(no subject)
"When I was small I would leaf through the Old Testament retold for children...and I saw the Lord God standing on a cloud. He was an old man with eyes, nose, and a long beard, and I would say to myself that if He had a mouth, He had to eat. And if He ate, He had intestines. But that thought always gave me a fright, because...I felt the idea of a divine intestine to be sacrilegious.
Spontaneously, without any theological training, I, a child, grasped the incompatibility of God and shit and thus came to question the basic thesis of Christian anthropology, namely, that man was created in God's image. Either/or: either man was created in God's image - and God has intestines! - or God lacks intestines and man is not like Him.
The ancient Gnostics felt as I did at the age of five. In the second century, the Great master Valentinus resolved the damnable dilemma by claiming that Jesus 'ate and drank, but did not defecate.'
Shit is a more onerous theological problem than is evil. Since God gave man freedom, we can, if need be, accept the idea that He is not responsible for man's crimes. The responsibility for shit, however, rests entirely with Him, the Creator of man."
-- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Spontaneously, without any theological training, I, a child, grasped the incompatibility of God and shit and thus came to question the basic thesis of Christian anthropology, namely, that man was created in God's image. Either/or: either man was created in God's image - and God has intestines! - or God lacks intestines and man is not like Him.
The ancient Gnostics felt as I did at the age of five. In the second century, the Great master Valentinus resolved the damnable dilemma by claiming that Jesus 'ate and drank, but did not defecate.'
Shit is a more onerous theological problem than is evil. Since God gave man freedom, we can, if need be, accept the idea that He is not responsible for man's crimes. The responsibility for shit, however, rests entirely with Him, the Creator of man."
-- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being