Sunday, April 27, 2008

Maybe it was a paraphrase of a paraphrase?

From Biblical Scholars Challenge Pelosi's 'Scripture' Quote:
In her April 22 Earth Day news release, Pelosi said, "The Bible tells us in the Old Testament, 'To minister to the needs of God's creation is an act of worship. To ignore those needs is to dishonor the God who made us.' On this Earth Day, and every day, let us pledge to our children, and our children's children, that they will have clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and the opportunity to experience the wonders of nature."
Apparently, the Bible doesn't actually tell us that (in the Old Testament or the New Testament). Speaker Pelosi's office didn't respond to Cybercast News Service's questions about the location of this supposed Bible verse. Various Bible scholars (such as Dr. Claude Mariottini) weren't familiar with the particular passage.

(By the way, House of Leoj also has an interesting blog post on this topic.)

So Pelosi's quote doesn't seem to be from the real Bible, but maybe it's from someone's fake Bible.

In any case, her Bible seems to teach worshiping the creation in lieu of worshiping the Creator. That doesn't seem like a Biblical principle to me, but I'm not a Bible scholar.

On the other hand, ministering to people (who are part of God's creation) is a Biblical concept. Matthew 25:34-40 includes: "And the King will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.'" But that passage doesn't teach worshiping people instead of God.

1 comment:

Mama Jessica said...

Good point babe. You are so very smart.