Some things are just too good to pass up.

[silveradept]

In that respect, you get a half-update because I'm thoroughly amused.

Today, the Gideons descended on my college town, passing out little green books with the New Testament, Psalms, and Proverbs. I remember those books well, since I picked one up three years ago that was just lying around. (I seem to have misplaced it, too. Oh, rats.) So after skillfully finding out who was doing this and politely listening to a gentleman try to convince me of Jesus's Godhood (not a bad job he did of it, either), and my early class, I asked him why the books they were distributing had Psalms and Proverbs in them. Apparently, it's because the song of Psalms is beautiful to behold and the wisdom of Proverbs is applicable to daily life. So all my esoteric theories were, naturally, blown out of the water by this humdrum response. This is amusing.

Even more so is that the explanation as to why they were passing out the New King James Version. Apparently, some of the churches and ministries they go to swear by that translation, and so they use it. (Smart people for getting the message out, but KJV has always had a dubious place in accuracy for me. Maybe NKJV is better. Maybe not.) This is amusing to my brain. Don't worry if it's not to yours.

Running the spectrum across to the other side, we have Unitarian Universalist Student Religious Liberals. In addition to being a mouthful, I can't help but smile at the slight redundancy in the title. I somehow doubt that UU's could be classified as "conservative" by many stretches of the imagination. Some days you can't help but laugh at the universe's in-jokes.

Comments

[trowizilla.livejournal.com]

But the KJV is so pretty! Speaking as a fan of the language, not particularly the religion.

As you're on his friends page, I'm assuming you know Jack (laundreu). Get him to tell you about the Mutants and Masterminds game and the pamphlet, if you want to hear about a similar experience. Also, it's a funny story, and I can't do it justice.

[silveradept]

Language, yes, pretty. Needs accuracy with prettiness. And I'll see if laundreu doesn't feel like telling me about it...

[pseudowolf.livejournal.com]

Actually, I've always found the Gideons to be one of the nicest Christian evangelist organizations I've met. They just offer Bibles and you take one if you want or not. They will gladly witness to you, but not if you're clearly not interested. Some other groups could learn a lot from them, I think. And I'm not just talking about other Christian groups, either.

[silveradept]

I can certainly agree with that. The gentleman I talked to was polite, friendly, answered my questions, and while he did witness to me, he did it in such a way that if I hadn't already known the content of the books fairly well, I probably would have been tempted to at least take one and read it.

A lot of groups could learn from them.