The Bible as Literature
The Ephesus School
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We, the Dummies
Speak, be silent, have your discourse, hold your discourse, mansplain, or be ever so polite and attentive. Gossip, hold your tongue, roll it around seven times seventy, or run it. Psychoanalyze your neighbor or choose wisely not to judge others. Who cares? Rehear Ecclesiastes: You are nothing new under the sun. You are not a judge, the judge, or anyone’s judge. Look down on yourself as hard as you can while you still can. No one cares if you are impressed or disgusted. Your compliments are a pat on your own back. Your critique means nothing. Your praise is empty. Your assessment of the situation is your own reflection—a phantom’s shadow. Your sage advice is Satanic. You are not God. You are not a reference. I do not believe in you. Believe me, I do not trust you. “I don’t care” and “we don’t care.” If Jeremiah were alive today, he would shout it three times: this is not “the temple of the Lord.” Wait, they did shout it three times, and so did he: “We don’t care.” About what? Your deceptive and lying words uttered at the gate. No one said you were a dummy. That’s the problem. Knowledge, like incense, stinks. The power of the Lord has been entrusted to you, and you, O Dialogions, like the Pharisees and the Law teachers, talk amongst yourselves. You talk to yourselves, for yourselves, about yourselves, about what one of you said about yourselves when you thought you were talking about a god. In fact, you were talking about your gods all along. Like the song says, Habibi, it was you, only you. The Gospel of Jesus Christ, O American, is your permanent teenage identity crisis. A guy is lying there on the ground, paralyzed. Kids are under the rubble; Their limbs are being amputated without anesthesia; children are afflicted by heart attacks from sleep deprivation and stress; pregnant mothers, the sign of God’s promise in Isaiah, are targeted. And you, O Pharisee, want to converse? You, who call yourself a Law teacher, want to talk about what? Your “knowledge?” Your “value?” Your “institution?” Your “title?” Your “building?” You trust in lying words to no avail. You utter deceptive words. “No wonder,” Paul says. “For even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.” What lies did Herod spin this week for the New York Times? Enlighten us so we can expand our syllabi, build our temples, and lead more of God’s children astray. If only women were in charge, you explain to Mustafa, then Hillary and Nikki would save the children. Keep dreaming, Homelander. As for bumpkins like me, we are here not just to talk but to walk the power of the Lord, and its consonants, which any punk can submit to with time and pressure, and, in doing so, communicate it to others. We, the dummies, preach Christ crucified. We know you are intelligent. We are just waiting for you—even hoping—that you will become dumb, like us. Richard and I discuss Luke 5:25-26. (Episode 516) ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
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