When talking about Scripture...

Two of my pet peeves on public discussion of Scripture: 1) "The Bible says..." Put your ear up to a Bible in a quiet room and listen. It doesn't speak. If you audibly hear something, see a psychological professional. Many different authors wrote down oral traditions or their own thoughts and did not expect their writings to be in a Big Book someday. And what we read now in many translations are not those people's exact words. 2) "The Bible." There is not just one Bible. Some insist that the King James Bible (aka The Authorized Version) is the only authentic Bible. I don't have the space here to give a history of Bible translation, but let's just say every translation is an interpretation. And the King James not only got a lot of stuff wrong; it's in a dialect of English that no one speaks anymore. Also, not every church has the same books included in their Bible. Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, and other churches include different books in their canons. There is no such thing as "The Bible."