Once you hear the biblical text and understand that the Bible satirizes and dismantles the arrogance and foolishness of war, political schemes, government powers, and the absurdity of any ruling authority, you can’t hear the Old Testament without bursting into laughter, the way that God laughs at us. 

The gift of biblical satire—with all its fury—is true freedom from the historical tyranny of the hell that surrounds us. 

Thank God that God judges and condemns us in the Bible. Only a monster would bless the monsters we are: men and women who do such monstrous things in his name, using his book, which lays out the epic parables of our monstrous forbears, whose legacy we are so desperate to manifest as our “new” destiny in West Asia. 

I challenge all of you to find one inch of Western society that hasn’t been coopted, sold, or sold itself out to slogans or navel-gazing. 

“What does it really mean that anyone can buy and sell activist discourse? Besides the trivialization of real issues…it is unclear who has claim to and who is profiting from this commodification. Think about all of the BLM merch sold on the website Etsy.com. On this site, anyone who makes anything can sell it. That being said, it is hard to know exactly who you are buying from on this site and where the money is going. I clicked on one seller with the username thewomenstore and saw that next to a shirt that read “Black Lives Matter” was a shirt that read “Tequila is Gluten Free.” … Are these phrases, priced the same, equally as important? Did this seller simply add a Black Lives Matter shirt to her collection because she knew it would sell?” — jaenichelle, Blavity.com

There are signs of hope, always, but we can count on our Western institutions to fight against them in the name of the almighty dollar. 

After all, our institutions were established by David and administered by Absalom. Ah, yes, “A student is not above his teacher.”

This week, I discuss Luke 6:39-40.

Show Notes

ע-ו-ר (ʿayin-waw-resh) / ع-و-ر (ʿayn-waw-ra)

In Arabic, the word أَعْوَر ( ’a‘war) means “one-eyed” or “having one eye.” עִוֵּר corresponds to τυφλός in Luke 6:39, which also appears in Romans 2:19. 

פ-ח-ת (pe-ḥet-taw)פַּ֫חַת—pit; ravine

The corresponding term βόθυνος (bothynos) does not appear in the New Testament, except in some Greek manuscripts where it onlyappears in Luke 6:39.

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