religion: Only 8?!
I’ve seen this ad in Express for the past few weeks, and it always gives me a bit of pause, but I usually only see it on my commute, so it easily slips out of my mind. This ad was a bit more prominent and eye-catching than some of their other ones, and I wondered just what take on it the sermons/discussions had. Visiting their website, it looks like these might not be as controversial as the ad makes it seem and in fact maybe pretty intelligent.
Still, regardless of which side of the belief argument you find yourself on, I’m thinking 8 is a pretty small number either way. 😕
Crap! Now you’ve led me to up their web traffic stats. 😡
@kyle: Hee hee, you’ll live, silly billy. And as I said, the series of sermons doesn’t seem all that dumb. It still ain’t getting me in the pews.
8 means different things on different states, and right now, 8 is a hateful number in California. Prop 8, this year’s homophobia for Election Day.
I suspect the sermons aren’t anything like my current associations with the number 8, so it sounds interesting for sure.
The sampling certainly smacks against what we encounter with some of those who speak in the name of Christ.
If you’re interested, I recommend reading “The Historic Jesus: The Life Of A Mediterranean Jewish Peasant”, and “Misquoting Jesus”. The first one was written by a friar and is a fascinating snapshot of that period of history, and indicates that probably 70% of the quotes attributed to Jesus in the Bible aren’t his. The second one is written by a fundamentalist Christian who turned atheist when he began studying the history of the Bible and how it came to be the book we have today. Excellent reading, but probably only if you’re interested in that sort of thing and familiar with the Bible in the first place.