Bible. (Please respond.)

[Splatter Phoenix]

Funny that the discussion of handing out bibles should come up.

I, myself, quite a long time ago, (several months, before moving to Georgia) took a pair of scissors to a bible, in frustration at having to deal with so many fundies pushing their worldview on me.

Today, father found out, found it, and flipped. Absolutely. Spoke of how it was disrespectful, etc, how there was something "Wrong" with me for doing it.

My question:

Is it disrespectful to deface bibles, or other holy books, when it is within the privacy of your own home (or room)?

[Rising Phoenix]

1. not at all...

its your home, its your life, its your right...you didn't deface HIS bible and you didn't wave it in his face...

[Splatter Phoenix]

22. That's true.

I actually tried to hide it from him and didn't fully succeed...


:hide:

[datasuspect]

2. what were you trying to accomplish?

it's just a book.

why not rip up a phone book? same effect . . .

[RevCheesehead]

3. Not unless you worship the Bible.

Seriously - some churches do.

It's just a book. What you do in your own home is your own business. That's part of the joy of being an American. Freedom of expression, and all that shit. :)

[YellowRubberDuckie]

6. It's funny how they worship a book...

out of which they pick and choose what to believe. You either believe in the Entire thing or you don't. Thank GOD the Catholics have come to their senses and realized that the bible is nice GUIDEBOOK, a storybook to help guide people thru their life, and it is not something to be taken literally. WHen you take something like it literally and pick and choose out of it what you want ot believe, bad shit like Bush happens.
Duckie

[Wapsie B]

7. Yes some do worship the Bible.

I wonder what would happen if someone were to have a public protest of book burnings by having a Bible burning? And make sure they were all the KJV Bible.

[RevCheesehead]

9. I'd rather roast Rove.

(I'd add something else, but don't want Agent Mike after me.)

[Wapsie B]

19. That would be great!

But with all that blubber wouldn't he cook down to almost nothing? :evilgrin:

Yeah better not arouse Agent Mike. ;-)

[RevCheesehead]

25. All that tallow - we could make candles.

"Better to light a few candles, than to curse the darkness."
Hell, talk about your 1,000 points of light - who knew it would all come from one ugly bastard?

[left is right]

20. Don't toast marshmellows over him

that would be toxic

[RevCheesehead]

26. Good point -

more like a toxic waste dump. Maybe we should encase him in concrete?

[RetroLounge]

4. If it is Yours, cut it up, burn it, deface it, read it, give it away.

whatever. It's just paper and ink.

RL

[Splatter Phoenix]

8. Good point...

Though burning it does seem...really bad. :rofl: I don't know, burning ANY book seems worse to me than cutting it up. At least if you cut it up you can work diligently with tape to fix it again.

[RetroLounge]

12. Yeah, I left my childhood bible on the book shelf

and there it sat, being packed and moved with me for years and years and years. I didn't read it, didn't believe in it, and don't know why I kept it. But it went up on the book shelf along with all myother books.

Then I got a puppy, and the ONLY book that dog ever ate was that bible. Chewed it to shreds one day while I was at work, as if it chose this book off the shelf on purpose, and left the others intact.

I took it as a sign from God there are many paths to get to him, but this was not the one for me.

RL

[cssmall]

5. The Bible is simply a symbol of Christianity that holds within it teaching

I wouldn't, personally, do that to a Bible because I do believe in Christ, but I am a Deist, which basically says God did what he said: he created it and then said "there you go."

Your father entitled to his opinion, but there are better ways to argue that point.

I wouldn't destroy the Bible as a way to lash out against fundies. Rather, I believe that you should learn it so you can argue against them. Use their teachings against them and fight their intrepretations with your own. I believe that is the best route.

All in all, I abhor the destruction of ANY book, whether it is a Bible or erotic pictures bound.

On edit: Like everyone said, this is America, knock yourself out.

[Rabrrrrrr]

10. If you meant it in a disrespectful way, then it's disrespectuful; if you

did not intend disrespect, then no, it wasn't. As the one who did it, the framing is up to you.

Jefferson cut his Bible up.

All it is is a collection of paper with words on it. Sure, the words are holy (to many), but not the ink or the paper that forms the words.

Only a Bible idolator would find offense or say it is disrespectful. The Bible that you hold in your hand is merelyt but a physical thing, and all physical things are evanescent and liminal.

[elshiva]

11. Freedom of expression is great.

Better to take your frustrations out on a book than yourself or someone else.

It would ONLY be disrepectful to do it in front of say a Bible study group. Disrepectful to other people not a sin, though.
Tell your dad this: It is a book. The central message of the Bible is to love others as you love yourself. NOWHERE does it say to love the Bible as yourself.

[tjwmason]

13. It depends

It is not like Islam where defacing the Qur'an would automatically constitute disrespect towards the faith. On the other hand, the Bible is inter alia one of the principal symbols of Christianity - if such defacing were aimed at Christians/Christianity then it possibly betrays an attitude.

Nobody, apart from the defacer, can tell whether this is the case.

[Tallison]

14. Sounds like you meant to disrespect it

Whether that is right or wrong is out of my league to judge, though your father clearly believes otherwise. :shrug:

[China_cat]

15. Ever heard of the Jefferson bible?

Maybe you ought to show this to your father.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/jesus/jefferson.html

Some versions of the story have him doing what you did...cutting up several copies of the bible and pasting only what he believed to be the 'truth'. Brought the whole thing down to less than 4 pages.

The fundies of his day were outraged, too.

[bridgit]

16. but why actively deface it, why expend the energy to do so...

as mentioned up thread it is your house & such, your eternal relation to the godhead/universe for that matter; but i would have used it, not saying "do it my way", just saying that's all...but i would have used it as a pot holder, or coaster of some kind; or a door stop if you will :shrug:

it is every bit your subject matter to ignore in the end :thumbsup:

[NYC Liberal]

17. A DEACON at my school threw the Bible on the floor to show

that it's not the physical BOOK that means anything, it's the words inside.

So yeah, it's perfectly OK. :)

[no name no slogan]

18. The Bible-- probably not. The Quran, OTOH...

In Christianity, the Bible is "just" a book-- the collected wisdom about Jesus and God. To Christians, Jesus is the living Word and the messiah, NOT the Bible.

In Islam, the Quran IS the holy word of God, while Muhammad is "just" God's prophet. Muhammad is NOT divine; however, he is the last of God's prophets sent to earth-- the last messenger of God's word.

That is also why there was such a brouhaha over the defacing of Quran at Gitmo. To most Muslims, to disrespect the Quran in any way is to disrespect God.

Unfortunately, most Americans don't "get" this, and therefore don't understand why it was a very big deal when Quran-defacing allegations came out.

I myself don't see the point in defacing ANY religions' holy book-- regardless of how misguided I may think the followers are. All it does is inflame tempers and leads not to wisdom but to greater conflict.

However, what you do in your own home is your own business. :)

[AntiCoup2K4]

21. It's about the same as defacing/burning a flag

It's what the object symbolizes that is valued more than the inanmiate object itself. A bible is a stack of paper with words on it, and a flag is a piece of cloth. But if you believe in what these objects symbolize, then you are offended by someone destroying them.

Maybe you should have taken the scissors to the fundies? It wasn't the bible that did anything to you, right? ;)

[SOteric]

23. If you owned the bible rather than your father

(and it was not a gift from your parents) and you owned or rented the room in your name and it was not part of his home, then I would say that you were within your rights and it was not disrespectful.

If the bible was someone else's, or was a gift from your parents, or if you defaced the bible in your father's home (even if in your room), then I think your father would be within his rights to feel you'd been disrespectful of his beliefs in his home.

[DanCa]

24. In your own home and it's your property

Of course today in church we had kids playing with bibles and dropping them during the service. I thought that was disrespectful as it was in public mass.

[Zenlitened]

27. When I was a kid in Sunday School, we were scolded...

... if we put a bible on the floor with the rest of our books during class. Because it was "disrespectful."

Turns out, that should've been the least of their worries. Picking that book up and reading it did more to banish any "respect" I might have had than dropping it on the floor ever could!

[Castilleja]

28. No it isn't, but

PLENTY of people will tell you it is, and look at you in horror if they see you do it. I was once told that you weren't suppose to throw one away either. It is book idolatry, I suppose. My kids were given one at school by religious mini-bible peddlers and we burned it in the barbeque pit. A good time was had by all. :)

[caty]

29. No more than

if you had cut of a copy of fairy tales.

[tuvor]

30. Or the Koran.

[tuvor]

31. Why couldn't you just have cut up some fundie publications?

Bible has nothing to do with them. (They just think it does.)

[XemaSab]

32. Jim Wallace in "God's Politics"

talks about how in seminary he took a Bible and cut out every mention of the poor and the Bible basically fell apart, there was so much of it missing.

(read God's Politics; he calls W a heretic :D )