steve howard's update of the new testament
BARBARALBA BIBLE

THE NEW NEW TESTAMENT

Paul's letter to the ROMANS

 

chapter 07

vs. 1: Certainly you will understand what I am about to say, my brothers, because all of you know about law. EQ.

“Of course, that is all the rules made by priests and lawyers, the whores of the warlords. The laws are made to make us all criminals so that prisons can be kept full for cheep labour and constant paranoia.”

“I don’t think that’s what Paul was on about.”

“Well, Paul, in this chapter is on about our nature being bad. And if we are made in God’s image, ultimately, even if God is only a story, we are made from life. And that’s the same as God without any laws outside of physics. So what Paul wants to say here is blasphemy against God. Or as the heretics like to say. Life.”

“So you going back to not liking Paul.”

“I am going back to being pissed off with the whole lot of pricks that have damned the body.”

vs. 6: Now, however, we are free from the Law, because we died to that which once held us prisoners. No longer do we serve in the old way of a written law, but in the new way of the spirit. EQ.

Paul is pushing through some clever concepts. The law. A scary thing. Making everyone into criminals. Making lawmen rich. Before law there were very few criminals. Now there is law over all, a little different in every land. And still very much to protect the rich and hold down the poor. The future, very near future, as in the day before tomorrow, needs to have fewer laws.

vs. 7: If the Law had not said, “Do not desire what belongs to someone else,” I would not have known such a desire. EQ.

This is a pretty serious statement. It demands, however, a creature that can find peace with him or her self. And it also demands that there is enough for all. For a man with an empty stomach will desire to eat. And if another creature has made this not possible. There is gonna be trouble.

And the law won’t matter. Which is one of those Catch 22 things. The law will simply be a military force protecting the rich under the authority of the rich.

“You mean like what we got.”

vs. 9: I myself was once alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life, 10. and I died. EQ.

“What’s he mean.”

“Maybe he means when he was a child. Maybe he means a million years ago when we were not so aware of our world. Though maybe we were more aware. Just less conscious of it.”

“So you don’t know.”

“Most everything I say in response to this fairy tale is speculation.”

vs. 15: I do not understand what I do; for I don’t do what I would like to do, but instead I do what I hate. EQ.

Ain’t that often the case. The tragic case of Gold worship. A tyrannical system that makes slaves of us all. Including those holding the gold. So let us awaken and spend at least most of our time doing what we want. It is okay to make less money in exchange for more time. Money is fake gold. It will vanish before the space age.

“You really think so.”

“Money is already on its way out. Soon as we decentralize and all become more self sufficient, money will be of little importance. Maybe it will be used for a trading convenience but the worship of it will fade. Only morons will exchange their lives for a small piece of the blood covered pile of gold.”

vs. 25: This, then, is my condition: on my own I can serve God’s law only with my mind, while my human nature serves the law of sin. EQ.

The condition is bullshit. Like we said, there is not a thing wrong with the nature of the human condition. True there is some garbage in our genes and we have some evolving to do before we are truly fit, but we have come a long way from the mud puddles we started out in. Or the lakes or oceans. The point is. Our condition is one of the most brilliant events in the universe and any fucker that thinks there is no call for celebrating such a wonder of evolution can go fuck off.

Now what the hell is wrong with Paul.

“He is impotent.”

“That is it. Again, we remind the reader that this is not said to be mean. It is said to make clear his bitterness at sexuality. And when Moses made all the laws against sexuality he was raping little girls and boys after murdering their parents.”

“So fuck Paul then.”

“No, Paul don’t like his body. But fuck someone else and enjoy it. And feel no shame. Self sex, same sex sex, hetero sex, group sex. Whatever whoever is into. It is simply sex so just do it and don’t worry about the rules of monotheistic dictatorship bullshit.”

“They should use condoms.”

“They should be informed. They should be learning the dangers of sex when they are young. Just like learning the dangers of driving a car. Or riding a bike.”

“Okay, we’ll get it implemented strait away. Fuck religion and know about sex.”


chapter 08

vs. 7: And so a person becomes an enemy of God when he is controlled by his human nature; for he does not obey God’s law, and in fact he cannot obey it. 8. Those who obey their human nature cannot please God. EQ.

“Then why the fuck did God give humans human nature. Where the fuck is the logic, Paul.”

It is an ever-occurring problem, this bloody God concept. Paul seldom lets up with it. The big bad dictator in the sky that makes us in his image and puts a curse on us because of it. It is simply madness.

The spirit is not a thing without Life. It’s a thing that is resulting from life. Like language. And it is taking us to another level of wakefulness and understanding. Spirit is not a given. It is evolving with the evolving of our instinct. It is an extension. It is a process.

vs. 18: I consider that what we suffer at this present time cannot be compared at all with the glory that is going to be revealed to us. EQ.

And Paul is right on here. Not because we are going to some place better when we die but because, unless we get bogged down with pulp entertainment, this place we have keeps getting better. There has been a bit of a setback because of our reckless industrial world pollution prostitution and myopic hacking down of the jungles and forests. But, if we smarten up just a little, we will very soon be an amazing creature in and amazing universe.

“You can see the universe in a grain of sand.” and Jim’s favorite: “If the doors of perception were cleansed, man would see things as they truly are, infinite.” William Blake.

vs. 22: For we know that up to the present time all of creation groans with pain, like the pain of childbirth. EQ.

The same thing Jesus and Nietzsche said. Never mind creation. It is a concept from a time when the universe was still a mystery. We know now that it is there. We know that even though it has been this universe for 13.7 billion years, it is still young. We know that if we choose to, we can be and are the gods.

We are beasts becoming gods and it is no small event. It is a major evolutionary step. We have gone through, at least the elements that are us and our unaware ancestors, hell. To get to a small piece of paradise. And it is ours. Not to be owned, to live in.

The step we are taking is over a river of burning doubt. And it requires conscious attention.

And we need our beast bodies. So that we can be real. And commune. And play. Create.

vs. 31: In view of all this, what can we say? If God is for us, who can be against us? EQ.

Again, we need to drop the God concept and say: if we are of the universe and we are of the life in the universe, what do we have to bitch about. We need to pay better attention to Life, make it our conscious objective to be the gods. Learn to use our senses and expand our minds. We need to want much more. We need to tell the tyrannical ruling class to go fuck themselves with their perpetual bald face lies.

Life is in us. We are in life. We can fight it and go extinct. Or love it and be the gods.


chapter 09

vs. 1: I am speaking the truth; I belong to Christ and I do not lie. My conscience, ruled by the Holy Spirit, also assures me that I am not lying. EQ.

Now one must be careful with such statements. Mostly ‘cause many a liar says trust me before they tell you lies. And it is impossible to be completely objective. On account, no matter how much you know and however wise you are, you know very little.

Evolution thrives on mistakes. And we are not above evolution. And most importantly, when one starts with the premise that a personal one almighty God decides what games he is going to play with which bunch of ignorant apes, there is little truth to be found. For you cannot make a clay pot out of reeds.

Paul tells the Abram story and it is a lie, just like he said he wouldn’t do. But Paul often tells things backwards. When one understands that, it is much easier to see what the story is. For those not versed in the Torah, Abram whored Sarah out to an Egyptian king when Sarah was too young to bare children. Said she was his sister. Which was half true. They had the same father.

Vs. 7: Nor are all Abraham’s descendants the children of God. God said to Abraham. “It is through Isaac that you will have the descendants I promised you.” EQ.

Now there is the key. First, in the Torah it was clear that it was not God but a Lord. Or a king. When the Lord came to Abraham and Sarah to see if Sodom and Gomorrah needed ethnic cleansing he came with a few other Lords, riding camels. Had an evening meal. And the Lord told Sarah he would be back in a year to see the baby. And since Sarah though she couldn’t have babies, she found this funny. And laughed. Isaac means laugh.

Isaac was biologically the son of a Lord. Not God, maybe some lords liked to be called God. But Lord is what they were called. As in landlord, warlord, drug lord. Mighty owners.

vs. 13: As the scripture says, “I love Jacob, but I hated Esau.” EQ.

Again, this will tell us that Jacob was the son of a Lord. Paul tells us Rebecca had two sons from the same father. I, your narrator, ain’t certain ‘bout that. It was not the tradition. And my suspicion is that Essau was the son of Isaac and Jacob was not. Jacob was certainly not loved by Isaac. And the two sons neither looked similar nor were similar.

Now we must go on a tangent just for a moment to get away from details and understand what the story may have to offer.

Essau was loved by Isaac. Essau was a hairy wild looking man and a strong and great hunter. An honest hardworking man. Jacob was a whiny little bitch that went through life lying and conning to make his wealth. The two are our yin and yang framework for what has happened to us. There was a time when one worked and hunted to survive. Then there was the new way. The way of the established thief. And we are told that God loved the lying thieving prick Jacob. And this is the great tragedy of the bloody story of the Israelites. They have descended from a bastard prick. Their great story is a lie. Their one true God is a lie. All their references to Lords were landlords and warlords. Organized crime demanding reverence, security dues and a tax-free empire.

“Are you serious. That would mean the Jews are a joke.”

“Any race that believes they are chosen by the one true God is a very pathetic joke.”

“Why would Isaac whore Rebecca out to a king or lord.”

Isaac whored his wife out rather than, the story goes, be killed by the King. Same as Abram.

It was the way of Kings at the time of the Torah. Kings often raped little Hebrew girls and gave the brother or cousin husband a little herd of goats to keep them from poverty. It was the deal.

Anyhow, Esau was first born and Jacob took it all.

Isaac thought Jacob was a sissy and loved Esau. Jacob connived everything out of Esau. And it very likely had something to do with who was the real dad of whom.

And it don’t matter no more. Esau was the great hunter. Jacob cut down all the forests and built shopping malls and Hollywood.

We need some Esau back.

vs. 29: “If the Lord Almighty had not left us some descendants, we would have become like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah.” EQ.

If there were two city’s called Sodom and Gomorrah that were destroyed, they were destroyed by warlords. God did not do it. There is no God that chooses between one bunch of apes and another bunch of apes. Morons.

The story was so written to paint their history of the slaughtered black so that we can think they deserved it. Every history book ever written uses this same lie. They were deserving of genocide, and since they no longer needed their resources, we took them. Ask an Amerindian.

No one deserves genocide. Not Jews. Not Sodom. Not Gomorrah. Not Amerindians. And there is nothing sinful about sex with bum holes. Or any other holes. Sex is sex. There is no excused for genocide. Pricks.

Idiots. Murdering Morons. Let’s take a step toward wakefulness and away from random hate. It’s a tool of the greedy overlords of war and plunder.

Now is the time to learn to love life and all that’s in it. Do not judge what you do not understand.

The kingdom of heaven is here. Let it be.


romans chapters 10 - 12