Passion Pt. IV

Maybe I was indistinct in my post, but Ben still doesn't get it. He says I tried to expand the category of people who love Jesus into a more diverse crowd; I don't give a tinker's dam about who loved Jesus, or paid attention to his teachings. What I did, or at least tried to do, was given an alternative, superior (or so I believed) explanation, supported by the biblical references, as to why MARSTEN used the word "love" and why it didn't break the world down into the Christians=Good Jews=Bad split my esteemed coblogger tried to put it into.

As for Ben's statement that he doesn't love his neighbor as himself, but wouldn't want to see somebody tortured to death, it's an unnecessary and irrelevant distinction. My equating "loving your neighbor as yourself" and the Golden Rule (y'know, do unto others as you would have them do unto you) in my previous post was an attempt to show "love" having a meaning encompassing not just (1) following the Gospels of Christ (Ben's sole reading) BUT ALSO (2) NOT TORTURING AND KILLING SOMEONE BECAUSE HE REPRESENTED A THREAT TO THE ESTABLISHED POLITICAL STRUCTURE.

Ok, that's enough religion talk for my non-believing-yet-still-confirmed Catholic carcass. Maybe I'll talk about something less controversial, like how much I hate Tolkein's classist, Luddite, overly verbose, dull as all hell, intellectually masturbatory travelogues masquering as adventure novels, and how incredibly tedious it was to sit through all three of those movies and how you couldn't pay me to sit through any one of them again for under $1000. The Hobbit was actually good, though.

On a lighter note, clowns!