A simplified hermenutic

I would just like to thank the internet for at least giving me a percieved outlet to grind my axe. Now onto the axe grinding. One thing I am kind of sick of is the whole notion in modern Christianity is the idea that the average person can "read" the Bible. The more I sit in churches the more I see people being fed how to read the Bible and then doing as their told. As a student of the Bible I see an emense amount of cultural, social, and religious mileus, themes, (etc etc ad nauseum) in scripture and I am constantly coming into question about how people "read" the Bible. People want to go "back to the Bible," but in reality no one would have the faintest idea of what exactly the Bible is because if you remove your modern social and cultural notions that you bring to the text the reality is that the text is pretty well unreadable. Thats not to say the Bible is unreadable, but there is hermenutic where the author has primacy and the more I see the activity in the church and understand the scriptures complexity I see in church a eisogetical hermenutic, even (possibly most of all) among pastors). I sometimes wish the whole task of reading and communicating scripture was just entirely left up to the pastor. I mean the reality of it is that it mostly is at the moment, but I just wish people would put away this pretense that the way they understand the Bible in their own little private sphere is how it was "really supposed to be read." Back to the Bible hay, I say back to Catholicism. Simpler times man. The Pope said jump everyone said, "how high?" Of course I am being a little tounge and cheek here, but I think I am just a little sick of modern protestant cultures pretentious ego.....thats my axe and boy is it sharp......

A little diversion

So, I just have an axe to grind. I am a little tired of Christian wagging their fingers at me for downloading the occasional mp3 and trying to tell me its a sin. Since when does using intellectual property constitute a sin and on the flip side at what point does goverment laws/policy dictate Gods will. I am amazed at how often you find people violating copy rights with books, images and many other methods. The thing is, I firmly believe that you should support the system, I do buy cds, but at the same time I am not going to be dictated that I should be obliged to buy a cd with 10 songs I dont want to get the one I do. On the flip side on line mp3 systems are so stinking propriatary that i am just not interested in going through that hassle. So I will continue to download the occasional mp3,buying them when I can afford to, and assume that God is ok with me listening to "I've got a lovely bunc of coconuts" and if he thinks differently he'll let me know.