6 thoughts on “Scintillatingly Rev and non-female Philip North, Bishop of Burnley and not Bishop of Sheffield”
Scapegoating – an absurd, barbaric, immoral practice made respectable because Mr Jesus wanted to save goats from blood sacrifice (er, my theology may be a bit shaky on the detail).
Turning Jesus into a scapegoat was a highly symbolic bit of invention on the part of the Gospel writers. He is made to be simultaneously the High Priest, the goat who is offered to the Lord as a blood sacrifice, and the scapegoat who is driven off into the wilderness bearing the sins of the people. Plus the whole adventure is made to take place at Passover. Jesus therefore replaces the key Jewish actors and usurps both of Judaism’s holiest rituals: Passover and Yom Kippur. It’s a blatant takeover bid by the new Christian sect.
Philip North tells us that we mustn’t create scapegoats and that none of us is without fault. This is the third TftD along the lines of judge-not-that-ye-be-not-judged we’ve had in the past couple of weeks. Maybe it’s because we’ve been exercising our own judgement instead of listening to Bishops telling us how awful we are.
Again, this is may appear on the surface to look at the news from a religious point of view, but scapegoating is all around us all the time as a human activity. Pointing out that it is important in Christianity only shows that early Christians recognised it as a negative act in human interactions and then commented on it in their BBoMS.
Fails the Greenberg test but is something that we should be aware of.
In the meantime, I blame all the Corona virus problems on Boris and his cronies and suggest they should be sent to the desert for 40 days.
A CoE vicar once called me a sinner when I was 14 years old. Actually he called the whole form, of about 30 grammar school boys, sinners on frequent occassions during RE lessons. He came to our school to teach RE and English as a kind of support teacher. I think he used to use us as token blame hounds as an antidote to displace the guilt he was feeling for cheating on his wife by playing around with other men. We didnt know what was going on until several years later when it all came out. Everything was differnt in the sixties … such behaviour was distinctly bad form, scandalous even, back in the day. I learned a valuable lesson … those that claim the moral high ground are not to be trusted … dont be fooled by the office or the uniform.
It can manifest in the opposite direction too – one of the priests from my youth that I had some respect for (back when I was still a believer) once gave a powerful sermon that stuck with me for a long time, a key line being “being careful before pointing the finger at someone, because if you look you’ll see four fingers pointing back at you”.
Alas, it turned out that he had a bit of vested interest in avoiding the finger pointing, as he was eventually releaved as yet another of the cohort of child-abusers.
Typo – should have been revealed, of course, not releaved. Though he was also indeed relieved off to a retreat for troublesome priests, via a short stay at Her Majesty’s Pleasure.
Platitude of the Day 
Scapegoating – an absurd, barbaric, immoral practice made respectable because Mr Jesus wanted to save goats from blood sacrifice (er, my theology may be a bit shaky on the detail).
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Turning Jesus into a scapegoat was a highly symbolic bit of invention on the part of the Gospel writers. He is made to be simultaneously the High Priest, the goat who is offered to the Lord as a blood sacrifice, and the scapegoat who is driven off into the wilderness bearing the sins of the people. Plus the whole adventure is made to take place at Passover. Jesus therefore replaces the key Jewish actors and usurps both of Judaism’s holiest rituals: Passover and Yom Kippur. It’s a blatant takeover bid by the new Christian sect.
Philip North tells us that we mustn’t create scapegoats and that none of us is without fault. This is the third TftD along the lines of judge-not-that-ye-be-not-judged we’ve had in the past couple of weeks. Maybe it’s because we’ve been exercising our own judgement instead of listening to Bishops telling us how awful we are.
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Again, this is may appear on the surface to look at the news from a religious point of view, but scapegoating is all around us all the time as a human activity. Pointing out that it is important in Christianity only shows that early Christians recognised it as a negative act in human interactions and then commented on it in their BBoMS.
Fails the Greenberg test but is something that we should be aware of.
In the meantime, I blame all the Corona virus problems on Boris and his cronies and suggest they should be sent to the desert for 40 days.
LikeLike
A CoE vicar once called me a sinner when I was 14 years old. Actually he called the whole form, of about 30 grammar school boys, sinners on frequent occassions during RE lessons. He came to our school to teach RE and English as a kind of support teacher. I think he used to use us as token blame hounds as an antidote to displace the guilt he was feeling for cheating on his wife by playing around with other men. We didnt know what was going on until several years later when it all came out. Everything was differnt in the sixties … such behaviour was distinctly bad form, scandalous even, back in the day. I learned a valuable lesson … those that claim the moral high ground are not to be trusted … dont be fooled by the office or the uniform.
LikeLike
It can manifest in the opposite direction too – one of the priests from my youth that I had some respect for (back when I was still a believer) once gave a powerful sermon that stuck with me for a long time, a key line being “being careful before pointing the finger at someone, because if you look you’ll see four fingers pointing back at you”.
Alas, it turned out that he had a bit of vested interest in avoiding the finger pointing, as he was eventually releaved as yet another of the cohort of child-abusers.
LikeLike
Typo – should have been revealed, of course, not releaved. Though he was also indeed relieved off to a retreat for troublesome priests, via a short stay at Her Majesty’s Pleasure.
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