Texas church offereing concealed carry class

A Baptist church in Dumas, Texas plans to host concealed handgun training classes, the Associated Press reported Saturday, Feb. 9, 2013.
To legally carry a concealed weapon in Texas, and in most states, a class is required. The training involves 10 hours of how to handle a gun and some basic safety procedures. There is also a legal aspect as well as far as defending oneself with a gun, and there is minimal training on firing a weapon.
The church is in the Texas Panhandle area near Amarillo. The pastor says it is offering the class as a community service because there is high interest in the subject matter. A state-certified instructor plans to teach the class on March 2.



http://www.examiner.com/article/texas-church-offers-concealed-carry-gun-classes

Stop praying for president Obama

Here is an article I found about conservative Christians praying for the president. The writer makes some great points.
It is extremely ironic that conservative Christians were supporting a non-Christian  over a Christian because of their political beliefs.

Here is the first paragraph of the article, followed by a link to the entire article.

Just the other day, I sat in a room full of conservative Christians who were praying for President Obama. One would think that that would have been a good thing. But sadly it was not. Toward the end of their prayer I wanted to scream, STOP! I wanted them to stop praying because their prayers were clearly being prayed under duress.

http://www.examiner.com/article/stop-praying-for-president-obama

Reading the gospels as story narrative

There are a lot of books out there about the Bible, and about the Gospels. I recently ran across a nice book called "Reading the Gospels Wisely."
Here is a review of the book by Jonathan Pennington.

What I like about this one is that it teaches us how to read the Gospels as stories, and that is what they are. They are stories about Jesus, and stories Jesus told. Thousands of books have been written about whether these stories are "true."
That debate is important, but lets not lose the forest for the trees.
To some degree it does not matter if the stories are true, and sometimes stories are told to make a point. When Jesus tells the story of the sower and the seed for instance, it really doesn't matter if there was in fact a guy sowing seed that he had observed.
The author talks about understanding the stories and getting the meaning of the story.
This is done of course by reading, and by asking questions.
Check out the review.

was Jesus married?

I supposed you all have read about the small piece of writing that was
translated from Coptic, that suggests Jesus may have been married.
Here is what I wrote about it today.

http://www.examiner.com/article/was-jesus-married-what-would-it-mean-if-he-had-b\
een

Book Review: Heretics

Book Review, Heretics by Jonathan Wright.

The book's greatest contribution is a detailed list of all the heretics that have existed throughout the history of Christianity. Wright also makes a serious effort to try to not judge previous cultures by our own. For instance, the idea of tolerance of all religious views, is a rather recent cultural development.

Continue with this post by clicking here

How the New Testament came to be

In the early days of Christianity there were a lot of ideas floating around, and gradually books began appearing. Some of these books eventually became part of what we know today as the New Testament.
There is a lot of speculation out there, as well as wildly false claims about how the New Testament came together.

continue reading this post here

Introduction

Another blog? Oh no!
Well I had to write something to get this blog started.
While the blog itself is about the bible I also hope to offer a different perspective on Christianity and a Biblical view of world and or national events.
 This is not your typical conservative republican Christian blog. While I do like to talk politics and try to take a biblical perspective, I am neither conservative nor liberal. Both sides merely spin the scriptures to meet their own philosophies. It should be the other way around.
Conservatives do not have the market cornered on Christianity.
Some argue conservatives are more closely aligned to the bible, while others say the liberals have a more biblical world view. I really do not agree with either assertion.
Both conservative and liberal ideologies have their strengths and weaknesses, but neither are biblical - or anti-biblical for that matter. You can twist the scriptures to fit either side if you want, but .. a plain reading of the biblical text would support neither side.