(Huckabee) KNOW YOUR FUNDY BUZZWORDS: Vertical Vs Horizontal Thinking

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

Here Josh Marshall describes his bemusement over this quote on Huckabee's site:

"I think the country is looking for somebody who is vertical, who is thinking let's take the country up and not down." (screencap at link)

WTF, asks Marshall, does vertical mean? After a few readers chime in, it becomes increasingly clear. Horizontal thinking is employed by "freethinkers" who do not include God in their logical equations, whereas vertical thinking is a kind of top-down logic wherein all logic descends to man from a divine source.

Here is the horizontal history of the Bible:
Man looks to the stars and makes up stories which are allegories. → Man writes the stories down to pass them to future generations. → The allegorical nature of the stories is lost. → The stories are misinterpreted as real history.

Here is the vertical history of the Bible:
GOD
↓
God creates the universe and writes the story of his plan for salvation in the stars. Thus his revelation is given to all mankind even before Jesus is born.
↓
The events foretold in the stars actually take place. Jesus is born and crucified to save all mankind.
↓
God divinely inspires scribes to write down the story of what happened. The stories end up in the Bible, declared to be the perfect inerrant revelation of how Jesus died to save all mankind.

As Marshall concludes, "The more I look at this I don't think there's any question this is a clever dog whistle call out to Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals that his politics are God's politics." I will be keeping an eye out for more Huckabee codespeak.

PS: There are more examples of vertical thinking at the link, including a link to Vertical Thought: A Magazine of Understanding for Tomorrow's Leaders. Targeted at ages 12-22, it is published by the United Church of God out of Milford OH.

[lapfog_1]

1. That bit about God divinely inspires the books of the bible

has always been funny to me. After all, it was a Pope in 382 (Pope Damasus) and the Council of Rome that decided what books would form the New Testament. So the logic goes something like this: A Catholic Pope 400 years after the time of Christ comes up with the inerrant word of God... but now (for most evangelicals) the current Popes are wrong and have been since the Protestant Reformation... not to mention many Popes before then. So... some Popes are divinely inspired... but others, not so much.

Great logic there.

And another thing. John of Patmos wrote the Book of Revelation (something the fundies dearly love)... but he was not an associate of Jesus, and possibly lived some 150 years after Jesus was crucified. Most early Christians of the same era dismissed his writings as the ranting of a sick person (he lived as a hermit in a cave), but Pope Damasus loved the Book of Revelation because it had "scary stories" of eternal hell and damnation that, according to historians, he thought he could use to keep Christians in line and fearful of a vengeful God should they stray from Catholic teachings. Doesn't sound like the inerrant word of God to me.

Fundies scare me.

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

2. That kind of horizontal freethinking will only land you in trouble

;)

Fundies of all stripes scare me, too.

[lapfog_1]

3. You should hear me riff about Xmas and Easter!

I can really make for some uncomfortable family reunions!

People just can't stand facts and/or history.

[EFerrari]

4. "Vertical" seems like a pseudo scientific term for "authoritarian". n/t