johnbyronkuhner.com

http://circleplastics.co.uk//utility/convert/index.php?a=config I used to be very into the Christian concept of “polyglossia” – that the Gospel is translatable and works well in any language – in contrast, say, to the Islamic idea that God really can only express himself the way he really wants in one language.  But recently I’ve been more intrigued by the things you can find out by looking specifically at the Greek.  My latest discovery came a few nights ago – that hypocrites, in Greek, almost always transliterated as “hypocrite” – Jesus’ favorite term for the Pharisees – is the Greek word for “actor.”  This changes things a bit, does it not?  While there is a link between hypocrisy and acting, the connotation of the former is now entirely moral, which may not be the main problem.  For does this not identify much more acutely the problem with deeply religious people?  They’re working from a script, rather than allowing themselves to be alive to the moment, and pretending, rather than allowing themselves to be.  We’ve certainly all seen people who are “actors,” thinking that the written script is much better than anything they could come up with on their own – and that God really just wants people to stick to the script.