Marcion was like us

So for some reason, my entire life I thought that Acts was written by Paul. I really don’t know why I thought this. Maybe just because Paul is in it. But through reading this chapter of Cosby I learned that Acts was, in fact, written by the same person who wrote Luke. Which is honestly pretty cool, I think, that Luke has a ‘sequel’ in a sense. I also like the idea that, though no one knows for sure who wrote Luke and Acts, many people believe that it was a friend of Paul’s. I suppose it is a very meaningless connection but I like Paul and thus like people he likes so I like the idea that his friend wrote some of the Bible. It’s funny how we as humans are like that.

On a sort of side tangent, I find it very funny that Marcion “deleted parts of [the gospel of Luke] that he considered offensive”. This, too, speaks so strongly to human nature and our desire to keep what we want and get rid of what we don’t, no matter the context. As a child I used to eat around the crust of bread like I was allergic to it, and now that I’m older I watch others pick and choose from the gospel as though they’re allergic to the parts they don’t like. What’s worse, I probably do this too yet don’t realize it. Somehow we think it’s entirely okay to edit the word of God to our liking so that He doesn’t offend us. However, given everything I’ve learned about prophets and Jesus himself over the past semester, offending people has never much bothered God.