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blue bits. red rocks.
Thursday 28 January 2010

But imagine what it would be like to live in this deep 3-D universe while thinking you were still living in the flat 6-line universe. That, I believe, is the condition many of us find ourselves in, and it explains why many of us find our religion limiting, cramped, and unlivable. We feel our religion asks us to live a flat life in a deep world. Many of us think we’re constrained by the Bible, when we’re actually constrained by the Greco-Roman framing of the Bible. Why would people keep living in a flat, determined world? Primarily, I think, because their authority figures, especially in their religious communities, have taught them to. Why would their authority figures keep them in a flat, determined world? First and consciously, because they themselves believe that this is the universe that the Bible mandates for believers to inhabit through faith; they’ve bought into the Greco-Roman fusion as a pre-critical assumption. But I think there is a second reason, more subconscious: when you’re an authority figure seeking to keep people “in line,” it helps to keep them in lines. Brian McLaren

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