The Bible Archive

I’ve been plagued with this problem for about two weeks now. I could write a post, I could publish it: but it would never show the information in the content field. The only thing that would publish would be the title, the tags and the categories. I could write comments and I could even delete entire posts: but I just couldn’t edit them. If I went into the edit field, I could type but once I clicked save the edits would dissappear.

Another sign of this problem was that I couldn’t switch to code mode: it was always stuck on visual editor. After some heavy searching I found two fixes, one safer than the other.

God is the Remote Control and we are the televisions.

What?

God is the Remote Control and we are the televisions. He’s in control of everything we do.

Ah. But what about when you’re bad?

God is still the Remote Control.

But Sy, you’re responsible when you do bad. You are responsible. Laura, why am I having a conversation about divine sovereignty and human responsibility with my five year old?

I don’t know.

You know what happens when we’re bad?

What Sy?

God turns off the TV.

I get a lot of email but most of it is spam. But some are from innocent bystanding readers who’ve witnessed a Rey-Post-Astrophe and had some questions. More often than not, these folk drop me a line and I stammer out an answer but some questions have come up often enough that I feel confident in rewording the questions and sharing my general response sharing my response and Putting It Out There as an Old Testament witness (you know, where you hiss as you walk by the ashes of a blog and see the goatlings prancing about and not even the Spammers make their home there since its so devoid of life). As homage to Click and Clack, here is my first Stump the Chump question plus response: If Adam and Evil were tricked by the Devil—why did they get in trouble?

Is surpassing the righteousness of the Pharisees all that hard ({{Matt
5:20}})? A group of conniving murderers who bribe people to get what
they want? No problem, right?

Most of the time, I don’t add anything to the conversations regarding
disasters. I don’t think my small voice can really add to what’s
already being said. In all honesty, I often feel disconnected from
these disasters or wars (etc.) and wind up not dwelling on them much.
Daniel Schorr’s editorial got to me though—not that he said anything
smart, but rather that he asked the old question “Why do bad things
happen?” while using it cast intelligent design in a bad light. You can
look at Abednego’s post regarding the argument, which I’m not dealing
with. Mostly, I’m thinking about the bad things and sharing why I think
they happen.

Recently someone asked me a question about verses that “sound really weird”. I could understand
the concern—especially when you find yourself listening to some
charismatic speaker (repeatedly) justifying his position from one verse
in Scripture. Sure, its bad form to do that sort of thing, but it still
leaves you wondering—what’s the deal with those verses in italics or
between the brackets in your Bible and do we need them?