Thou Shalt Completely Misinterpret the Old Testament

NY Times article, "Thou Shalt Not Kill, Except in a Popular Video Game at Church ".

First off, when interpreting the thou shalt nots of the Ten Commandments, this always seems to be a popular one with certain folks who dislike certain Christian groups. Matt Richtel uses that line as a cute hook for his article, ignoring that this admonition applies to all the Abrahamic faiths as they all consider Moses a prophet.

That's never stopped Jews, Christians, or Muslims from "killing". Clearly the intent, and the more appropriate translation from the original Hebrew commandment into English should have been "thou shalt not murder with criminal intent". I don't ever recall a pacifist movement within the Jewish faith (before WWI), but I'm not a scholar in that area, so maybe there has been a movement sometimes in the past 3700+ years since the Ten Commandments have been followed that there have been Jews that extended the admonition against taking a life to not only include murder for personal reasons, or wrath, or jealousy, but even in self-defense, or to defend your faith and your country (and in the case of Halo 3, the very existence of the human race). Moses "kills" in the bible, yet God doesn't get down on him, cause clearly the commandment isn't an absolute ban on all taking of life, in all circumstances. When googling "Jewish pacifist" it seems pretty clear that this concept didn't exist until the 20th century.

It's a popular slam against Christians, to call them hypocrites for being pro-defense, but anti-abortion, or pro-death penalty (not to say Catholics are wrong to suggest scripture supports their anti-death penalty stance, but Christians who support the taking of non-innocent criminal life have plenty of scriptural support as well) and this NYT headline is yet another example of this anti-Christian prejudice. Seems if there was ever a "Just Cause" for war, and for killing, the preservation of the entire human race against a horde of space aliens (on a religious crusade of their own) ought to be a cause that God (as interpreted by just about any faith) would be on board with.

Matt Richtel, the San Francisco based tech issues reporter for the NYT, sounds clueless about Halo and Christianity in this article, but that's to be expected. This article is meant to be consumed by liberals so they can feel superior to those hypocritical pastors who push their faith by pimping violent video games. And the article is a broad side at teen boys, who will go any where, and listen to anything to play their violent video games.

(and did I include his homebase of operation as an insult or a statement of fact?)

I'm Once Again Ranting Unhingedly for All of BLOGTOBER

BLOGTOBER's first unhinged rant is up, go over and read it if you like. It's an examination of this rather strange piece by Verlyn Klinkenborg in today's NY Times.

LOL Schroeder?!?

Former Congressperson Pat Schroeder (D-Co) speaks ill of conservative readers. Not a big deal if she was just a bitter old ex-politician who sees her beloved ideology becoming less and less relevant. But she's also a bitter old ex-politician who happens to be the president of a trade group, as well.

Insulting a large chunk of your potential customers isn't a smart way to run a trade group. But smarts and liberalism don't always mix (though they will always claim that only the smartest, bestest, and most wonderfulest people get to be the chosen few, the liberal). Michelle Malkin does a great job attacking this statement, read what she has to say.

And just to up the irony quotient of this post just a little more, I'd like to thank Lindsay Beyerstein (aka Majikthise) for such a lovely photo of Rep. Schroeder which I could deface. It's nice to do this feature without any worries of copyright infringement for a change.

And I swear, I am teh smart, even though I am teh conservative, honest (and I've been known to read a book or two . . .)

UPDATE: Prof. Althouse also has some good things to say about this topic. Guess being so close to the media's epicenter hasn't changed her too much, yet.