Today on Out of Context Theatre

[Jon.]

Yesterday, I got a birthday card from my fundie sister-in-law. It made reference to thanking God for me and praying that I will be blessed. Whatever. What's important for this thread is that on the pre-printed card there was an excerpt from the Wholly Babble (Genesis 12:3 to be exact). What it said was this:

I will bless you ... and you will be a blessing
GENESIS 12:3 (NIV)

I looked that up. It's about Abraham, and the text which precedes it is "I will make you into a great nation"; the missing text where the ellipses are is "I will make your name great"; and the text which follows is "I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."

Now, I'm polite to my SiL, so I'm not going to do this, but I thought of sending her a little note saying "Thanks for the lovely birthday card. The Bible verse was particularly appropriate, as I was considering taking Isaac* up a big hill and asking God whether or not I should kill him. Then I'm going to tell Paul Martin that I'm chosen by God to lead Canada, and he'd better step aside or the big fella will be mighty angry."

Don't you love quote-mining?

*actually my son's name!

[c4ts]

Abraham and Isaac raises more questions than any other bible story I can think of. It's one of the most interesting dilemmas in that book, but I'm not sure what it has to do with birthdays. Maybe drunken Noah would have been more appropriate. After all, he's in his birthday suit.