A Flander plan

11.1.14

It is good to return to the 21^st century once in a while.  An immaculately clean hotel room, pumpkin spiced latte, aged Irish cheddar, German and Dutch beer, live rock and roll.  It’s not asking for much, it’s only a few kilometers away on foot and yet a millennia separates a divided people and for what, the uncounted and undocumented impoverished pursuit of a better life on a greener side of an ugly fence. 

The Flander plan is an audacious one.  I don’t know if I am capable of the kind of research needed to persuade anyone to move 13 letters plus one to the back of a holy book read by a billion people.  I would need to confront daunting challenges that could take more than a year to prove:

--The 40,000 denominations noted in Gordon Comwell’s list came about as a result of Paul.

--There is nothing sacrilegious about moving the letters, though calling it something than what it is would stir the hornets.

Secondary fronts that could buttress the hypothesis:

--The spirit of the age vs literal interpretations.  Case in point, the demise and disappearance of a pro slavery interpretation in the Bible.

--Paul’s exclusion of Arabs in his letters because the Abrahamic covenant led to the revelation of Islam, which if taken to its stupendous and ballsy conclusion,God changed his opinion and chose one man to reveal a final path for humanity, or this was all supposed to happen in the first place and all peoples of the world would finally have at their choosing a monotheistic faith to reconcile themselves with the creator.

I think I’m leaving out something else but right now I am barely awake and sunset is an hour away.  I did not sleep well in the too comfortable bed last night.  Why oh why does this happen.  Nigel Cliff’s ‘The Last Crusade’ looks like a good read, and perhaps will help me understand the challenge I have ahead of me, if I so accept.  But I couldn’t read more than a few pages without the eyelids flickering shut.  And my stomach flutters, a Starbucks lunch isn’t doing me well and the breakfast buffet spread may have been way too much though I swam well afterwards.  Who the hell knows I wish it were time to call it a day.

The ultimate goal of rearranging the New Testament is reading the Gospels and the other letters without the undoing influence of Paul.  His letters would still be there for everyone, but the focus would return to Jesus, the focus would take us away from the legalese and polemic and return us to the simple message. 

I know this would drive people to impassioned poles, but this could be a good thing.  I think, if I am well defended.  In this spirit change can reconcile.

The first challenge, a formidable one, will be to collect three letters of recommendation.  #@$%.  I may never get this on the road.

11.4.14

By the time I return to the grotto at 8pm I have enough energy to eat a couple of cheese, tomato and cucumber pitas before I turn in.  And in the morning, before the sun rises, I watch the headline news, eat breakfast and read until it is time to return to my place of employment.  There is safety in the routine but omg it can be tedious.  The weather is turning comfortably cool again at night and hopefully by week’s end I won’t need the a/c in the bedroom.  I still use the one in the tv/living room, the morning sun heats things up quickly.

Paul’s letters were intended to support the new congregations in Asia minor, defeat the Roman empire’s pagan deities and the Greek’s mythological monopoly. For God so loved the world wasn’t a world that included at the time the empires in the East.  The war for hearts and minds came when the new faith, Islam, rolled into Europe seven centuries later.  Politics and trade fueled passions and divine revelation in human hands came ashore on the banks of India while to this day Islam and Christianity battle.  Hinduism and its cousin Buddhism, no strangers to conflict, have never attempted to persuade by forceful coercion their faith is the only true religion.  Nyima and the Dalai Lama say Tibetan Buddhism is the best, though acknowledge it is not the only true faith.  If you believe in something else be compassionate, love one another and always consider your neighbor first.  I think the Buddhist intention here is life is impermanent and change is the inevitable continuum of the human spirit.  Dogmatism becomes a crutch, a hindrance, when it is inflexible.  My  aim, if it is written in the spirit of the inevitable, would be to show the gospel without the influence of Pauline doctrine, as a new breath of fresh air.