Comments on: Mark 7:1-23 (ESV)

By: Zeke

Zeke — Fri, 22 May 2009 20:04:45 +0000

I wouldn’t say this passage itself was “troubling” me. I think I saw something in it that seemed very similar to present-day Christianity: Pharisaical dogmas and “moral” codes stamped with divine mandate and passed off as if God created them himself, all the while deceiving many adherents and keeping them receiving Christ’s true message.
I feel like one of Christ’s biggest teachings was about the uselessness of religious practice and dogmatism as ways to achieve salvation, and yet almost immediately, so many of his followers fell into the very thing that he was denouncing. It makes about as much sense as all of those Che Guevara T-shirts lining the racks of capitalist shopping malls!
Does that better explain where I’m coming from?

By: Louise Sweeney

Louise Sweeney — Fri, 22 May 2009 17:54:21 +0000

Zeke, I wonder why this is troubling you. But I looked it up in my favorite source for Bible research, the very old (1950) “Dartmouth Bible.” They discuss it with Matthew 15:11. “This seeming abrogation of dietary cleanliness is regarded by many scholars as either an exaggerated form of an utterance by Jesus or a later expression of the anti-Pharisaic attitude of Gentile churches.Evidence is lacking that Jesus denied the food codes of the Pentateuch and no student has suggested that he would have approved the eating of forbidden meat from swine or camels…. If this verse is a statement by Jesus himself and was so regarded by his immediate followers, it is difficult to explain the controversies over foods reported in Acts 10 and Gal. 2.” But maybe you are concerned about the evil things within?

By: Katya

Katya — Tue, 12 May 2009 15:38:26 +0000

Hola, que tal?
Okay, I just want to say how much I enjoyed yr photos of Liverpool, Amsterdam, and Prague.
Did you visit the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam?
Love, Mom