The New Commodified Version (NCV) is a creative misreading of selected passages of the Bible. Various mainstream translations and paraphrases of the Bible are used in its creation. Anyone with access to the more popular translations can determine easily enough which is most relied on for the rendition of any particular NCV passage.
Very little of the biblical text is changed. No phrases or lines are added. Instead, word-for-word substitution is employed. Take for instance the use of divine names. The word "LORD" is replaced by "Market." "Holy One" becomes "Wealthy One" or "Prosperous One." These substitions are on the whole consistent across different passages. Click to continue reading “A note on the creation of the New Commodified Version”
1 "Comfort, yes, comfort My people!"
Says your Market.
2"Speak comfort to America, and cry out to her,
That her warfare is ended,
That her iniquity is pardoned;
For she has received from the Market’s hand
Double for all her sins."
3The voice of one crying in the wilderness:
"Prepare the way of the Market;
Make straight in the desert
A highway for our god.
4Every valley shall be exalted
And every mountain and hill brought low;
The crooked places shall be made straight
And the rough places smooth;
5The glory of the Market shall be revealed,
And all flesh shall see it together;
For the mouth of the Market has spoken." Click to continue reading “Isaiah 40 (New Commodified Version)”
1 In the beginning was the Market, and the Market was with God, and the Market was God. 2Market was in the beginning with God. 3All things were made through Market, and without Market nothing was made that was made.
1 O Market, you have searched me
and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue
you know it completely, O Market. Click to continue reading “Psalm 139 (New Commodified Version)”
Bronchial infections suck.
A guest blog post by author Brian McLaren has me thinking. (Thanks to Scott for the link.) McLaren has a brief list of some theological claims he’s exploring in his latest book. (He at least leans toward universalism.)
What’s got me thinking is this:
E. The Sadducees were the conservatives who held to the older view that there was no hell or no afterlife. The Pharisees were, in a sense, the liberals who accepted the idea of hell. Many believe that the idea of hell came into Judaism from Persian religion – and that the name Pharisee may be from Farsi, or Persian.
F. Jesus does not follow either the Sadducees (who reject any idea of afterlife), nor does he follow the teaching of the Pharisees and their view of hell. Rather, he charts a bold new path and uses the language of hell ("owned" by the Pharisees) to draw attention to his own message – centered in the kingdom of God, and the character of God. [Emphasis mine.]
The move to interpret Jesus’ words metaphorically is an easy one for us religious liberals, but McLaren’s claim is different. If I read him correctly, he is claiming that Jesus’ use of "hell language" was merely a pragmatic rhetorical choice. Jesus, implies McLaren, used hell language not because he believed in it but because it was already in the water.
If we follow McLaren on this, then Jesus’ use of the language of "eternal punishment" in Matthew 25, for instance, is little different than the "woe unto the Pharisees" passages just two chapters earlier—except that in Matthew 25 he can now be read as intentionaly using the Pharisees’ own hell language against them.
One of the problems of Christianity is that its adherents have persistently reified (that is, "thing-ified") its rhetoric to the point that one must take out a mortgage to buy an entire worldview to be able to preceive its "good news." Heaven, hell, sin, grace, salvation, atonement, God, Christ, Holy Spirit, Trinity, Satan, Fall, law, church, sacrament—you must understand, and assent to, most (if not all) of these symbols in order to be able to accept any of them. Sure, there are different interpretations of these symbols, and minority Christian groups will do without one or two here or there.
Still, an entire symbolic universe must be swallowed whole just to receive the message of grace that Christians themselves would admit Jesus meant to give to everyone freely.
What’s wrong with this? And what does it have to do with McLaren? Click to continue reading “A Jesus worth having”
