A really great sign entered my feed this week on Facebook to which I re-posted. “Sadly, you can read a Bible in prison but not in school! Perhaps if they read it in school, they wouldn’t be in prison.”
One comment was: “Lots of incarcerated Black people are innocent. All the Bible reading, Sunday School and going to church did not prevent the injustice they are now suffering. These kind of images are simply ridiculous and lack critical thinking.”
Another person said: “The Bible should never be force fed to children in any democracy. It Did not help the Italian Mafia the K.K.K. the Nazi’s the Mormons or the MAGA politicians and the insane Confederacy or the Bishops and priests molesting children or any of the billionaire TV evangelists.”
To whom I replied. “Dig Deeper. It’s what I do. You have chosen to take “State Side” in this; which is what MAN… (let me remind you that MAN determined that “WOMEN must and have been SILENT in the CHURCH”). I have Taught Bible on not just Church, but College level. I am now at the age of Wisdom and can definitively delineate GOD from MAN… in all Ancient Religious Texts; in Archys and ISM and any RULE by men; Societies, Cultures, et al. To say that now, I run the numbers in my lifetime study of Bible.
1) Justice (OLD TESTAMENT). When you really have time for Bible see how many times you find JUSTICE in the Texts. Man has so perverted JUSTICE… CHURCH & STATE. (Know that Justice & Righteousness is ONE AND THE SAME. Sooooooo lost in translation!)
2) Agape – God’s LOVE (NEW TESTAMENT). Not Philos nor Eros (Man’s LOVE). Talk about lost in translation! Real Talk!”
To which he responded: “How can you dig deep when you are not negating the prejudices and passages that produce hatred genocide and extremism? Discrimination of women and homophobia driven hatred of gays, and taking them out of all those not truthful mythical superstition riddled children’s books that form the very foundation of all the traditionally divisive false religions? Dig deeper dear.”
My response to this: “I was BORN THAT. I Have LIVED THAT. I have WORKED HARD my entire Life NOT TO BE… THAT! The “NEGATING OF ALL these things you speak of here” is WHO I AM. Very Real Talk!”
Another comment was: “U can read a Bible in school because one is in the library. It has not gotten on the banned book list yet. Other similar books with the same stories have.
I replied: “Did you read The Bible in school? I definitely DID NOT. And was never caught, alive or dead, picking a Bible off the Library Shelf of our Alma Mater. Did You?” Real Talk.
He replied: “When I started school we had devotion every morning. Song, Scripture, Prayer, and the Pledge of Allegiance. This lasted up until about 1965. We didn’t have a library at the grade school I attended due to segregation and other issues. If you check, there should be a Bible in every school library. Also what is concerning to me is that we must not ever let our public schools become responsible for letting one type of religion become president in our schools. If you’re a Christian one’s home and church should be Paramount in a child’s religious training and upbringing not public schools. Believe me it may not be in the open but Bible reading and praying are very much a part of the school day.”
My response: “Me, I’m from the streets of Cleveland. We Pledged Allegiance to THE FLAG as our morning routine. The VERY FIRST Bible I picked up in a classroom was my Seminary Master of Divinity study. FRFR. When we talk Prisons, black folk choose to forget the millions of Black MEN and WOMEN who have come from the streets of Cleveland and Chicago, and Memphis, and New York, and Philadelphia… who sit in box cells with little to no working knowledge of salvation.”
Another comment: “How has reading the Bible in Churches and Catholic schools…been working out?”
My response to this came forth as new thought: “We allow the MEN of the Church to READ, PICK, CHOOSE, TRANSLATE, TRANSMIT the Bible TO US and FOR US! For me, (and my Dissertation, is “The Parables of Private Interpretation in Mark.”), for me, one of the MOST IMPORTANT scripture is from ‘The Sermon On The Mount’: “You can’t serve God AND Mammon. You will either Love One and Hate the other”. We have allowed MAN to bring us to the place in time where HE Loves MAMMON… as his ways and means, no longer for the State, but ALSO for the Church. Does this mean he hates God? Is that what we are really seeing in 2025 America?”
Real Talk Only!
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