![[0381] Larisa Will Burn In Hell](/comics/2012-05-31-0381-larisa-will-burn-in-hell.png "[0381] Larisa Will Burn In Hell")
Of course Larisa isn’t becoming all soft suddenly.
I had a dozen different ideas for Larisa’s dialog in the last panel, but this one was the best in my opinion.
- Priest: … since the Lord will forgive those who honestly repent their sins. Yes?
- Larisa: Is there some sort of guideline on which sins are exceptions to this rule?
- Priest: Huh? You mean, like murder?
- Larisa: No, no, the less obvious ones. Because I really don’t want to end up like the poor fellow in Numbers, chapter 15, who was stoned to death as commanded by the Lord for gathering firewood during Sabbath.
- Larisa: I also don’t want to be mauled to death by a bear just for mocking a prophet like the little children in Kings, chapter 2. In any case, there’s no evidence that the Lord gave them time to repent before punishing them this way.
- Larisa: I’m appalled that the church refuses to give me religious guidance on avoiding sins for which I’ll be mauled to death by bears.
|
C.W. Roden wrote:
And after first stone hit her he said “Mother please stay out of this, you are ruining it.”
I thought one of your rules was to avoid religion?
@ Slimecat the wasomesauce:
I Apologize, I have made a fool of myself. The Chuck Norris analogy was very poor, and I shouldn’t have started a comment with, “I’m pissed.” However, I would like to address you arguments as best I can. Job ‘got off the hook’ because it was a one time offense, the Children in 2Chronicles would have heard these insults from their parents, and had chances to not insult Elisha, I notice that you did not refute my point about the way the sin is committed, which is relevant here. I did not Assume to know any more of the will of God then anyone else can learn from the Bible. Of course, I could be misinterpreting what the Author means by this strip as, C. W. Roden, has said, Larisa may just be complaining about pastors and priests that don’t answer questions like these and offer guidance, In which case, I agree with what the Author could be saying.
@ Pillamelai:
No.
Ok, this is just stupid. The actual translation of the verse in question of kings chapter 2 isn’t “little children” it’s “youths” as in a gang of obnoxious teenagers, possibly armed. They were mauled by bears for attempting to mug a prophet. This is what happens when modern writers with a chip on their shoulder decide to pan religion. I have nothing against people with anti-christian views voicing their opinion, but at least do your research first.
The Bible, it has everything! Incest, Stoning, Samson killing Philistines with a jaw bone, and his bare hands. Your kids will fucking love it!
Landbark wrote:
Dude, she was doing it for the lulz. Either been dragged in there, or gone in for the purpose of waiting for the priest to say something like that so she can mess with him.
Also, testing his character and knowledge … any decent Christian minister should have countered with “ah, but this is why Christ died to forgive us all our sins… anywhere his teachings clash with those in the earlier books, Jesus’ word takes precedence… son of God vs mere prophets, several hundred years later on, etc. You would only catch those punishments under a fairly harsh reading of Orthodox Jewish law, not Christian. The books cannot be erased, but we do get the benefit of an errata slip, in the form of the New Testament, correcting the work of some very sloppy scribes.”
The problem is, there aren’t that many good ones about. I think I’ve known two in my life who might have been trusted to have that knowledge, thoughtfulness and patience… quite a lot of them would react like the one in the comic, I fear!
Also, she’s not exactly “evil”. Just very expressive, and has a love of fire. (And messing with people’s heads) … I think when challenged, Larisa would show a very moral side 🙂
First time commenter here. Took 2 days to read through the archives, and here I am. S&W has got to be the cutest comic (most of the time) that I’ve had the pleasure of reading lately.
Also, Larisa rocks. I love how she’s all outspoken and/or chaotic most of the time. XD
@ Alexander B:
Interestingly, the relevant passage states “You shall not lie with a man as you lie with a woman” – not just “you shall not lie with a man [full stop]”. Needless to say, the exact interpretation of that phrase is widely debated, with numerous interpretations ranging from the broad (all homosexual relationship – both M-M and F-F) to the exceedingly narrow (don’t do it on the marital bed / don’t do it in pagan temples).
Together with determining which bits of the OT laws still apply, I’d say it’s all a matter of personal interpretation (as Larissa’s demonstrating). For a start, how many can honestly say they’ve never been envious of someone else’s possessions (thou shalt not covet…)?
What I think is very funny is that a lot of people point out that “here it says that these rules don’t apply anymore, this has been nuanced and this is replaced by that and a council decided that this doesn’t apply.”
In short, in my view, people throughout history have been adding, removing and editing the holy scriptures, often more through social pressures and political motivation (yes the church was very active in politics) and still it is treated as being “the original source”
On average, the old testament is pretty horrible, with deaths, sacrifice, slaughter, genocide and destruction. Anything was allowed if you weren’t a jew (judaism is the older religion, christianity was a small break-off sect). For example, reading the old testament after the 10 commandments were recieved, you can definately see that they do not apply to non-believers.
The new testament is the one that promotes forgiveness, peace and friendship etc and is a rather big break with the old testament.
@ Buttmonkey:
Did you consider that it may have been purposely miswritten to show Larisa getting it wrong (inasmuch as you can get an inherently vague translation from an ancient, vowel-and-punctuation-free script that doesn’t offer a very good literal match-up with English/German “wrong”) even whilst trolling a minister who himself know any better, as an extra bonus for those who know their bible studies?
Same way as Sandra’s slip up with the process of stellar fusion was a sly bonus for the scientists amongst us?
Hmm…
Welcome to Acme™ brand Instant Argument™ Religious Edition XP. It’s so easy! Cut open the packaging at the top and insert one (1) standard sized joke into the mixture, then sprinkle liberally with religion, preferably Fundamentalist™-brand “Christian” or “Muslim” flavours. Light the blue touch paper and RUN LIKE HELL. Sorry, I mean, RUN LIKE HECK. Within the space of fifty comments or less, you, your friends and family can all be enjoying a spectacular, roaring flamewar. Acme™ Instant Argument™ provides a reliable, repeatable flamewar experience, yet leaves behind very little toxic waste – its main byproducts are nothing more than a lingering sense of butthurt, reinforced prejudices, neutralised surplus time and bandwidth, and a small amount of carbon ash.
Note that use of “Jewish”, “Buddhist” or “Hindu” flavour religion mixture, as well as non-Fundamentalist™ flavours, will have a much lower chance of success owing to these sects having a sense of humour about themselves, hence this ingredient will rarely provide the necessary set of reactions to cause the intended explosion.
If the recommended mixtures are not available, they may be replaced with Hardline™-brand “Joyless Atheist” deity-free religion substitute. Again, note that other varieties of “Atheist” substitute will cause a more muted reaction or a complete fizzle, as their manufacturers use a more “live and let live” style of recipe.
Acme™ Instant Argument™ Religious Edition XP is not compatible with science jokes when combined with the common agnostic geek flavour of commenter powder. Any attempt to ignite this mixture will lead to almost complete neutralisation. To create a flamewar using these ingredients, why not try Acme™ brand Instant Argument™ Apple VS Everyone Steppe Polecat edition? Our revised formula doesn’t even require a lame-joke catalyst any more; with a single teaspoon each of Apple Fanboy and of either Microsoft, Linux or Android Fanboy powders, you can have a beautiful, extra-long duration flamewar big enough to entertain a hundred-strong audience, seemingly out of nowhere, in mere seconds after setup.
mittfh wrote:
Maybe it’s not a prohibition… maybe it’s instructions for the terminally dense homosexual? (or to be more fair, an exceptionally ill-informed one, as may be expected in an era somewhere between the stone and bronze ages where such things were a bit taboo and no-one except scribes could read)
“Use the ‘other hole’, stupid. No matter how hard you poke the taint, it’s not gonna open up for you. Might wanna try approaching from the opposite direction too… and rub a bit of cooking fat into your ‘little guy’. Or just sixty-nine*, if you’re similar heights, as you’ll each get an equal experience which a man and wife would have trouble matching, and no need for a clean-up.
* NB this practice refers to the appearance of Arab-type numerals when written in left-to-right big-endian base-10. Consult with your local market traders for further details.”
These things are open to such diverse interpretation it’s a wonder that anyone can agree on ANY part of it…
@ Osk:
Well why would it? Judaism was just one religion amongst several in the region at the time, and so religious doctrine wasn’t always necessarily a part of official law.
It would often be taken as de facto law on a local level, however, if you were in a region whose population had a high or near-exclusive proportion of followers of a particular faith… (as was, ever shall be? This struggle for church/state separation continues to this day around the world, including the USA) … It probably wouldn’t be the smartest idea as an Egyptian, Samaritan, Roman, Greek etc to wander into a mainly Jewish village and start doing things that the OT prescribed a stoning for, as you’d walk out of there with a good number of grievous lumps and bruises, if you were still capable of walking (… standing … breathing) at all.
In a more mixed city you’d probably get away with it, but out in the sticks it’d be as foolish as mincing into a good ole boys’ bar in the deep south hand in hand with your boyfriend.
I think one of the main things Larisa may be driving at here is the odd “change of heart” the Lord seemed to have between the time of the OT prophets, and the coming of the Messiah? He seemed perfectly happy to have the scriptures written in that way (not checking or correcting what the prophets wrote, if it was mistranscribed), and for people to interpret and follow their doctrines in a manner that led to all kinds of maiming, blinding, death, rape, incest, disownment, blood money payments etc, for at least a couple hundred if not 1000+ years.
Then he gets bored of it and sends his son down with a free pardon for everybody and a relaxation of several of the more difficult and controvertial existing rules. But only if you convert, are baptised, and repent. Tough luck if you’re too crippled or demented to go through with that procedure, don’t get to hear of it, or die just before the JC (or JTB) baptise-o-matic tour bus comes to town… or even just before he was born. You’re still going to hell on the flying-rock express for daring to top up your heating fuel stocks on the saturday after an exceptionally cold, wet and windy friday that ruined most of your existing pile.
Kicking a person for asking too difficult questions… Not very exemplary action for a shepherd of a church. But all too common today.
Christians often have trouble finding how exactly the Old Testament and the New Testament fit together. Many are willing to eject and abandon the Old Testament alltogether, in order to stay happy in their zone of comfort: the traditional christian religion, which teaches that Jesus died to do away with the law of Moses, so we don’t need to do anything but wait for rapture.
In doing so, they forget entirely that whenever the New Testament says that the apostles were studying the scriptures, the scriptures that they read were the Hebrew writings: The Old Testament. Whenever Paul taught anything, they verified the Scriptures to see if it is really so. The Scriptures — the Old Testament — was the basis for each and every teaching. Jesus said: It is written. Where? Not in Paul’s letters, because Paul had not written them yet.
On the road to Emmaus, Jesus explained a lot of things, beginning from the Torah and the Prophets (the old testament), explaining all of what he did and why he did. And it was all in concordance. In Matt. 5:17-19, Jesus said, he did not come to do away with the law: He came to fulfill it. Heaven and earth will vanish before a “jot or tittle” is undone. Whoever teaches otherwise shall be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven. In John 14:15, he said, if you love me, you keep my commandments. Which mirrors Exodus 20:6, where the law giver (James 4:12) previously said, love me and keep my commandments. Which commandments? Are those the the ten ones, which the Hebrew scriptures just calls “ten words” of covenant (Ex. 20:1-17)? How about the two in Luke 12:29-31? Those were supposedly the two greatest commandments, and they were not even within the ten! Then how about the four in Acts 15:29? Those are not from the ten commandments, either. He meant every single one of them! Which includes keeping the Sabbath (Ex. 20:8-11, 31:13-14) and the Feast of Tabernacles (Lev. 23:34-37), and not eating pig or cats (Lev. 11:1-3). Why? Because we ought to obey the law, if we love Him. Obey his Word. Why should we love Him? Because He saves us. Doing the law does not save us. The law allows us prosper if we obey it (Deut. 6:1-2), or it can be a curse if we break it (Deut. 11:26-28). But we should do the law, because He saves us (Psalms 7:11, 118:14). We should do the law, because Jesus did so, and He told us to follow him. An apostle is one that follows their teacher and does what their teacher does. Israel was saved first, and then the law was given. And when we falter, he will forgive us (Psalms 32, Isaiah 55:7).
So how about Numeri 15? Verse 30: Whosoever _purposefully_, willingly, does sin (transgression against the Torah, 1. John 3:4), mocks the Lord and shall be cut off from their people. Contrary to Larisa’s words here, it seems like there was plenty of time to repent there, but the perpetrator was bent on their way. The immediately preceding verses (22-29) talk about transgression by accident, and what to do in those cases. The contrasting juxtaposition makes it rather clear, that the person was not stoned on the basis of an accidental lapse of judgement. He was brought in front of the court, and he was questioned. Apparently, after the questioning it was still clear that he was guilty of willingly transgressing the law.
For anyone wondering, enacting such a capital punishment requires that the matter is judged in a court where all the members know the Torah completely throughout and obey it. There’s no such court today in the world.
How about Kings, Chapter 2? Verse 23 indicates that the culprits were little boys mocking Lord’s prophet. Even today, behavior of children is associated with their parents. These boys were raised by their parents in disrespect of God’s law, and of God’s prophets (Lev. 19:32.) This implies a much longer period of willing transgression. And for anyone who has dealt with seriously misbehaving children, such a problem usually does not go away before things are seriously put in order at their home. In other ways, the seed produces after its kind (Gen. 1:12). The children are too young to understand or to change their ways or to understand what they’re really doing. Here, God addressed a punishment towards the parents. The parents still had time to turn.
I’m just surprised that:
a) Larisa didn’t burst into flames as she went into church.
and
b) The church didn’t burst into flames as Larisa went in.
That title is a complete falsetto, my good sir, for you see:
It’s not “Larisa will burn in hell,” but “Everything around Larisa, including Hell, will burn.”
Really impressive work, you guys. Spent all day reading the archives, did a great job of cheering me up. And hey, if Laris was burning in hell, chances are she’d be telling the Devil how to do business. xD
Keep up the great work, I’m loving this comic.
This strip underscores a huge weakness in modern Christians. Sometimes we just don’t know or understand our own faith, and an honest question sends us off the deep end and puts the questioner out. In Acts Chapter 17 the Apostle Paul deals with people questioning his message with answers, not derision.
The entire book of Proverbs celebrates the seeking on knowledge, an places a high value on an individual’s quest.
Sadly, much “debate” today has been replaced with rudeness and mockery. People don’t wish to watch an honest discourse between two calm individuals. It seems we prefer to see the human wreckage on the Howard Stern show.
what dyou expect, she is russian if i;m not mistaken.
And that’s why I don’t go to church. The whole basic premise starts to fall apart after a few simple childish questions. Of course, that still doesn’t change the minds of the “faithful,” the human mind can cling to an idea tenaciously no matter how much evidence to the contrary exists.
@ TheInvisibleMime:
Well, your comment dropped below the ‘approval’ rating, but I have a thought for you. The man who was gathering firewood to heat his home on the Sabbath, he was supposed to just freeze to death? You don’t make a very compelling case when you present no evidence as to why he could’ve gathered said firewood the day before. For all we know he had some tremendously important job to do that prevented him from being able to gather the firewood before the Sabbath, thus requiring him to go and gather it then. Also, as another person has pointed out, the majority of the Old Testament (as Christians refer to it) is written in Hebrew, which doesn’t translate well into Latin, and then been translated from Latin into other languages (particularly English) so many times that it has almost become a joke, especially when the different translations don’t agree (which is a side effect of Latin having some difficulties translating into a hodgepodge language like English, and most other modern languages for that matter). Oh, and don’t forget that it is the imperfect and eminently fallible humans that have done all of the translations, not an Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Perfect God, so who’s to say that it’s all that ‘correct’ in the first place?
Now, for a comment regarding the strip itself: That is the major flaw with organized religion Larisa, they don’t mind questions, they detest free thinkers asking questions.
Absolutely love it this is why the crazy makes her and 11 and not a 9.
Wasn’t there some king who was eaten by worms from the inside out because another person said the king was a god? So unfair, dead for a sin done by another . . . then there’s Noah’s daughters, getting him drunk to etc etc . . . which is all why I personally would rather worship the Great Pumpkin and his prophet, Linus Van Pelt!
DragoFlare101 wrote:
I did not know there was already a website for pyros.
@ Soyeong:
Oh, are you kidding me? The Five Ways have each been refuted so many times it’s not even funny. There’s NO evidence for the resurrection of Jesus other than the testimony in the Gospels and esoterica, and even one of the esoteric Gospels claims it was a hoax. There’s very little evidence even for the existence of Jesus, little enough to show that he at least certainly did not have thousands of followers in his lifetime, as the Gospels claim. There’s not a single prophecy in the Bible that’s come true that isn’t either too vague to take seriously or sourced to after the fact.
You people do realize that sending someone to hell for not believing in God is pretty horrible, right?
Larisa will not burn IN Hell. Larisa would rather burn THE Hell.
Might I say, I’ve never seen a pastor in any denomination break from the homily in order to answer a raised hand.
Careful! Don’t mock the the christian version of the abrahamic god, or some of its followers will stop reading your comic. Unless of course you don’t give a damn about about ’em and you want readers that can take a bit of criticism :Þ
Okay kids, Bible lesson time.
Numbers 15
So we see a man get stoned just for bringing in some firewood. Poor guy, right? Well, don’t take things at face value. You see, back then and even now, there really is only one rule that God wants people to truly follow: believe and love him. It makes sense because God was the only reason Moses and his Jews actually survived the desert. In fact, all motivations for sins are fueled not wanting to acknowledge God. What this guy did may have seemed innocent as simply wanted to stoke the fires, but in reality, this action was a boldfaced breaking of God’s law and stating that he did not believe in God. So, he got his just due in according to breaking God’s law by facing capital punishment.
Now let’s compare this to a more familiar, Christian situation. Remember that hooker that everyone wanted to stone, and Jesus went and said “let whoever throws the first stone be innocent of sin”, no one threw the stone. This is because everyone is just as guilty as the hooker was.
You see, for capital punishment to actually work, it needs to be administered by someone with a higher authority and supreme morals to make people say “Hm, so in the eyes of the supremely good being, breaking this law is bad.” Having the hanging of a thief done by a man who has slept with every woman in the village is extremely hypocritical in the eyes of justice.
So to answer Larisa’s concerns, while facing today’s pussy-footing system may not seem that bad, just remember that one day you will be judged by the supremely good being.
Kings 2
So here we have Elisha the prophet setting a hungry bear on a group of boys who only called him names. Again we need to examine this situation a bit more closely. The original Hebrew doesn’t actually describe these boys as cheeky-chips loveable 10 year old boys, but more like a hardened gang of age 16-32 young men. MEN. For comparison, it’s like Grandpa Joe being cornered by the Rough Riders gang in the dark alleyway at night, and the gang has smashed his cell phone to avoid alerting the cops.
Name calling back then was much more serious that today’s potty mouths. “Go up, you baldhead” may not seem like damning words in comparison to today’s colorful words, but this was a serious “F— you” in those days. What they were really doing was attacking God’s words and message. First they mocked Elijah’s miraculous ascension into heaven (” Go up”), which was a message of hope for the forlorn peoples. Then they attacked him by calling him a leprous man (“Baldhead”). This was serious stuff people. Now the Rough Riders have ripped Grandpa Joe’s cross from him necklace and are smashing it on the ground while they deride Joe’s senility.
How Elisha handled this was really important. Firstly, he did not fight back. Okay, there was that bear, but that wasn’t Elisha’s doing. What Elisha did was curse them in the name of the Lord. Okay, this is not as bad as it sounds. “Curse” in this context means “deal with lightly” in Hebrew. Elisha said, May God deal you as you deserve, not kill these people for me. So what simply happened was God removed the boys’ blessings. That was it. The bears (yes actually there were two bears) were simply there at the right time to demonstrate what happens to people that loses God’s basic protection. It’s simply a case of extremely bad luck without God’s blessings.
So in short, Larisa, don’t mock God or you’ll be visited by two hungry bears at the moment your flamethrower runs out of fuel.
If I were that priest, I would have at least gone and done the research.
@ tahrey:
There’s a lot of research into the meaning of Christ and implications for people that died beforehand, but I’ll make this quick.
Jesus’s coming was God’s way of saving his people. This was planned back when Adam and Eve ate that smart apple. God looked the snake down and said that from Eve’s seed would come someone that would destroy the snake and save his peoples.
Interesting thing is that all the good people who died before Jesus’s time didn’t go to Heaven. They went to the place called Paradise. It’s similar to the Greek’s idea about the underworld consisting of different levels. When Jesus made his appearance, however, he transferred everyone in Paradise into Heaven after he ascended, thus fully separating his people from hell.
Those who didn’t want to go with Jesus simply didn’t. Hell is really just separation from God. And if that’s what people want, then that’s what you get.
Chern wrote:
neither higher authority nor supreme morals. Simply superior executive power and different morals. There is no way how to compare what is considered “moral” even village by village.
And as for flametrower well one of the few good things from Mass Effect 3 the quote “I do not need luck, I have ammo.” rings a bell. just make sure you never run out of ammo and you do not need gods at all.
@ Pillamelai:
The Old Testament is still relevant for Christians. As Mathew quoted Jesus saying on the Sermon on the Mount (MT 5:17-):
17 “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them. 18 For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. 19 Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
Thus you can’t just dump the most embarrising parts of your religion, which would include the 10 commandments. To learn more read The Skeptic’s Annotated Bible
@ Sir Chaos:She would probably just run around screaming yay!!!!!!!
I lol although I am slightly appaled at what she did but of that happened in real life I would probobly lol too you know I think I lol to much like the fact that I talk to much witch is kinda funny because I type so slowly compared to how much I talk because I just jabber on about comics and physics and how much I talk and cute pictures and how I want to hug soft cute baby animals and that my brother knows how to code and bubbles and pancakes and how I can’t spel to save my life and fish and did i mention how much I talk I just jabber on and blah blah Blah blah and blah blah blah sandwich blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah moo blah lightning blah maniacal laughter blah blah blah blah blah
@ Brothernature0:blah
@ Raen:
In order to refute something, you need to first show that you understand it. Aquinas’ Five Ways are summary arguments, meaning that if attempts at refutations ignore the 100’s of pages of arguments that Aquinas wrote to support them and ignore that Aquinas had already anticipated and responded to the objections that they are bringing up, then the attempts have failed to refute anything. Dawkins’ last attempt was especially pitiful.
As I said earlier, you’re free to make arguments that the evidence is not strong enough to support my conclusions, but my point was that it can’t be said that there is no evidence to support my conclusions, thus it also can’t be said that religion is irrational.
As far as fulfilled prophecy goes, you need to look no farther than the restoration of Israel. No other nation has survived a dispersal like that did, let alone become a nation again. Good luck arguing that it is vague or after the date too. You’re welcome to come to http://www.theologyweb.com if you want to make your arguments in a more appropriate place.
@ NavnUkjent:
The fundies at The Skeptic’s Annotated Bible know practically nothing about good scholarship and textual criticism. They prefer the wooden literal translations are care nothing about doing research into the history and culture to find the author’s intent. If I wanted to laugh at people blundering around, that’s where I’d go – at least in this comic strip they have an excuse in their young age.
It is not that Christians should ignore the OT; it’s that they realize that they aren’t the audience to which it was written. On the other hand, God’s morality doesn’t change, so what was moral then is still moral today. Therefore we can safely choose to adopt OT laws that concern morality while safely choosing not to follow laws that don’t pertain to us.
Welcome to the club Larisa, though they fired me as an alter server before they threw me out! all over 1 question
Well it’s inevitable that Christians(read – supporters a baby-murdering petty omnicidal maniacal tyrant with somehow good publicity. alt – buddies of a complete monster) would start a holywar here. But hey, you gotta do what you gotta do. Humanity outgrew Santa Claus, the Boogeyman, and it finally needs to outgrow this.
@ Soyeong:
I am neither a telepath not I have ability to timetravel. (YET… perhaps genetic engeniering and physics will advance) so it is practicaly impossible to know what what author meant and not even milion theories on the original meaning will change that.
Therefore only thing that can actualy be judged and examined is precise text. (And well I do have one rule: Never believe anything that was not signed by hand of an author with his full name)
Not only does she make a good point, but THIS IS FUNNY! XD I also can’t remember the last time I saw so many reviews on this comic…
@ Paeris Kiran:
The question to ask does the text have meaning? Sure, we can interpret it however we want, but that does not make all interpretations equal. For example, we can look at how words were used in other texts within the same time frame and safely conclude that the author was using the same word in a similar manner. Research can also tell us that idioms were commonly used at the time and help us to spot when they are being used and what they meant. It can also tell us that hyperbole was commonly used and help us to identify when it used. This isn’t to say they can’t be wrong, but on the whole, they are going to be much closer to the author’s intent than someone who does a wooden literal reading without taking these things into account.
I respect and enjoy the often thought-provoking questions raised in this comic, but to me this strip unfortunately feels like a cheap joke made from a problem that would warrant more serious discussion. Yes, the relation of Old Testament law to the New Testament law (or even the question of HOW Old Testament law was meant to be interpreted) is not a self-explanatory issue, but neither is it an impossible contradiction, unlike how it seems to be portrayed here.
(And for the record, I believe our priest would be more than happy to discuss this with anyone interested, although preferably outside of a mass. That of course does not rule out that the above situation may nonetheless occur in some churches, which would be deeply regrettable.)
It’s Larissa we’re tlking about, drop thet ‘in’ in the title to get the truth. For equivalency watch the anime Bastard and how the main character deals with a fire elemental.
There’s so much comedy that can be based off ridiculous religious beliefs, but so much of it is offensive to serious fundamentalists.
Is it just me…or does Larisa suddenly look older/more mature?
I’ve got to say it. The people who were mauled by bears weren’t “little kids” like a lot of people believe. They were young men (the word refers to just that: young men) who weren’t just mocking Elisha, they were threatening him. It was pretty obvious that Elijah had just gone into the sky on the fiery chariot, and they were saying “Go on up, baldhead.” Essentially, they were telling him to drop dead, threatening his life.
Oh, and to anyone who says that Larisa’s in the forefront too much: Sandra’s great and all, but Larisa’s awesome.