{"id":9961,"date":"2024-09-05T03:19:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-05T03:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=9961"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:31:58","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:31:58","slug":"literally-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=9961","title":{"rendered":"LITERALLY"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I listened to a podcast today about how useless the word &#8220;literal&#8221; is when it comes to discussions about how to read the Bible. Although I largely agreed with his stance, his explanation ended up being unnecessarily confusing.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I guess I would explain it this way: People don&#8217;t generally speak or write in a strictly literal way, so we should beware of hyper-literal readings of any text &#8211; especially something written thousands of years ago in a distant land.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here&#8217;s an illustration any parent or teacher will immediately recognize:<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Your kid comes home from school and tells you, &#8220;My math teacher yelled at me today for not having my homework done.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Do you A) ask your kid why he didn&#8217;t have his homework ready to turn in or B) make an angry phone call to the principal demanding the math teacher be fired for verbally abusing your kid?<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Because you&#8217;re not an idiot, it doesn&#8217;t even cross your mind to make that phone call.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You know your child was simply communicating the teacher was irritated over the missing homework.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Fortunately, nobody will berate you as a bad parent for not taking your kid&#8217;s words literally.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I listened to a podcast today about how useless the word &#8220;literal&#8221; is when it comes to discussions about how to read the Bible. Although I largely agreed with his stance, his explanation ended up being unnecessarily confusing. I guess I would explain it this way: People don&#8217;t generally speak or write in a strictly [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9961","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=9961"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9962,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9961\/revisions\/9962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}