Category Archives: The Pope

The Internet Prophecies (or How the Bible Can Be Used to Prove Anything)

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Jesus_mac1Religious history was made on 12/12/12: the Pope pushed a button!

Not the Lowrider Bounce button on the Popemobile. No, instead, this button transmitted the Pope’s first tweet!

Joining the Twitterati elite may seem a gimmicky way to relate to today’s youth culture, but the Pope is actually fulfilling Bible prophecy! The Bible foretold of this day; the signs have been there all along, and now the prophecy has been fulfilled! BEHOLD:

The web that he spread over all nations. —Isaiah 25:7

The web has spread over all nations. How did the Bible know?

Like a swallow, like a crane, so I twitter; I moan like a dove. —Isaiah 38:14

The Bible actually mentions Twitter! And here it references Facebook:

Then all the wives will honor their husbands, regardless of their status.” —Esther 1:20

And in a thinly veiled reference to Cyber Monday:

So the word of the Lord to them will be, “Order on order, order on order. Line on line, line on line, A little here, a little there.”  —Isaiah 28:13

Tweeting may seem a strange way to get your spiritual message out, but in fact, the Gospel of Thomas was basically nothing but Jesus tweets:

Do not do what U H8. —The Gospel of Thomas 6  #WWID

And this little known Jesus utterance that somehow never got picked up by Matthew, Mark, and the rest:

Blessed is the lion that becomes man when eaten by man.  —The Gospel of Thomas 7 #KentuckyFriedLion  XD 
http://tinyurl.com/lionloin

Twitter may help the Pope connect with his followers, although he admittedly will be very hands off on the whole endeavor. His social media staff will write the tweets which he will review before they send them out on his behalf. The pope should be careful leaving the messaging up to others. When Paul took over the messaging from Jesus, we end up with lovely sentiments like the following:

But now God has put every one of the parts in the body as it was pleasing to him. And if they were all one part, where would the body be? —1 Corinthians 12:18-19

And speaking of bodies, Paul seemed to have some issues with them:

And to those parts of the body which seem to have less honor we clothe with more honor. And to those parts of the body which are a cause of shame to us we give the greater respect. —1 Corinthians 12:23

Twitter has definitely enlivened the religious dialogue throughout the world. Whether the Pope, who seemed to struggle just to push a single button on his iPad, is really the ideal candidate to be the Catholic church’s ambassador to the web is still to be determined. Comparing the numbers, though, he seems to be a huge success: Pope Benedict has almost a million Twitter followers, while Jesus only had 12 disciples. (Editor’s note: Jesus, it should be pointed out to our younger readers, lived at a time before broadband and even before dial-up.)

Michael Morris is the author of Bible Funmentionables: A Lighthearted Look at the Wildest Verses You’ve NEVER Been Told!, which features all of the shocking and hilarious verses that your minister, rabbi, or charismatic cult leader is afraid to preach.

The 500-Year-Old Ceiling That Still Brings Down the House!

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Michelangelo’s fresco on the Sistine Chapel ceiling turns 500 years old today! (10/31/2012) The Renaissance artist realized long ago, that the best way to make sure your painting does not get taken off the wall is to make sure your painting IS the wall.

People have praised his upside-down artistic achievement for most of these five centuries—though I believe it was El Greco who saw the ceiling and basically said, “Yeah, I coulda done better.” So instead of addressing the artistic achievement of the ceiling, I thought I’d reveal a few of its most endearing oddities and the corresponding Bible quotes.

This first scene I’ve chosen shows an unflattering angle of God as he creates a fairly un-majestic bush, recalling this Bible verse:

And again the Lord said, “Behold there is a place near me, and thou shalt stand upon the rock. And when my glory shall pass by, I will set thee in a hole of the rock, and protect thee with my right hand, till I pass. And I will take away my hand, and thou shalt see my back parts, but my face thou canst not see.” —Exodus 33:20-23

The next image is one you don’t see often in religious paintings: Noah as an old naked, drunk. Not to say that Michelangelo was plagiarizing himself, but it’s basically the “Creation of Adam” composition but with the Adam/Noah figure too wasted to point back to the finger that’s pointing at him. But hey, it’s a big ceiling; all those little kids touring the Vatican would hardly even notice the passed out 600-year-old man exposing himself, right?

He drank some wine, got drunk, and lay naked inside his tent. —Genesis 9:21

We also have Moses’ cure for those who were dying from being bitten by the fiery serpents that God was sending down to them. All you had to do back in those days was look at the brass serpent Moses put on top of a pole, and you would not die. I don’t know if this cure still works. Next time you’re bitten by a snake, you may want to ask to your doctor if Brass Serpent Beholding is right for you.

And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he was made well. —Numbers 21:9

One of the many prophets that Michelangelo painted was Ezekiel. The Book of Ezekiel has this underpreached treasure:

Your kerchiefs also will I tear, and ye shall know that I am the Lord. —Ezekiel 13:21

as well as this one:

And he said to me, “This is the house of the kitchens wherein the ministers of the house of the Lord shall boil the victims of the people.” —Ezekiel 46:24

 

And finally, this lovely scene of Judith, who, after beheading Holofernes, needed to stash the head somewhere!

And she struck twice upon his neck, and cut off his head, and took off his canopy from the pillars, and rolled away his headless body. And after a while she went out, and delivered the head of Holofernes to her maid, and bade her put it into her wallet. —Judith 13:10-11

So congratulations Michelangelo for having created such a lasting work of art, that still amazes to this day. 500 years is a very long time indeed. How long, you ask? 500 years is exactly the amount of time it took until Noah was finally able to father his three sons.

After Noah was 500 years old, Noah fathered Shem, Ham, and Japheth. —Genesis 5:32

I can only hope my paintings are still around in 500 years, but with medical advances and clean living, I’m quite confident that I will still be around fathering children to populate my space ark.

 Michael Morris is the author of Bible Funmentionables: A Lighthearted Look at the Wildest Verses You’ve NEVER Been Told!, which features all of the shocking and hilarious verses that your minister, rabbi, or charismatic cult leader is afraid to preach.

The 6 Most Boring Passages of the Bible (And Why You Should Avoid Them)

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Most kids think church is boring. No news there. But now, in classic man-bites-dog style, it’s a Catholic bishop who has made headlines by complaining that church is too boring!

Retired Philippine Catholic Bishop Teodoro Bacani claims that boring sermons are hurting the church’s market share, as many are seeking out the El Shaddai Catholic charismatic movement instead of their traditional Catholic parish.

Boring sermons may cause drowsiness in the Philippines, but according to the Bible, boring sermons can kill!

A certain young man named Eutychus sat in the window, weighed down with deep sleep. As Paul spoke still longer, being weighed down by his sleep, he fell down from the third story and was taken up dead. —Acts 20:9

To avoid boring their congregation to death, Bishop Bacani recommends that priests learn a more effective and “livelier” way of communicating their message. For a religion that claims to offer the ultimate truths of life, creation, and heaven and hell, it seems superficial to attempt to repackage those eternal truths to accommodate the short attention span generation.

A more reliable solution is to know which Bible passages to avoid in the first place! So as a service to preachers everywhere, I offer this Do Not Read List of The Bible’s 6 Most Boring Passages. Attempting to read these passages may not be mortally monotonous, but they could easily cause a loss of tithing churchgoers. And as most preachers know, to quote the church leader in the movie Help!, “without the congregation there’ll be no…more…me.”

1. The Table of Nations: Genesis 10-11 (Genealogies of People You’ll Never Meet and You Couldn’t Care Less About)

And these are births of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and born to them are sons after the deluge. Sons of Japheth are Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras. And sons of Gomer are Ashkenaz, and Riphath, and Togarmah. —Genesis 10:1-3

2. Setting Up the Tabernacle: Exodus 40 (Moses Puts up a Tent)

And it came to pass in the first month in the second year, on the first day of the month, that the tabernacle was reared up. And Moses reared up the tabernacle, and fastened his sockets, and set up the boards thereof, and put in the bars thereof, and reared up his pillars…And he took and put the testimony into the ark, and set the staves on the ark, and put the mercy seat above upon the ark. And he brought the ark into the tabernacle, and set up the vail of the covering, and covered the ark of the testimony…And he put the table in the tent of the congregation, upon the side of the tabernacle northward, without the vail. And he set the bread in order upon it before the Lord…And he put the candlestick in the tent of the congregation, over against the table, on the side of the tabernacle southward…And he put the golden altar in the tent of the congregation before the vail. And he burnt sweet incense thereon…And he set up the hanging at the door of the tabernacle. And he put the altar of burnt offering by the door of the tabernacle of the tent of the congregation…And he set the laver between the tent of the congregation and the altar, and put water there, to wash withal…And he reared up the court round about the tabernacle and the altar, and set up the hanging of the court gate. So Moses finished the work. —Excerpted from Exodus 40

3. Burnt Offerings: Leviticus 1-10  (Because the Lord Wants to Smell Burning Animals)

If the offering is a burned offering of the herd, let him give a male without a mark. He is to give it at the door of the Tent of Meeting so that he may be pleasing to the Lord. And he is to put his hand on the head of the burned offering and it will be taken for him, to take away his sin. And the ox is to be put to death before the Lord. Then Aaron’s sons, the priests, are to take the blood and put some of it on and round the altar which is at the door of the Tent of Meeting. And the burned offering is to be skinned and cut up into its parts. And Aaron’s sons, the priests, are to put fire on the altar and put the wood in order on the fire. And Aaron’s sons, the priests, are to put the parts, the head and the fat, in order on the wood which is on the fire on the altar. But its inside parts and its legs are to be washed with water, and it will all be burned on the altar by the priest for a burned offering, an offering made by fire, for a sweet smell to the Lord. —Excerpted from Leviticus 1

4. Curses for Disobedience: Deuteronomy 28 (Before Hell Was Invented, Curses Were God’s Way of Ensuring Good Behavior)

You will be cursed in the town and cursed in the field. A curse will be on your basket and on your bread-basin. A curse will be on the fruit of your body, and on the fruit of your land, on the increase of your cattle, and the young of your flock. You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out. The Lord will send on you cursing and trouble and punishment in everything to which you put your hand. —Deuteronomy 28:16-20

5. Historical Records From Adam to Abraham: 1 Chronicles 1-9  (It’s Like Hearing Stories About People You’ve Never Heard Of—But Without the Stories)

Adam, Sheth, Enosh, Kenan, Mahalaleel, Jered, Henoch, Methuselah, Lamech, Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. The sons of Japheth; Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras. And the sons of Gomer; Ashchenaz, and Riphath, and Togarmah. And the sons of Javan; Elishah, and Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim. The sons of Ham; Cush, and Mizraim, Put, and Canaan.  The sons of Cush; Seba, and Havilah, and Sabta, and Raamah, and Sabtecha. And the sons of Raamah; Sheba, and Dedan. And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be mighty upon the earth. And Mizraim begat Ludim, and Anamim, and Lehabim, and Naphtuhim, And Pathrusim, and Casluhim, (of whom came the Philistines,) and Caphthorim. And Canaan begat Zidon his firstborn, and Heth, The Jebusite also, and the Amorite, and the Girgashite, And the Hivite, and the Arkite, and the Sinite, And the Arvadite, and the Zemarite, and the Hamathite. —Excerpted from 1 Chronicles 1

6. The New Temple: Ezekiel 40-43 (Now You Can Build Your Own Temple Without the Benefit of Blueprints)

Then he brought me into the inner court through the south gate, and he measured the south gate; it had the same measurements as the others. Its alcoves, its projecting walls and its portico had the same measurements as the others. The gateway and its portico had openings all around. It was fifty cubits long and twenty-five cubits wide. (The porticoes of the gateways around the inner court were twenty-five cubits wide and five cubits deep.) Its portico faced the outer court; palm trees decorated its jambs, and eight steps led up to it. Then he brought me to the inner court on the east side, and he measured the gateway. It had the same measurements as the others. Its alcoves, its projecting walls and its portico had the same measurements as the others. The gateway and its portico had openings all around. It was fifty cubits long and twenty-five cubits wide. Its portico faced the outer court; palm trees decorated the jambs on either side, and eight steps led up to it. —Excerpted from Ezekiel 40

Left for theologians to discuss is the age-old question of why God felt it necessary to include these insufferably long, repetitive, spiritually-bereft verses in a book that many believe is the actual word of God. They say God works in mysterious ways, and evidently sometimes he works in mind-numbingly tedious and uninspiring ways as well. It doesn’t seem to have hurt Bible sales too much. You do have to wonder how much more popular the Bible would have been if God had deleted these chapters and focused on penning some practical solutions to day to day problems people face: reliable nutrition information, disease prevention strategies, or detailed instruction on how to build your own bicycle.

So remember, preachers, avoid these chapters in order to keep your congregation coming back for more, and keep people from falling to their deaths like Eutychus.

Who might actually want to seek out these verses?

  • People who never again want to be asked to choose the reading at their Bible study group.
  • Priests who are ready to hang up their collar for good and want to go out in style with the longest and most wearisome Bible recitation ever.
  • Insomniacs—even the Bible admits that it’s boring enough to put a king to sleep:

On that night could not the king sleep, and he commanded to bring the book of records of the Chronicles, and they were read before the king.—Esther 6:1

Michael Morris is the author of Bible Funmentionables: A Lighthearted Look at the Wildest Verses You’ve NEVER Been Told!, which features all of the shocking and hilarious verses that your minister, rabbi, or charismatic cult leader is afraid to preach.

Now About That Vow of Silence…

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Every Catholic schoolkid knows one thing: you don’t tell a nun to shut up. At least you don’t if you wanted to avoid rapped knuckles and the more long-term problem of eternal damnation.

Yet one man is finally doing what so many students have always dreamt of: Pope Benedict XVI is telling 1,500 nuns of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), who represent over 40,000 nuns, “You don’t make the rules here. I do.”

It seems the nuns made the mistake of not speaking out forcefully enough about abortion and gay marriage, and then they actually contemplated the possibility of the ordination of women priests. If the Pope would read his Bible a little more carefully, he would find that someone else didn’t speak out forcefully, or at all, on these issues: a guy named Jesus of Nazareth. We all remember him, right?

This papal bitch slap (N.B. To every nun who worked so tirelessly to educate mischievous little me—with very little pay and even less gratitude—forgive me for using this politically incorrect yet emotionally very correct phrase) is being euphemistically called “renewal” by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. Using the term “renewal” for this major rebuke is like a new dictator’s claim that he overthrew the government in order to “restore order.”

And who was appointed to tell the nuns what they can and can’t say? Archbishop Peter Sartain of Seattle, who is (in)famous for being the guy who ordered anti-gay marriage sermons be preached in all of Washington’s Catholic churches, in an attempt to defeat same-sex marriage legislation.

Interestingly, many churches refused to repeat Sartain’s political/religious opinion, to the approval of many churchgoers.

If Sartain and Benedict are looking for biblical justifications for this ecclesiastical crackdown, they won’t have to search very hard.

Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak. —1 Corinthians 14:34

It is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church. —1 Corinthians 14:35

I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. —1 Timothy 2:12

Theologians note that Paul himself very likely never wrote these quotes that are attributed to him. But thanks to some misogynistic, mischief-making forger who lived 2,000 years ago, these sentiments made it into the most revered holy book in Western culture.

Usually it’s fairly easy to find Bible passages that would contradict other passages, but when I searched for verses that speak positively about the rights of women, there were slim pickings:

Husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel. —1 Peter 3:7

The next closest thing I found were the many occasions where Paul addresses the following female leaders and other important women in the early Christian church:

  • Apphia —Philemon 2
  • Euodia —Philippians 4:2
  • Junia —Romans 16:7
  • Mary —Romans 16:6
  • Nympha —Colossians 4:15
  • Persis —Romans 16:12
  • Phoebe —Romans 16:1
  • Priscilla —I Corinthians 16:19
  • Syntyche —Philippians 4:2

So you see, religious women have a long tradition of being active in the church and following Jesus’ call to serve the needs of others. The Vatican, on the other hand, has a long tradition of holding onto power and keeping its concentration of wealth restricted to a relatively small group of increasingly conservative men. Maybe it’s a force of habit, as it is a part of evolution: men feel threatened by forces that could potentially lower their social status—so even priests who may never reproduce (ideally) still possess the genes from their forefathers who behaved and successfully reproduced with this mentality. Let’s all just breathe a sigh of relief that the fathers of the church have not yet started quoting this biblical gem:

If anyone deliberately disobeys the priest who serves the Lord your God or the judge, that person must die. —Deuteronomy 17:12

Meanwhile, I’ll start searching for those quotes from Jesus’ Sermon on Gay Marriage. I think it starts “Blessed are the straight.”

Michael Morris is the author of Bible Funmentionables: A Lighthearted Look at the Wildest Verses You’ve NEVER Been Told!, which features all of the shocking and hilarious verses that your minister, rabbi, or charismatic cult leader is afraid to preach.