Reader-Response Biblical Criticism

Historically, the Bible was considered 'revelation'. It still is. However, when Moses said the "Burning Bush told me to take my people home" today,given the history of miscommunication and chaos and world wars it would be more likely that Moses would be locked up for antagonizing Egypt.
There has been a radical shift between what is considered 'objective' and what is considered 'subjective'. In the past the 'consensus' was considered 'objective'. Since the Jewish people, according to the wealthy powerful, and evicted from the land as a murderer, Moses, said it would be better for us to get out of Dodge, given his 'strong man' position the majority of Jews, followers lacking capacity for independent thinking, slaves to the Egyptian or their own rigidly hierarchal traditions, got out of Dodge.
Today the youngest kid would ask, Why and the exodus would not occur. Much bickering would ensue and the Child Protection Services would be brought in to arrest Moses for endangering children by suggesting they walk through an ocean without proper life guard certification and back up scuba gear.
I heard that God had died and then I heard Sartre had died. Truth itself died when the girl told me "My Truth" and further went on to say "Your God". Historically there was an idea that a child was narcissistic and that the elderly returning to dust to provide good soil for the crops were Altruistic. There was this movement forward from nowhere to somewhere. There was even the circle from Old Jerusalem to New Jerusalem that didn't just run like a hamster in a cage but rather elegantly spiraled up like a Watson Crick diagram of DNA structure.
Subjectivity and loss of faith in the consensus began in the 30's between World Wars. It was the recognition that the upper class were decidedly in bred and utterly dangerously insane willing to kill off all humans with their new toys. WWII didn't make things any better but by the Cold War the leaders were decidedly not to be trusted as they now had the means to kill cities and perhaps make the very planet uninhabitable. Further after the Cold War the hot air of politicians was likely to kill us all in the microwave effect of global warming. Lots of images of children putting cats in the microwave and watching the outcome were naturally associated with media images of humans having the same thing done to them by the leadership.
Meanwhile there were still those like the Moslems saying it was the Christians that were killing the planet or Koreans saying it was the Americans. In the West the British had long realized that the Germans were as much at the mercy of their leadership as they were. At Christmas they stopped fighting by themselves all along the WWII front and this was made a "state secret" only released decades later before Julian and Wikileaks showed us a couple of soldiers were more likely to bring peace to the planet than the likes of the Golmand Sach Banker scoundrels.
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely seemed to be the daunting lesson to be learned as first Psychiatrists, then Priests, then Judges, then Rabbis, were sexually abusing anyone that found themselves under their robes. The Imans were likely the worst of the bad lot because anyone who questioned their use of privates was made a fatua of.
It all rather made the idea of 'objectivity' questionable since the academic teachers seeking tenure were more often the toadiest or most irrelevant but principally interested in status and salary. The boss gave them that so even the 'illusion' of independence and freedom of thought got shot to peices when it was recognized Freemasons were behind one group, communists were funding another group and cocaine money Republicans were behind another group. Academics were being bought by industry and dropping their credentials as fast as prostitutes dropped their nickers. One leading environmentalist 'authority' said another was wrong and in the courts there was always an 'expert' who could be paid enough to appear in a latter day OJ trial and reduce learning to the cockfight that the courts had become in an attempt to keep some interest in themselves after the advent of reality tv.
So what is mine and what is yours. Truth is no longer God's revelation or if God is standing right in front of me depending on whether I've seen Matrix or dropped LSD or gone to a closed minded one idea school teaching one strict view of whatever cultist fundamentalist liberal authority reigns this week then that's the fashion of religion.
The Messiah could come but no one would notice because he wasn't wearing prada. With the wrong colour of robe today the truth can be rejected as passe. Whatever!
The subject, me, I'm the reader, and my opinion is as important as anyones and I don't have to have a community because I'm alone and alienated and we're all living separately and there's no federalism just an aristocracy and the rest of us peasants.
Mostly your truth is not my truth the adolescent insists as he donns the latest uniform. 12 years stylish with male bling kalishnikovs and as feminists realize their castrated demeaned men can't protect them Sarah Palin denies shooting a moose because she at least can tell objectively that a caribou is not a moose.
Out of the drug crazed media hazed fear mongering of deconstruction and celebration of the mastabatory genius of destruction and temple toppling there remains the question of degrees of objectivity. Cogito ergo sum.
Where the universal unconscious of Jung met with the Hindu Greater Self and the common ground of mysticism the philosophical rants of the politically depraved threaten to spin off into outer space breaking the planet apart with the silliness that comes of loss of gravity and laughing gas.
My truth. My God. My interpretation and we don't have to agree. We just have to judge conflict of interest and then ask how many guns can you bring to bear on this situation. Power politics. Before the mercy of an Eye for an Eye there was the feral beauty of 'touch me and you die'. My genetic strain will wipe out your genetic strain and rape anything that remains. I am Darwin. Fuck you."
There was before the chaos of present day Globalism where ideas of Babylon with all the languages and all the people compete in the insaniety of the United Nations and the absurdity of the World Court with war criminals judging war criminals and lies hiding lies and deals making deals, some ideas of what we should do for each other in our individual groups.
The first nations called themselves 'human' if they acted in kind. The Europeans called themselves gentleman and gentlewomen if they behaved according to code. Of course the cannibals always excluded the neighbors they called the 'edible ones' from their own inclusivity myth but really must we wait for an alien invasion before we come to see us all as 'us'. Earth Folk. EF for acronym short sense of commonality.
And frankly I'm not ready to extend Earth Folk to the cockroach or the planet calling her Gaia or saying that a spotted butterfly is equivalent to a child starving in a dessert. What absurdity we have today with those killing each other to protect an endangered linguistic. No different than the age old excuse of one nation invading another to protect some marginalized people under rule of some 'strong man' who happens to have some gold or spice or oil or land or trade route.
Sure, look at the conflict of interest. Question the 'Truth' as presented but as Earth Folk and Humans together can we not see there is more than just 'reader response'.
Am I really that alone.
Are you so distracted by your game boy that you can not hear me. Are your earphones so tight that you cannot hear the world outside your selected safe media. Am I limited thoroughly by this room. In this space can we not meet.
The Liberal Pluralists say, "I'll meet you in the middle", when they are way out in left field. The right wing merely flaps and the centrists won't come out of the lavatory.
Our Truth. Our God. I'm not suggesting an umbilical cord by any means. We're cut off from Eden and a flaming sword blocks the way. The Cross at least offers a meeting place between horizontal and perpendicular.
But Satan turns his back on God and prefers to watch his shadow. The world pouts as the child insists on my way.
But "our" preceded "me" and "we" will go on.
Bible study is discussion, not lecture; love making, not rape.
And at it's best something a whole lot more than masturbation.
Despite those that insist that lust is just love.
For what it's worth, that's "my reader-response". Deconstruct that!



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