Holy Roller indeed

It is inevitable that someone as forum-active as myself encounters plenty of opinions – mostly negative in my circles – on religion, the Church, the Bible, and Jesus. Most of the opinion statements are not stupid or markedly ignorant. Even the LJer who said Jesus ate too much, flabbergasted tho I was at the time, wasn't mixing him up with Gautama Buddha: the Gospel says disbelievers called him a winebibber and a glutton.

But last night was the first time that I can remember a distressing contrary view in my dreams. The precise situation is very fuzzy to me now, but I know someone was contending that Jesus was popular with the poor because he gave them the fruits of his... gambling. The speaker recited what sounded like a passage out of the Gospel as evidence. In my dream-tripped state, I could think of no suitable refutation.

Maybe the dream indicates that I should resume serious investigations of claims. Not just religious ones, but anything that can't readily be verified or dismissed. I've sometimes been lazy even about the Google Bar, but if I don't want to fall into the category of gullible netizens – heck, gullible Americans, like the notorious 73% – I must get into a new positive habit.

HOWEVER, if anyone here offers halfway-compelling evidence that Jesus actually did gamble, I will need a vacation from the Net.