{"id":79,"date":"2004-11-07T10:55:50","date_gmt":"2004-11-07T15:55:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/homecomers.org\/weblog\/index.php\/now-pretend-youre-a-heathen\/"},"modified":"2004-11-07T10:55:50","modified_gmt":"2004-11-07T15:55:50","slug":"now-pretend-youre-a-heathen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/homecomers.org\/weblog\/now-pretend-youre-a-heathen\/","title":{"rendered":"Now, pretend you&#8217;re a heathen."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Try this experiment: read the Bible as if you were an outsider. Pretend that these scriptures belong to a now-extinct sect that many admire but nobody follows. Imagine that someone loaned them to you and that you have no claim of understanding or even believing them. For once, don&#8217;t assume that you have the right to be encouraged by every encouraging word within their covers.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nThis experiment isn&#8217;t as difficult for those who don&#8217;t consider themselves Christians or Jews. They don&#8217;t have so much to prove. You don&#8217;t need to convince them that they may not be experiencing all the promises of the Bible. As a result, the Bible sometimes means more to a sincere outsider than a complacent believer. A complacent believer is vaccinated against the wonders of God.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Try this experiment: read the Bible as if you were an outsider. Pretend that these scriptures belong to a now-extinct sect that many admire but nobody follows. Imagine that someone loaned them to you and that you have no claim of understanding or even believing them. For once, don&#8217;t assume that you have the right [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-desperate-suggestions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/homecomers.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/homecomers.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/homecomers.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homecomers.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homecomers.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/homecomers.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/homecomers.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homecomers.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homecomers.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}