Job 17; Acts 24-26

Acts 26: 19"So then, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven. 20First to those in Damascus, then to those in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and to the Gentiles also, I preached that they should repent and turn to God and prove their repentance by their deeds. 21That is why the Jews seized me in the temple courts and tried to kill me. 22But I have had God's help to this very day, and so I stand here and testify to small and great alike. I am saying nothing beyond what the prophets and Moses said would happen— 23that the Christ would suffer and, as the first to rise from the dead, would proclaim light to his own people and to the Gentiles."
24 At this point Festus interrupted Paul's defense. "You are out of your mind, Paul!" he shouted. "Your great learning is driving you insane."

I remember apologizing for my new found passion which came across as condesending and I imagine even a bit mean (I am even more sorry as I write this for that inability to process something so life changing as anything but softening.BUT I had no desire then to BE soft. I wanted to be commended and well thought of) to my Dad and his looking at me and asking me if I were perhaps
'insane'.
Don't know why I relate this story other than every time I read this passage I get a strange kind of comfort.

I may move this to my side bar I like it so well....the Bible as scandalous....

“Only by giving the Bible a devotional spin when we read it, by taking isolated verses out of context and ignoring the raw whole, by filtering and interpreting, do we “civilize” it. Civilized, the Bible has become a devotional prop of middle class values instead of being the rude challenge to false propriety it actually is. The Bible is a dangerous, uncivilized, abrasive, raw, complicated, aggressive, scandalous, and offensive book.
“The Bible is the literature of God, and literature, as every book burner knows, is dangerous. The Bible is the drama of God; it is God’s Hamlet, Canterburty Tales, and Wuthering Heights. The Bible is, among other things, about God, men, women, sex, lies, truth, sin, goodness, fornication, adultery, murder, childbearing, virgins, whores, blasphemy, prayer, wine, food, history, nature, poetry, rape, love, salvation, damnation, temptation, and angels. Today the Bible is widely studied but rarely read. If the Bible were a film, it would be R-rated in some parts, X-rated in others. The Bible is not middle-class. The Bible is not “nice.” The Bible’s tone is closer to that of the late Lenny Bruce than to that of the hushed piety of some ministers.
“In some centuries, the church did not allow the common people to read the Bible. Now by spiritualizing it and taming it through devotional and tehological interpretations, the church once again muzzles the book in a “damage control” excercise. We now study the Bible, but through a filter of piety that castrates its virility.” Franky Schaeffer
—from googleimages.com