Yesterday I found two similar, but different articles. One via National Public Radio (NPR), the other from the New York Times (NYT).
Both cover religion, or perhaps I should say faith, certainly in one instance, faith is required in bucketfulls….here are the articles, in brief…
In the article entitled…. ‘ Celestial Sales for Boy’s Tale of Heaven’ Julie Bosman of the 
NYT talks of young Colton Burpo, son of an evangelical pastor in Imperial, Neb., who, just two months shy of his fourth birthday was rushed into emergency surgery with a burst appendix. He woke up with an astonishing story: He had died and gone to heaven, where he met his great-grandfather; the biblical figure Samson; John the Baptist; and Jesus, who had eyes that “were just sort of a sea-blue and they seemed to sparkle,” Colton, now 11 years old, recalled.
Now, most of us acknowledge that Jesus of Nazareth was Jewish, ergo… it’s highly unlikely he owned a pair of “sparkling sea-blue eyes”, although that image does appear in numerous Sunday School tracts.
…and, from National Public Radio, comes ‘Unprotected Texts’……
“Pastor Jennifer Wright Knust says the Bible often contradicts itself on topics relating to sex and desire. If we were to take the Bible literally, marriage would look very different than it does today, Knust tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross.
“If you’re reading the Hebrew Bible, we might have polygamy again. We might have not only polygamy with wives, we might have polygamy with concubines and slaves,” she says. “And if we’re reading the New Testament, we would avoid marriage. The overwhelming opinion of New Testament writers is that marriage is a waste of time and that we shouldn’t be doing it because we should be spreading the Gospel. … If you’re married, you’re totally distracted and not focusing on God. If we took the New Testament seriously, we would all stop being married.”
Knust’s book, Unprotected Texts, suggests that the Bible shouldn’t be used as a guidebook for marriage or sexuality because passages related to sex — on topics related to monogamy, polygamy, sexual practices, homosexuality and gender roles — are more complex and nuanced than popular culture has led us to believe.
“The Bible offers no viable solution to our marriage dilemmas,” she says. “There is no such thing as a single, biblically based view of legitimate marriage.”
You can read more about Pastor Knudsen’s views, including her view on the bible’s view on homosexuality….here
…so….What Say You?
