Monday, October 19, 2015

Faith works miracles: Time travel edition

Or is he just another secret Muslim? (Via)
I was startled to hear on the radio this morning the story, from the Republican candidates' forum at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas this weekend, of how JEB! found the Lord, which was new to me, and somewhat surprising, given the well-known history of how he got married to a Catholic woman in 1974 and went to Mass with her for the next 21 years before finally being received into the Roman communion in 1995 (as he wrote in a piece for CNN on the eve of the Pope's visit to the US in September), because it sounds as if he was having a secret and, um, rather Baptist life the whole time:
Like the other candidates, Bush focused on his anti-abortion rights record and painted himself as a defender of religious liberty. He opened up about a born-again moment he experienced in the '80s, when he decided to read the Bible from end to end.
I got about halfway through Romans when I realized that Jesus was my savior," he said. (CNN via)
(love how the defense of religious liberty is directly associated with the liberty to interfere with other people's possibly irreligious liberty), or,
Former Governor Jeb Bush give a personal account of how reading the bible from cover to cover as an adult, changed his life. “I realized that Jesus Christ is my savior,” said Bush. “I can’t wait to get home for Sunday Funday and to pray with my wife.” (Leslie Chapman, Pop Goes the City)
Halfway through Romans is around page 2127 of 2355 in my cover-to-cover Harper Collins Study Bible edition—
For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit.
For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.
Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.
So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.
But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. (KJV)
So it wasn't a casual project. Nevertheless, even though he was nine tenths of the way through, he doesn't seem to have finished reading it, because last spring he was trying again:
Looking for a good summer read? Jeb Bush has some suggestions.

Visiting a bioscience company here  Thursday, the presumed presidential candidate was asked if he could recommend any good books. He named a few.
"I’m actually reading Paul’s letters right now, which I haven’t read in awhile," he said, referencing biblical passages.
"I’m not sure that fits your spiritual views, but it’s pretty good reading," he added. "The Bible, I read it when I go to church but I haven’t read it from cover to cover and I’m starting to do that. I recommend it. Particularly if you want to get your architecture straight, your life kind of centered, that would probably be the best book ever written." (WAPO, May 28)
He was reading the Good Book cover to cover as he had not done before and had arrived at the Epistles, but still felt he was starting.

Unless perhaps he was reading it backwards, back cover to front cover?

And the other question is, is it possible that, in some bizarre retroactionary phenomenon, even as Governor Bush has moved forward through the summer, his Bible experience has somehow migrated backwards in time, 30 years, and settled into an entirely different phase of his life?

Cross-posted at The Rectification of Names.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow. So if you believe that he read the Bible starting from the start and didn't realize Jesus was his savior until halfway through Romans, then that means he was able to read THE ENTIRETY OF JESUS' LIFE STORY -- birth to death -- and didn't connect to it.

It wasn't until he read somebody say that gays deserve to die (something Jesus never talked about) that he said "Now this speaks to me!"

Glennis said...

Um, really? I was raised a lukewarm Methodist, and even I understood at the age of eleven or so that Jesus was supposedly my savior. It took him until the '80s? when he was in his '30s? What did he think Jesus was, the Easter Bunny?

Yastreblyansky said...

Snow, I think he's suggesting he had the whole saved-a-wretch-like-me enchilada of the personal relationship with Jesus and permanent transformation like the other guys at the church, even though he's Catholic and Catholics don't do that shit. The true Evangelical fanatic doesn't call you a bona fide Christian until you've been through this experience and let Jesus right into your heart, with a lot of tears and yelling. (A friend of mine raised Dutch Reform was actually saved three times as a teenager, at summer camp.)

Also, not to be too obvious, I think he's making it up. Which is why he recycles the story he was testing out last spring, only pushed back three decades.

Feud Turgidson said...

Lying fatuous god-bothering piece of crap war mafiosi. Now I have another reason to hope he doesn't game the RNC nod: if he did, i'd spend more money and time than I actually have to take this horrible hellspawn down & send the very ground of his demise into a one-way trip to Pluto.

And of course, Yas is right: Jeb!'s one of those can[didate] doll lying liars that the yappy mouth whiny doll lying liars in the MSM and RW-owned-&-operated media spew lies for.

Poppy was spared this bullshit because of his record in WWII & doing such wonderful humanitarian work in ex officio direction of the CIA Team B secret deals with Iran on behalf of the RNC, and his boldly toxic testicle juice. The progeny felt compelled into telling these tall tales because they're all cowardly & feral monsters who've dined off gold plate with solid silverware on the bodies of yer brown types, children and women.

Dear Benarlidon Trumporellason: won't you please save my retirement? Any of one or combo of you sickos wouldn't cost much at all in my time and treasure to help the Dem nominee salt the Earth with your bleached bones - purely in political metaphorical sense, of course.

Never Ben Better said...

Facts don't matter. Truth most assuredly doesn't matter. All that matters is pushing the right buttons to get the right conditioned response.