesus . . . a little primer as it were, to the uninitiated and curious as to who and what this Jesus was. It was for the "beginners in the faith." This version did not even "hint" at the secret "mystic" things. Later, Mark went to Alexandria, and expanded his narrative with material for those who wanted to attain a higher understanding of the knowledge of the faith. Clement described this augmented version as "a more spiritual gospel" for use by those "being perfected" in the faith. [This explains why the stories of Matthew and Luke "differ" in some small ways from the "Mark" that is currently in the Synoptic Gospels. For it simply means that Matthew and Luke were using the "original" version of Mark. It also means that the current version of Mark has been redacted from both its original and "advanced" versions . . . with some scurrilous stuff sanitized out.]

Well . . . Clement gave Teddy a lot of ammunition as to how to refute these scandalous Carpocratian choreographers of Gnostic Christianity. And that ammunition included including two direct quotes from the real "Secret Gospel of Mark."

They involve an incident of the resuscitation of a young man who had died. His sister pleads for help from Jesus, and both go to a garden tomb from which a great cry is heard. Jesus rolls away the stone from the door of the tomb, enters and resuscitates the youth. The youth "looking upon [Jesus], loved him." They go to the youth's house, "for he was rich." Jesus remains for six days, and then advises the young man what he must do. The unnamed youth then comes to Jesus in the evening "wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the kingdom of God."

The Carpocratians had gotten a hold of this secret gospel and had twisted these words into some debauchful practice . . . at least according to Clement. And in counseling Teddy as to what to do, he admonished him to deny under oath, that the Carpocratian version of Secret Mark was written by Mark. And even if the Carpocratians were to say something true, Theodore should not agree with them.

Doncha jus lov'it when Christians hav'ta lie!

When Morton Smith published his understanding of this newly found letter of Clement to Theodore, it was titillating for the masses, but nuclear for the learned cerebrals.

"Forgery!" "Forgery!" They screamed!

Primal evidence of forgery! The technique for making salt "adulteratable," i.e. flowable, so that it could be mixed, was not invented until the 20th century by the Morton Salt Company (adding magnesium carbonate, later replaced by calcium silicate, as an anti-caking agent to allow the small crystals to flow through the small holes of a salt shaker even in humid weather.) Clement would not have "known" about 20th century "it pours when it rains."

Poor old Morton Salt Smith simply had to be the re-incarnation of Carpocrate. Debauching the orthodoxy of the pompous pimps of piety.

Never! Never! Woulda! Coulda! The Lord Jesus Christ Savior of Mankind. Ever! Evuh! Establish a ritual of baptism into mysticism with an initiation experience . . . at night . . . with a naked man.

But that is what Clement copied from "The Secret Gospel of Mark" to Theodore to provide proof of its authenticity. A mystery-religion baptismal initiation: Jesus baptized each of his closest disciples into the mystery of the kingdom of God, "singly and at night."

Smith, in his 15 years of study of this letter, wrote "In this baptism the disciple was united with Jesus. The union may have been physical . . . (there is no telling how far symbolism went in Jesus' rite), but the essential thing was that the disciples was possessed by Jesus' spirit."

And what did sneak through in the "unsanitized" version of Mark that is currently in the New Testament canon? Mark 14:51-52. In the Garden of Gethsemane, on the night of the arrest and trial of Jesus, what was going on? "A certain young man was following him, wearing nothing but a linen cloth. They caught hold of him, but he left the linen cloth and ran off naked."

Old Morton Salt Smith, salting the prudishly politically-corrected orthodoxy, made the point that prudishly politically-corrected salients of second and third-century Christianity did their damndest to cover up the salinity of that aspect of the mystery of the force called Jesus Christ.

And the prudishly politically-corrected orthodoxy yelled "Forgery!" "Forgery!"

For only old Morton Salt Smith could have had the "means, the motive, the opportunity" to foist a practical joke like this on the Christian world.

But "means, motive, and opportunity" mean nothing if there was no crime committed.

Gives a new meaning to being "adulterated salt of the earth."

http://www.bib-arch.org/bar/ for the four-part series "Secret Mark" A Modern Forgery?

The Refectory Manager