Summary: <p>Human communities fixate on self-preservation, naturally forming traditions and customs that protect them from outside threats. The problem of protectionism is amplified when a group's leaders benefit from it, turning the community against itself—even alienating children from parents—for self-gain. With this in mind, it's easy to see why religious rules often devolve into an “us against them” paradigm. In human communities, self-preservation is wrongly elevated as virtue, enabling the very behaviors the Bible warns will lead to our destruction. It's counterintuitive, but in the Torah, self-preservation works against the survival of the community. In seeking to keep the evil out, we neglect the evil within. Unfortunately, by turning away “the unclean” outsider, we cut ourselves off from the life revealed in Mark's gospel, extended to us from the wilderness, by way of the very outsiders we fear. Richard and Fr. Marc discuss Mark 6:53-7:13. </p> <p>Episode 165 Mark 6:53-7:13; Subscribe: http: // feedpress.me/the-bible-as-literature (http://feedpress.me/the-bible-as-literature); “Sunday Dub” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com (http://incompetech.com/)) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http:// creativecommons .org/ licenses /by/3.0/</p>
