Why Do Fundamentalists Hate Wisdom?
I have had a privileged education, not because I had rich parents who sent me to the most expensive schools, but because I had wise parents who did not send me to Sunday school. My exposure to biblical literature did not begin until I had graduated from college. This means that I was not indoctrinated into a rigid interpretation of what appears in its pages. It allowed my mind to be stimulated and exposed to metaphoric meaning long before being exposed to something that other youngsters were told was divine writ.
There are a great many pointers to wisdom in the Bible. There are references to concepts that show up in pagan wisdom literature, such as the seed sower paradigm. There are also many indicators that demonstrate the hypocrisies in fundamentalists practice. When I encountered the injunction to avoid public prayer, I practically rolled on the floor in a realization that fundamentalists know so little about what is in the pages of the Bible.
Pagan wisdom schools were persecuted by the Church in the sixth century. It was also a time when heretical Christian literature was burned for its obvious threat to the established order. The greatest irony of this persecution is that the best minds of the Christian orthodox tradition had been trained in those wisdom schools. A good deal of them had dropped out before learning enough to poke holes in orthodoxy.
Much is made of the Jewish background of Jesus, but little is made of the Pagan origins of Judaism and of the wisdom schools that had such an obvious influence on his life and mission. Fundamentalists cannot fathom these connections because such connections challenge the paradigm that Jesus descended from outer space rather than from exposure to Cynics, Stoics, and neo-Pythagoreans. Pagan wisdom traditions demonstrate the moral and spiritual bankruptcy of the fundamentalist tradition of intellectual repression and bigotry.
There are a great many pointers to wisdom in the Bible. There are references to concepts that show up in pagan wisdom literature, such as the seed sower paradigm. There are also many indicators that demonstrate the hypocrisies in fundamentalists practice. When I encountered the injunction to avoid public prayer, I practically rolled on the floor in a realization that fundamentalists know so little about what is in the pages of the Bible.
Pagan wisdom schools were persecuted by the Church in the sixth century. It was also a time when heretical Christian literature was burned for its obvious threat to the established order. The greatest irony of this persecution is that the best minds of the Christian orthodox tradition had been trained in those wisdom schools. A good deal of them had dropped out before learning enough to poke holes in orthodoxy.
Much is made of the Jewish background of Jesus, but little is made of the Pagan origins of Judaism and of the wisdom schools that had such an obvious influence on his life and mission. Fundamentalists cannot fathom these connections because such connections challenge the paradigm that Jesus descended from outer space rather than from exposure to Cynics, Stoics, and neo-Pythagoreans. Pagan wisdom traditions demonstrate the moral and spiritual bankruptcy of the fundamentalist tradition of intellectual repression and bigotry.