Astrology & Religion.....headache time!

One of our local newspapers, on Christmas day, carried a major piece in the "Religion" section headed "Pastor: God wrote gospel in the stars". The piece was written by Jacob Russell and contains plentiful quotes from said Pastor -one Ron DuPont.

The article begins:

"For hundreds of years, religious scholars have debated the legitimacy of the Gospel in the Stars -a belief that God used the constellations as a primitive way to tell his redemptive story, prior to the writings of the books of the Bible - but there could be no debate, according to a local pastor who said the Bible supports the theory.......he believes that the purity of the Gospel in the Stars was perverted with Adam's sin and the fall of man.

........The constellations, he said, continue to tell the same story as they did in the beginning of time.....it begins with Virgo, or the virgin, which fulfilled the prophecy by bearing Immanuel; and ends with Leo or the lion, symbolizing the Lion of the Tribe of Judah and the Messiah's consummated victory over the serpent......If you follow the arrow out of the bow of the Archer (Sagittarius), it goes acrosss the sky, into the heart of the scorpion (Scorpio)"........ He said there is a fine line between astronomy, the scientific study of celestial creations, and astrology, which is using the warped knowledge of the position of those objects for wisdom and guidance to empower themselves. "All scriptures condemn astrology" DuPont said..........."

Condemn astrology? Of course. Anything that threatened to contradict or supersede what they feed to their flock has always to be condemned. They fear losing control - and, of course, income!

A brief Google search throws up conflicting ideas of even the origin of the word zodiac:

Novareinna.com

The word "Zodiac" comes from the Greek zoad, which means "the way" or "the path." According to many Christian scholars, God depicted his story and his promise of salvation within the stars

Wikipedia

The term zodiac derives from Latin zōdiacus, which in its turn comes from the Greek ζῳδιακὸς κύκλος (zōdiakos kuklos), meaning "circle of animals", derived from ζώδιον (zōdion), the diminutive of ζῶον (zōon) "animal". The name is motivated by the fact that half of the signs of the classical Greek zodiac are represented as animals (besides two mythological hybrids).

Sigh.....Give someone a diagram of the zodiac and its symbols and they'll find a way to bend it, shape it to fit any number of connotations. In my view astrology's version manages to make a reasonable amount of sense. But even astrological doctrine can, at times, stretch it, try too hard and come up with stuff that isn't really and truly there (my own opinion).

Local people will read that piece in our newspaper, take IT as gospel truth without so much as a critical thought entering their heads - and there lies the shame of it all.

I feel a headache coming on. Note to self: In future avoid reading such articles, or in fact such newspapers, for they are filled with prejudice of every kind, opposing views are never expressed these days, on any topic, for the balanced consideration of readers.