John Chapter 9

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After Poetically Responding to Literally
Hundreds Of Poets and Thousands of Poems

Globally As Part of 10.3 MiLLioN Words Now in
103 Months of my Own Longest EPiC Long Form Poem

Bible; Yep, More than 12 Times the Size of the Old King James
Size Minuscule

Effort

Considering How
Differently 40 Different
Humans May Respond to

The Same Poetry in Determining

The Meaning, Totally Different From the
Intent of the Author Who Is Actually Alive
And At Hand to Provide His Actual Intent

And Meaning of the Poetry He Or She Writes
From Deep Within; It's Surely Amusing to Hear

Someone Claim They Have the 'One True' Meaning of

Anything Written in a Bible By Ghost Authors assigned
Famous Pen Names Like Mark, Luke, John, And Matthew,
Close to 2000 Years Ago; With All the Scribe Changes, Mistaken
And Intentional After That; And All the Editing Changes, Translations,
And ReVisions That Still Come Today Among Over 45,000 Denominations

Globally Where In One Church You May Ask A Congregation of 400 People
And Get Different Interpretations From EACH AND EVERY PERSON THERE IN

REGARD
TO THAT
OLD BIBLE

THAT HAS AS
MANY VERSIONS AS
THERE ARE EYES INTERPRETING

AND DISCERNING THE FREE VERSE
POETRY THROUGH THEIR UNIQUE
BIOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL CIRCUMSTANCES OF

LIFE EXPERIENCES THROUGH AND THROUGH AND THROUGH

The Truth is as Validated By Neuroscience At Least, is Every Breath

We Take Is Constantly Changing Us into a New Creation That We Take Part

Of Now in Both
Nature and Nurture too,

Which Means An Eternally Changing

New Testament of Life We Co-Create As

We Basically as Neuroscience Also Shows,

Hallucinate our Realities, Creating them Based
on Past Hallucinations We Co-Create of Our Realities Before...

And This Is Why, i Write My Own Bible; Might As Well As Most
Everyone Around Us Who Has Read that Old Dusty one Has

A Different
View in
Someway
Based on their
Nurture and Nature

As They Continue to
View it Differently Based
on Their Changing Discernments
In Changing Interpretations too All

The Way Across Their LifeSpan Of Course
Unless They Change over to a Zillion Other
Books or So Doing the Reality of Change Again

of Every
Breath
We Take
A New
Testament
of Our Changing
Realities Eternally Now New...

Other Than That Happy "Fred's Day" Again,

For It's True, i'm in Good Company As the Holy
Fool is an Archetype As Long as Humans Exist,
Marginalized, Bringing Newer Rules to Order Creatively

Moving Out of Herd Think this way to Come to New Arts
And Sciences of Life; And Of Course, the Isaiah 53, Archetypal Hero
Story Retold Innumerable Instances In Other Stories and Arts too;

The Hero Is Called Out into the Desert Within and Challenged in Dark
By Demons Within And Escapes Dark to Bring Newer Arts And Sciences
About Life Experience to The Village iN LiGHT Back Home or Traveling
Further; Yep,

Even Online
Globally
These
Days too
As Heroes
And Holy Fools Still Do...

It's Nothing New Under the Sun Now or then...

Different Actors, Same Characters As the Human Story continues on
And on As Some Folks Learn From Lessons Old And Make A Newer World Greater To Love;

One Thing For Sure is, One Who Proclaims the Meek Inherit the Earth; And the Poor of Spirit
Inherit the Kingdom of God and Heaven Within; And the Last is First; And If You Believe You
Will Do Greater

Works than

me Is the
Meek

Now Who
Inherit Heaven
Within New Same

Story Cross Culturally

Proclaimed Through Ages Still;

Same Story Acted Upon too Now For Real...

And it's Damned Sure Not the Same Demagogue Story of
'Trump Jesus,' Ya Can And Will Also Find in that Big Black

Book, If That Is How You Perceive Your Reality Differently too...

Basically Life is A Rorschach Test And Some Folks See Demons

And Other

Folks Become
Angel Empath
Lovers For Real

As Strong As No Fear Brings...

Anyway, JeSuS, According to the
Story at Least Wasn't too Big to
Suggest That Others Will Do Greater
Works than Him Per John 14:12
If They Just Believe
And Do It too...

So It's

Simple, i Do,
With All the Authority too
of the Luke 17:21 Kingdom
of God Within For Real All Original

And

Creative
of Course Now Too...

Meanwhile, Folks Still Wait
For 'Godot' After A Dirt Nap

And May Never Even Seek/Find the Kingdom
of Heaven Within For Real Now in An Autotelic
Flow Generating As Much Joy as they Please Now too

And Other Folks Spend Their Life Never Really Living Now

Afraid

Of Hell
Focusing
On After Death
Even More in An
Imagined Dirt Nap More...

Anyway, Just my View; VIEWS Vary Smaller
Or Greater, Per Each and Every Human BEING NOW AS IS..

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Not guilty mate. I'm atheist for other reasons. If I'd been around back in the time of Jesus and he was anything like the Bible cracks him up to be, I'm sure I'd have liked him a lot, though with certain reservations. Religionists usually have a very poor insight into what makes an atheist an atheist. I guess that's why religious tracts and sermons so often fail to convert.

I am not talking about you specifically. I am talking about statistics as a whole. I mean, why is it statistically there are a lot more atheists among aspies than among NT-s? To me it seems like persecution complex is one of the factors.

I agree that it might not be the only factor. The other explanation is that aspies are very logic-oriented while religion has element of faith it.

But I still think that persecution complex has to be one of the factors, at least for some aspies. Because I know in general aspies tend to look to NT culture as hierarchy-oriented and judgement-oriented. And I also know that this is something atheists say a lot about religion. So if I put 2 and 2 together it seems likely that this is one of the reasons aspies are atheists.

That plus also I have a sense that I heard this kind of sentiment from people in WrongPlanet about religion. I don't remember which specific people or which specific threads, but I have a general sense that this is what people feel.



I used to be atheist up until I was 22, so I know both sides.

Now, I, personally, was "not" an atheist for the reasons I am alleging either. In my case I was mostly atheist for science related reasons, and then came to faith for fear-related ones.

However, again, I heard other people who were atheists "because" they felt that religious people are judgemental. And yes, I heard it from atheists themselves as opposed to Christians quoting them.

As a side note, I think that blind man did a pretty poor job defending his faith.

Well, for one thing, it might have been different pharesees who were asking him from the ones before.

And even if they were the same people, why losing an opportunity to get them to believe "just" because he grew frustrated with them?



So he didn't have patience to answer their factual question the verse before yet he had patience to say it was "marvelous thing". He just made himself look less credible this way. And for no reason: because he had facts on his side yet refused to voice them.



Well, what about Moses parting red sea?

But then again, he wasn't fully a Christian yet, as evident by the following verses:



So that chapter doesn't ask us to believe that this man was right. It simply recounts what that man said, which he did.

If anything this can be a wittness to the truth of the Bible. Because it didn't try to sugar coat things to make everything look perfect. If that man screwed up, it recorded him screwing up.

Still though, he didn't screw up because of any sin. He probably screwed up as any simple guy would. He was an outcast his whole life since pharesees *mistakenly* thought it was because of sin. So he probably was barred from bible studies and simply didn't know any better.

The point I made in the OP remains: he did not sin and he might be an encouraging example to other disabled in this regard.

The critique is valid, there are some deeply judgemental religious people among those who identify as Christians.
And they can be intensely judgemental to other religious people, Christian people, who are not doing religion 'THE RIGHT WAY', with the right way, the only true way, being their own specific denomination's way.
And similar can seen between different factions within other religions.

Ultimately that situation of being judgemental demonstrates the Bible's account of we humans have become so inherently flawed that we can not fix ourselves.
Which is why Jesus Christ was needed, and needed to do, what he did.

I have experienced judgemental-ism within Christianity in several ways, one being that I couldn't really be a Christian since I wasn't baptized their denomination's way.
I found it most interesting that there wasn't much of any inquiry in to whether I had accepted Jesus Christ as my savior, the issue was only that I'd been baptized in a Presbyterian church by sprinkled water instead of by the Baptist method of total immersion in water.

The entire argument/rejection was founded on their external rituals and not on what was in, what was the present condition of, my heart and soul and spirit.
Fascinating, as that guy with the famous ears often said.

So ...

With that being the available church to join ...

I said, "Okay, I'll play your game, but I'm going to make a point in an idiosyncratic way."

So ...

For the Baptist baptism by immersion I wore under the white gown my B-2 Stealth Bomber t-shirt which was light grey with big black lettering "Sleek and Sinister" which I knew would readily show through the wet thin white gown.

There seemed to be some looks but nothing was said to me.
God only knows what might have been said behind my back.

But they were aware that I was something of a model airplane geek there in the 1990s.
So maybe they just put it to that.

Remember, Jesus isn't about denominations and rituals, he is all about you, you specifically, you personally, and your individual relationship with an infinitely holy God who would like to have relationship with you but that inherent human imperfection, that infection with sin, presents a barrier to that relationship.

As a Christian I wouldn't agree with your assessment of a Bible. I think Bible is the Word of God.

However, you can write poetry about things that are true. And that chapter sounds quote poetic. Particularly its ending:



Verse 39 is quite poetic, to my ears anyway.

Verse 40 sounds like a bit of a trance.

Most people interpret that verse as in Pharesees are accusing Jesus of calling them blind. But if you forget the outside context and simply read that verse in isolation, it doesn't sound that way. It sounds as if Pharesees are looking up to Jesus to address their concern about themselves. Well, given the outside context, it doesn't seem likely, unless they were put in a type of a trance. And thats how I like reading that ending, as if they were. That end of a chapter sounds poetic, trance-like, soothing. Or maybe it just sounds that way to me, since I like the message that chapter is trying to portray about the disabled.

And then verse 41 reminds me of a Russian poem. The subject is totally different. I am just talking about the similarity in style. Sure, said poem was written in 20-th century, so the Bible couldn't have possibly been quoting it. But I still can't help but think of it. The poem is as follows:



And the translation of that poem is like this:



The way it reminded me of that poem is all those sentences "I say", "you say".

So when Jesus said "and now you say I see" that "you say" phrase totally reminded me of that poem.

That plus also the way he said those that see will be blind and those that blind will see ... Kind of like that poem that says who now "am" will not exist any more and vice versa.

By the way, here is a little bit of Russian language. In Russian they don't use articles. So they don't say "I am walking", they say "I walking". The version of "am" that they use in that poem -- namely "есмь" -- is not an article but rather its a version of the word exist, but very rare/poetic one. The mundane version of the word exist is "есть", but a poetic version is when they replace "т" with "м" and have "есмь". And it is used very rarely. The only time I remember hearing it is when we studied the above poem in the literature class back in Russia. But then several years later I read the Russian version of "Before Abraham was I am" (John 8:58) and they translated "I am" as "Я есьм", and I was like "wow, is he quoting that poem". And I knew he wasn't since it was written in 20-th century. But it was still pretty cool to read it translated this way.

Well, judging people based on rituals is not nearly as bad as judging people based on disabilities, since the way you baptize is something you can change if you choose to, while disability is something you can't.

I was baptized when I was 7, in Russian Orthodox Church. But that was a rather silly incident since as a little kid I had no idea what it was all about, it is just that at a Christian camp they talked me into it. Then my Jewish mother got mad at that and so I rejected the religion. And then only came to faith when I was 22 and never got baptized again since I keep it from my mother.

When I tell this to most Christians that I chose not to get baptized again they are normally fine with it, they say faith is what matters anyway. I remember only ONE conversation along the lines of what you described. That was in the Church of God, someone asked me if I was baptized by immersion or sprinkling. I said I assume sprinkling and they said I should get re-baptized by immersion. And by the way my assumption was wrong: when I googled it I saw in Russian Orthodox they actually baptize by immersion, which also matches my vague memory.

But in any case, I never felt judged by that particular person who told me that. Because he wasn't rejecting me, he was just suggesting I get re-baptized. And it was up to me to take his advise or not.

Maybe I don't get judged in the manner you described because I get judged for my Asperger, first, and then people never get to know me well enough to even get concerned about other things. Thats why I feel like judgement against the disabled is far worse since this is what affects me personally and this is the one thing I have no control over. Which in turn is the reason why I like John Chapter 9 so much.

That is understandable.

My physical health has never been the best but before it crashed bigtime in early 2000s I could usually mask well enough to pass for NT - for a while.
Even before that time, fatigue and especially stress would shorten, and sometimes dramatically shorten, the length of time I could do so.


If the endocrine, mitochondrial, neurological, and autoimmune, diseases weren't somewhat kicking my butt today that bit there would already be the launchpad for a rant about, against, the Word of Faith movement.

I was indeed being a bit flippant there with my "not guilty" remark, but I still think what I said was about right. Aspies are such a heterogenous group that it may be difficult to find any one general reason for this or that tendency, though it's still interesting to speculate, and does no harm as long as it remains labelled as speculation.

It seems to me that the hallmark of atheism is disbelief rather than dislike. If a person believes the Christian claims of the existence of a supernatural deity, miracles, judgement, afterlife, and all that, then even if they don't like Jesus, they've still got the problem that if they don't obey the Christian rules then the deity is too big to stand up to, that they're going to lose out on that nice afterlife, perhaps even burn in hell forever. But if a person genuinely doesn't believe those Christian claims, then it becomes a waste of time to obey their rules.

I'm not sure about this "persecution complex" theory either, because it seems to assume it's some kind of mental ailment. I don't see anything wrong with disapproving of a rigid hierarchy, or with being pushed around by beings who don't have to justify their authority to the ones they order about. Even among the general population these days there's a strong liking for democracy, a system in which we the people decide what the rules are going to be. Christianity is much more a top-down thing, a dictatorship. It can be (and is) argued that the deity knows best and has our interests at heart, and that we mortals just aren't smart enough to see how that can be so, but it's still not democratic.

One aspect of the Aspie mind that may contribute to atheism is a tendency to use thinking rather than emotion when it comes to decision-making and deciding what to believe. I have no data to back this up, but my conjecture is that such propaganda doesn't work so well on Aspies as it does on the general population. And religious people rarely offer rational arguments when they seek to convert people to their particular persuasion. Every religious tract, hymn, and sermon I've been exposed to has contained nothing to appeal to my intellect, to my powers of critical reasoning. Instead, they're full of repeated assertions that they never back up with anything but quotes from their own scripture. The most effective of them have a disarming style and an appeal to the emotions, just like the most effective ads. As such they can't make me believe. At best, all they can do is make me want to believe.