I think of spiritual life as having a single messsge for the human family.  I discount any single traditional story as having the locks and keys to the spiritual house.  Jews and Gentiles never stood a chance.  Christians are also out of the loop as long as the Hebrew text was the means.   The same may be said for Muslims and infidels with reference to the Qur’an.  Hostility and fear dominates the environment.  How much progress can there be in the necessary dialogue between (for example) Jews, Christians and Muslims when Christians are often not reading the text and prefer to blame the media.

“The media” for Muslims and Jews are evidently original language texts.  We have every right to read the sacred texts in our vernacular but the languages of the modern world are so impoverished in their depth, that the rendering into scores of versions (translations) deliver only shallow representations of what the ancient writers intended.

Muddy waters and trampled grass

Is it too slight a thing for you that you should feed in the good pasture, that you must tread down with your feet the rest of your pastures? Or that you should drink of the clear waters, that you must foul the rest with your feet?

Ezekiel 34:18

The dichotomy of diet into vegan and carnivorous illustrates the poverty of many clergy. They prefer to hang their hats on the lowest pins on the hatrack, and they resist the education and rebuke they know awaits them in the certain apprehension of the apostolic writings.

Not my friends, not my people, and no mercy

People who deny the salvation that the cross brings have a lot to explain. First and foremost is the safety of the one saved by God. If such a one is not safe why would anyone trust such a person to go grocery shopping?

I blame the whole lot of gatekeepers who have been lowering the standards of our high calling with our folklore and muddy waters. Leaders are the media. The media has been hijacked by sons of Sceva types. God depends on us to deliver his message in its purest form. Let the ignorant continue to blame God for his timely choice of the writers and the language to bring his most important message to the world.