RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/09/islam_and_the_culling_footbridge.html

Islam operates by two powerful schemes: reward and punishment. It mesmerizes the believer by its encyclopedic descriptions of Allah’s lush paradise that awaits the worthy faithful. For the kefir and a not-so-true Muslim, the destination is Allah’s dreadful hell.

Muslim clergy tirelessly preach about these two locations with great success. Fear of hell, for some, even out-muscles the attractions of paradise and works wonders in keeping the flock servile to the parasitic clergy.

A powerful, well honed scheme involves pol-e As-Sirāt (the footbridge of the path). The kefirs, after they die, do not even get a chance to see if they can cross this footbridge; they go directly to Allah’s hell. Yet all Muslims approach the footbridge. The problem is in crossing it. The preachers describe at great length how difficult it is to cross this bridge over the gorge of hell to the other side, where paradise is located.

A great majority of blindly faithful Muslims are either illiterate or semi-literate. These people tend to take everything the charlatan preachers say as literal truth; many panic with fear and beg the preachers to tell them what they need do to cross that dreadful footbridge. They become ripe for the picking. The preachers, well trained con artists that they are, burden these simpletons with all kinds of well rehearsed fabricated demands to keep the flock in their pen. The preachers say, for instance, that they must do this and they must do that to earn the good graces of Allah. And when they die, Allah will commission two angels to hold them on both sides and safely transport them over the bridge. Wayward Muslims, on the other hand, are all on their own and most likely will fall into the dreadful hell with their very first steps.

When asked about the mercy of Allah, since he is billed as the most merciful, can they count on his mercy to send them the helpful angel if they somehow, themselves, fail to live completely up to the standards of the faith? The preachers have a pet response to that, too. Allah’s mercy has limits. You had best not to count on it too much. He has already shown you his abundance of mercy by sending you his beloved messenger Muhammad. Allah guides, and it is your duty to follow. And if you are confused or in doubt about things, just go to the preachers. They will clarify things for you and set you on the straight path. The crafty preachers claim that they have spent their lives learning the intricacies of the faith, and it is their humble task to serve the believers.

This past spring a friend and I spent almost a full day at the museum. It is a noble undertaking, meticulously respectful of all faiths with dioramas, recreations of biblical villages and thousands of displayed texts………rsk

http://www.asor.org/anetoday/2018/09/About-That-Museum-Washington

On a quiet street corner two blocks south of the National Mall and just above the busy highway that is Virginia Avenue is the latest addition to Washington’s cultural life, the Museum of the Bible. But unlike the Smithsonian Institution, sprawled out across the Mall, this new museum is a private venture, a labor of love by the Green family of Oklahoma City, they of Hobby Lobby fame. From the outside, the building looks like a forgotten branch of the Bureau of Printing and Engraving. Inside is a state of the art museum, spread over seven floors and hundreds of thousands of square feet. But the Museum of the Bible is more than that; it is a unique performance space that operates on multiple layers to present an American Protestant perspective on the Bible, God, and History.

Some readers are doubtless ready to stop right here. That would be a mistake, not only because they’d miss some witty insights, but because the museum itself is a serious place that deserves consideration and respect, if only because of the questions it poses for us about the Bible. Who has the right to interpret the Bible? The museum makes it clear that, following the Protestant tradition, all people do. But using what tools? That’s where things get complicated.

Entering the museum through its main door, flanked by tablet-like engravings, visitors are thrust into a marble clad interior space that feels like the corporate headquarters of a global pharmaceutical firm.

Giant touch screens and video displays hint at what is to come, as do the moveable pillars of the Philistine temple in the children’s room, ‘Courageous Pages,’ which junior Samsons can push apart. Another important hint is the Vatican Museum room filled with manuscripts on loan; the museum has been relentless and successful in developing partnerships with other institutions around the world. On the one hand the strategy vastly expands the scope of the displays. On the other, this is a way for an upstart museum to generate respectability and put itself on the map.

Respectability is an important issue, both for the museum and for its patrons. Any new cultural institution in Washington needs to establish itself, and in a city dedicated to the Seven Deadly Sins and then some, a Museum of the Bible is at a disadvantage. So too is the Green family, which founded its first arts and crafts store in 1972. The chain now employs 32,000 people in 800 stores, and is famous for stocking over 70,000 different crafting and home decor items. It is also famous for winning its case in the Supreme Court, in which it argued that as a closely held corporation with religious objections, it did not have to provide contraceptive coverage to employees as otherwise mandated by the Affordable Care Act.