tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6550315839527219940.post8159346533898216953..comments2023-10-11T02:43:45.437-07:00Comments on CASAMURPHY: A Respite from Selfless AltruismLaynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11202742050661813668noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6550315839527219940.post-17109435541745731392012-05-06T11:01:31.470-07:002012-05-06T11:01:31.470-07:00I saw the Savage and Michaelson exchange as much a...I saw the Savage and Michaelson exchange as much ado about nothing. They were not talking about the same thing. Savage encourages the resistance to the invocation of biblical authority by ministers, preachers, rabbis, imans, evangelists... and the plumbers, clerks, and investment bankers who follow them. That "authority" confirms that same sex attachments are contrary to God's will... as evidenced by scripture. In my lifetime such invocation of scriptural authority was also pointed to as evidence of the natural inferiority of people of color ("the children of Shem"). That invocation of spiritual authority is "real" to the majority of conservative religious. Conservative religious has predicated ideas of unholy same sex attraction in the public sphere for.... oh, like many centuries? Michaelson presents exegesis that further develops exactly what scripture says. It is a hopeful, though unlikely assumption that such scholarly study can influence the cultural norms that been founded by "scripture." It is the bull shit of "scripture" that Savage attacts; very different from the study of scripture. As a person of faith I have no problem, and welcome, this distinction.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11744997942078418500noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6550315839527219940.post-20704858941259179192012-05-05T06:12:05.057-07:002012-05-05T06:12:05.057-07:00Love this Layne! And also John's comments too....Love this Layne! And also John's comments too.Rosemarynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6550315839527219940.post-33807455586410783382012-05-04T15:32:11.246-07:002012-05-04T15:32:11.246-07:00Quite an array of topics, all paraded on the big-s...Quite an array of topics, all paraded on the big-screen, or for some, the smartphone app or laptop website. I recall how the radio in early-70s days would bleep the edgy singer-songwriters' damns and such, and how I would as a devout altar boy do the same for a while, putting my fingers in my ears if not fast enough to shut out the harmful words transmitted, at least on 93-KHJ. I suppose some of the FM stations were more free-form.<br /><br />I think Savage and Michaelson might agree not on parsing Torah (Dan's way out of his league as a lapsed Catholic and even a Jesuit might quail to take on Jay in yeshiva-bocher swaying, debating mode), but they seem to join in explicating more tolerance. I liked how Savage counseled a Christian student away from his girlfriend on campus not to make a mistake and lose his virginity to an alcohol-fueled hookup, but to be careful just in case. He doesn't mock those who don't put out, just as he doesn't chide those who do. He encourages each inquirer to be true to one's own needs and one's own morality, even if that's impossible for a rigid, text-based, literalist to comprehend as less than spiritually or morally relativistic. <br /><br />A term I was called on my own blog after a review where I took a book by a prisoner on its own terms, ignorant of what one commenter often in CAPS derided me for doing, as I did not look up on the Net allegations of said author's infractions. Like I try to do in reviewing, so Jay and Dan do in advising: they take the subject on its own terms, and deal with it grounded in their own critical insight and learned confidence.<br /><br />I hope those emerging as said sons into whatever millennial or post-Gen-whatever demographic dogs or defines them have a similar balance. You and I grew up so dramatically divergent, and my own coming of age however delayed feels as if from a chronicle of times far longer past than the calendar charts. But, we connect, I trust, in that we try to find for ourselves and our family a similar belief that beliefs that one can build relationships of trust and love can only come from insight, and not from imposition. xxx meJohn L. Murphy / "Fionnchú"https://www.blogger.com/profile/16616876266772470719noreply@blogger.com