Just remember that the group of people who actually wrote this stuff down more-or-less universally regard the Pentateuch in symbolic terms – in fact, I’d say a huge chunk of Rabbinical debate over the centuries has been differing opinions about how to symbolically interpret the holy books.
Even the Catholic Church generally appreciates the symbolic value of these writings.
The hyper-literal interpretation of the Old Testament, is a thing some Christians, mostly evangelical, often American, do. It has little to nothing to do with the underlying, almost entirely symbolic, concepts. Which one can take or leave of course. But they weren’t ever intended to be viewed literally, and Jews have not generally done so for a few thousand years.
Bigots aren’t fairies, they don’t cease to exist when you don’t pay enough attention to them. This woman is still in congress and so her actions matter. I can’t believe people argue they deserve less scrutiny because she’s a fascist.
Okay, so, I could probably look this up but it might be more fun to learn from you. What’s the deal with Exodus 4:24? Moses didn’t want to go, but he went, got his wife, had a son en route, blah blah blah. Then, at an inn along the way all of a sudden the Lord shows up to smite him? Why?
And he’s saved by Zipporah’s quick thinking with her flint knife (that quick thinking being to cut off Gershom’s foreskin, because, you know, a good guy with a foreskin is all the defense you need against a bad guy with a foreskin…?)
What’s the symbolic interpretation (asking sincerely)?
Yeah, but that is the uniform, isn’t it? Is there anything else that better unifies all this new batch of Repugnicans? I am going over the list of those in this Trump-era movement in my head and that is standard operating procedure for all of them. Remember, this is the Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, Proud Boys school of political discourse.
The beliefs were always there. Far-right Repugnicans have always been against gay rights, BLM, women’s rights, recognizing transgender status, etc., etc., ad nauseum; like fire-breathing, burn-in-hell against those issues. The older members of the party are religiously in agreement with this sign, but they don’t hang them; they are anti gun control, but they don’t chase around school shooting survivors on camera.
Nothing in her behavior or personal history makes me feel she’s really religious. She’s not been out there protesting abortion clinics or anything. Her online activism was QAnon-oriented, and started a couple of years before she ran for office, and continues as obnoxiously as she can for the camera, for the aforementioned reasons.
She’s a political agitator, the Nazis pretended to be religiously conservative and moral too.
Edit: And I don’t mean this to say she is less dangerous, actually the opposite. Over and above any of her beliefs, I think her PRESENCE in Congress needs to be addressed, relentlessly, no less than if a known plant from a hostile government was found to be there.
I think I misunderstood something somewhere. I don’t think she is religious or moral either, that part is definitely an act. I meant she is a transphobic, homophobic, antisemitic, Qanoning, racist, and Islamophobic conspiracist. Religion and “morals” are just tools to advance her hate and career.
On the plus side Greene publicly declared that being kicked off every committee for being insane would give her time to enact her REAL agenda, complete with villain laugh.
After weeks of planning, this was the most she could manage.
Oh, I have no idea! haha I studied for my bar mitzvah a long time ago now, like 30ish years. My current areas of interest lie almost entirely with (my interpretation, and some others’) nondualistic aspects of the Abrahamic religions (I Am is what I Am, treat others as if they are yourself, the first without a second, just to name some top examples from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam).
Also some of the esoteric/mystic symbolism and “events” (I do believe there may indeed have been strange events recorded in some of these tales that may be somewhat more literal).
But let me offer a stab at how I would interpret at least “The Lord showing up to smite him,” from the nondualistic perspective I personally believe comes closer to the original intent.
The Lord is literally everything. There is only one thing. You’re it, I’m it, Moses is it, it’s literally everything in existence. Think of it this way: religious monotheism is actually just reinterpreted (usually poorly) mystical and philosophical nondualism. So in saying “The Lord showed up to smite him,” this may just be a way of saying he died, and as The Lord is not only behind all actions but literally IS all matter, energy, action, and everything else, this was just a hat tip to the underlying metaphysical reality, rather than a statement that the Lord had something against Moses so he just decided to kill him. Imagine The Lord as a self-perpetuating cellular automaton that literally manifests all of reality as a kind of probabilistic computing system made out of itself, rather than “a character” we would relate to as such.
As far as the foreskin thing, it may well just have been done at the time for some kind of perceived health benefit – and there does seem to be evidence that some STDs propagate a bit less in circumcised men. I happen to think that in our contemporary society, it’s an abhorrent thing when done to babies and I consider it to be literal extremely widespread male genital mutilation that should be illegal. Let a boy decide if he wants his foreskin cut off at 13 when he has a bar mitzvah – plenty of adults in the Old Testament had circumcisions, if memory serves!
It’s dead, pal. Hatemongers like Greene represent the GOP perfectly- they are, in fact, all that’s left now that the veil has been dropped. If you want to be part of a moderate right party that isn’t composed entirely of bigots, just become a Democrat.
Does it matter if she believes it if it has a material impact on the lives of LBGQT+ people?
She’s still a member of congress. You ignore bigots at your peril. We’ve been ignoring racists for the past few decades, and they very nearly pulled off an insurrection.
Not even that. Over 500,000 people in that district either did not vote or voted for the other guy (77,000). The district has around 732,000 people, and only about 230,000 voted for her.
This.
If we ignore them, they will continue to infect our body politic, so no. We work against them and get them out of office.
This.
We can’t know exactly what people believe, but we can see what they do and how they act. That’s what matters.
I know of the hateful agenda that a person like this piece of garbage has.
My point was, that like Trump she is willfully feeding off media attention which is angry and divisive and our political tactics need to not get bogged down in the anger and find other ways in a ‘Fake News’ landscape.
I think the closest we got was when we had a UFP flag hanging from the mast we put up to raise our cable above the drive path for trucks barreling up our residential street. As a joke, one year when we were away on vacation, a friend climbed onto our roof and replaced the UFP flag with a Klingon one; he told us when we returned that our house had been annexed by the Klingon Empire.
My current areas of interest lie almost entirely with (my interpretation, and some others’) nondualistic aspects of the Abrahamic religions (I Am is what I Am, treat others as if they are yourself, the first without a second, just to name some top examples from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam).