Results tagged “war” from Kristin Swenson

Modern believers are frequently encouraged to treat their Bible's with a little less care. Use it! read it! don't worry about marking it up, dog-earing pages, or wearing it ragged, they're advised. A tired-looking Bible is a good sign. Its user is, well, using it. Sometimes, though, the thing itself, that particular copy, really matters. Some might protest that that's to make an idol of the object; but occasionally the object is greater than itself. Maybe it points to a history that musn't be forgotten, its survival is a triumph of right, or it simply reminds that sacredness demands honor and attention. I'm thinking here of the Hebrew Bible, looted by Nazi soldiers in 1938 and finally returned on Monday to the Austrian Jewish community in Vienna. When and how should a Bible be so honored in itself? 

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then what's a picture with words

worth? GQ recently published eleven cover pages from ealier Pentagon

intelligence briefings. That they juxtapose biblical quotations with Iraq

war photos has elicited all sorts of righteous indignation.  Predictably,

many people are outraged that Rumsfeld and Bush would blithely endorse

equating Christian mission with a Mid-East military invasion. Others say,

not so fast. Context, as always, is everything -- the context of the photos,

of America's military today, and of those biblical verses.