Yesterday marked 42 years since John Lennon was killed by a gun shot.
I was a kid but remember it really well which is really scary.
But what’s more scary is how gun violence continues to disrupt our lives and how much of it is derived from the cultural legacies we inherited - including rock and roll and including the Bible. Today in Below the Bible Belt - a weird link between the Beatles and the Bible, Gideon and John.
Recognize this line? “Rocky Raccoon checked into his room / only to find Gideon’s Bible.”
This is the Beatles singing in the White Album. When I was a kid I had no idea what this line in the Beatles’ White Album meant.
Paul McCartney sings about this guy in South Dakota inspired by the Bible to get a a gun and kill another guy over a girl.
The Gideons didn’t invent the Bible - just distributed over 2 billion free bibles all over the world. But this US based Evangelical Christian organization that’s been around for over a century keeps spreading the gospel without what we know must happen to prevent us from repeating patriarchy’s problematic power structures and violence as value.
The original Gideon is the biblical leader of Israel whose name means HACKER - as in the GUY WHO HACKS DOWN THE SACRED TREE OF THE GODDESS and then goes off to kill the natives and launch a holy war in the name of his God.
How many bibles and gun, holy wars and bloody conflicts have been read and waged since in the name of this sacred but misguided dogma? How many lives lost?
What will it take to better balance the good news and the virtuous values of love from this literary treasure that holds so much history and holiness - with the fanatical hate and violence that Gideon and so many others then and now spew in the so called name of the divine and this book edited by men who want power at the expense of love?
This week on Below the Bible Belt - we continue our journey with the book of Judges. what can we learn from these myths - coz it isn’t history - to imagine, as Lennon did, a better world for all?
Big questions to keep us thinking. Next week - Judges continues.
Shabbat Shalom
Check out today’s new vid.
Shabbat Shalom.
Join Rabbi Amichai on December 15th 1-2pm ET for a free and open zoom conversation about what the Book of Judges has to teach us today about leadership and loyalty, faith and fanatics, history and myth.
Link here:
https://labshul.org/event/929-below-the-bible-belt-monthly-wrap-up-with-rabbi-amichai-4/
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John Lennon, Gideon’s Bible - and Guns?