{"id":4857,"date":"2022-07-22T02:52:00","date_gmt":"2022-07-22T02:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=4857"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:33:49","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:33:49","slug":"literally","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=4857","title":{"rendered":"LITERALLY"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Jesus: <i>&#8220;Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.&#8221;<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Disciples: <i>&#8220;Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.&#8221;<\/i> (John 11:11-12)<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">******<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The more I think about it, the funnier this exchange gets.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Is this the first recorded incident of believers assuming every word spoken by God must be taken absolutely literally &#8211; and thus completely misunderstanding the message?<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This reminds me of a friend I had in seminary who had a simple litmus test for who among us were &#8220;true believers&#8221;:\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\n<li>If you believed the earth was created in a <b>literal<\/b> six day period &#8211; as Genesis <i><b>clearly <\/b><\/i>teaches &#8211; you were a Christian.<\/li>\n\n\n<li>If you did not, you were obviously not a true believer.\u00a0<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And that&#8217;s all there was to it.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">(I said it was a <i><b>simple <\/b><\/i>litmus test &#8230; I didn&#8217;t say it was a <i><b>good <\/b><\/i>one.)\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/literally-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"494\"\/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jesus: &#8220;Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.&#8221; Disciples: &#8220;Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.&#8221; (John 11:11-12) ****** The more I think about it, the funnier this exchange gets. Is this the first recorded incident of believers assuming every word spoken by God must be [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4858,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4857"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4859,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4857\/revisions\/4859"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}