Bible Musings
Lately I have been going through old stuff and have come across Bible verses that were suggested by various people as evidence of their religious beliefs. An open-minded Christian-type person, I welcome intelligent arguments and conversation on the subject of religious beliefs. As I read them and come to my own conclusions, it is often blatantly obvous to me how very differently the Bible can be interpreted. Not everyone agrees with this viewpoint. For me, the idea that there are as many individual religions as there are people is a refreshing one--we can learn something new from everyone we meet, by trying to see things from their perspective. Some people, however, are so vehement in their beliefs that they persecute others for disagreeing with them. If you are one of these people, please don't take it upon yourself to "save" me (I belong to God already) or tell me the "good news" (I got the memo) or try, in any other way, to push your beliefs on me. It doesn't work that way. True faith is so strong that it withstands the entire world's disdain and efforts of conversion. Please do talk to me about your beliefs. Let me explore another person's viewpoint, and grow as a person in the process. Just don't expect me to believe what you do at the end of the session.
This is not what I came here to say. I am here to comment on a passage I came across in my cleaning-out-the-email-inbox job today. In talking to someone about "the Sabbath," someone once argued to me that refraining from working on the Sabbath day (whatever day that is--this is an argument I'll have to tackle some other time) is so very important that even Jesus himself ordered a man to be put to death for violating the no-work rule. I was agape. Surely not, I thought. Jesus? Mr. Perfect? The guy who once said to an angry mob who were about to stone a sinner, that the one among them with no sins should be the first to throw a stone? The one who came to live as a human being with the sole purpose of telling us we were all forgiven our sins, whatever they may be, just so long as we believed in him? "No. I don't believe that. Prove it." Although this person didn't have the passage handy, once they did find it, they emailed it to me.
When I first read it, I saw it there, in bold print, that there had indeed been a man who was to be killed simply for gathering wood on the Sabbath day. The very thought threatened to tear down the foundation of the kind of person I thought Jesus was. Until.... Wait a minute. this is Numbers, and it's in the Old Testament? Well, sheesh, THAT explains it. The passage is NOT about Jesus, but about God Himself (trust me, I sympathize with the idea that maybe God wasn't male, maybe not even female but just Was, but for the sake of brevity and clarity here, I will use a masculine pronoun). This was in the time of Moses. Jesus wasn't even a glint in God's eye then, so to speak. God can act as a parent would and dole out punishment. After all, He eventually wiped out nearly all life on the planet because it didn't please Him. Furthermore, all he really was saying was, this man's earthly life is over. It never said he would be sent to hell, just that his human body must die because he didn't do as God instructed. God can do that; he owns vengeance.
Now I find myself thinking, why on earth does this bother me so much? Why am I even considering writing a bit of prose on the subject? It was a simple misunderstanding. Right. But countries go to war over such misunderstandings. Even today, people are still fighting over the so-called Holy Land. Why? Because someone, a very long time ago, believed that God had promised it to his people, eventually. Meanwhile, other people decided to call the land their home, since no one was living there at the time, and there were no billboards that said "This is my people's land. We're out for coffee but will be back in a few hundred years, so don't stay here." Fast forward, and it's "possession is 9/10s of the law" versus, "nuh-uh, God himself said we could have it." "Oh yeah? Prove it." "Ummmm...."
That's the thing, you cannot prove what God personally tells you. No one can. And here we come to the crux of what is clattering around in my head. The entire Bible is written by people who believed they were doing what God told them. This I believe. However, there is no way of knowing whether or not God REALLY told these people to write these very words. Yes, I believe it is a very good book, with some very good ideas on how to live your life as the best person you can possibly be. It is full of lessons both large and small. It inspires many people to do many great things. It is the primary source material for one of the largest religions on the planet today. However, anyone who has actually read very much of it will have to admit that it is probably one of the most inconsistent books ever written.
Conflicting ideas abound, and with good reason--look how very many people wrote these chapters. No doubt they believed they were doing God's work, but no one knows for certain that every author was a sane man, and that the voice only he could hear telling him to do things was actually God's and not a mad creation of his own psyche. Even if these men were actually writing God's story, they were men, and thus fallible, susceptible to misinterpretation of God's intended meaning, and liable to color their writing with prejudices and ideas of their own time. Even the fact that they are MEN is a testament to those prejudices. Surely there were women whom God would have instructed to write as well, had they been allowed to learn to write, and had anyone cared enough to give any credence to a woman's writings in the first place. Actually, I'm neither a theologian nor an historian, so I may be mistaken. Maybe some of the passages were written by a womyn, and I'm simply ignorant of that fact. If you know something I do not, please enlighten me. :-) Anyway....
In adddition to the possibility for human error, as evidenced by the many instances where one Bible passage directly undermines another, there are many parts of the book that lend themselves easily to non-literal interpretation. Do you think there will be a seven-headed serpent, and actual serpent with seven heads, coming out of Earth's water at some point? Or is it just possible that the phrase used in the Bible was a metaphor for something else, like, say, our seven continents? Ergo, the best way to approach this book is not as a "proof" for arguments, but as a stepping stone toward open communication and understanding. You can't logically just say, well here it says in this one tiny verse that, quote, this is how things are, so there is my proof. Some people do just this and it drives me buggy.
My point, I suppose, is this: to hold every single word of this book as sacred and true would be impossible. To try to do so is small-minded and ignorant. If you're so caught up in the words and their absolute righteousness, have you not lost the message entirely? The Bible is meant to be a guide and a testimonial. It exists for our benefit, not our detriment. Every person must come to his or her own conclusions about what is contained within. There is no sense in persecuting others for coming to different conclusions than you have. I am so very weary of people believing their interpretations to be the true and Godly ones, and fie upon everyone else whom they can't convince. You people are the epitome of intolerance, and surely you have missed the point God was trying to make in commissioning this book in the first place.
I think I've gotten the ranting out of my system for now. If you've enjoyed this installation of "Brandi Must Type or Something's Gonna Blow" please check back with us in the future for another wildly ranting glimpse into the psyche of a stressed-out Mommy. :-) In the meantime, I'll be playing with my wonderful little boy (who should be up from his nap very soon) and basking in the wonderfulnes of watching him toddle around on his own, babbling on the "phone" (usually a TV remote control), and learning more about the world around him every day. And in knowing he will be raised as a tolerant, loving, sympathetic, open-minded, fair, trustworthy, trusting, kind, confident, honest little man, who is always surrounded by the people who love him.
Toodles!
MommyFaerie :-)
This is not what I came here to say. I am here to comment on a passage I came across in my cleaning-out-the-email-inbox job today. In talking to someone about "the Sabbath," someone once argued to me that refraining from working on the Sabbath day (whatever day that is--this is an argument I'll have to tackle some other time) is so very important that even Jesus himself ordered a man to be put to death for violating the no-work rule. I was agape. Surely not, I thought. Jesus? Mr. Perfect? The guy who once said to an angry mob who were about to stone a sinner, that the one among them with no sins should be the first to throw a stone? The one who came to live as a human being with the sole purpose of telling us we were all forgiven our sins, whatever they may be, just so long as we believed in him? "No. I don't believe that. Prove it." Although this person didn't have the passage handy, once they did find it, they emailed it to me.
When I first read it, I saw it there, in bold print, that there had indeed been a man who was to be killed simply for gathering wood on the Sabbath day. The very thought threatened to tear down the foundation of the kind of person I thought Jesus was. Until.... Wait a minute. this is Numbers, and it's in the Old Testament? Well, sheesh, THAT explains it. The passage is NOT about Jesus, but about God Himself (trust me, I sympathize with the idea that maybe God wasn't male, maybe not even female but just Was, but for the sake of brevity and clarity here, I will use a masculine pronoun). This was in the time of Moses. Jesus wasn't even a glint in God's eye then, so to speak. God can act as a parent would and dole out punishment. After all, He eventually wiped out nearly all life on the planet because it didn't please Him. Furthermore, all he really was saying was, this man's earthly life is over. It never said he would be sent to hell, just that his human body must die because he didn't do as God instructed. God can do that; he owns vengeance.
Now I find myself thinking, why on earth does this bother me so much? Why am I even considering writing a bit of prose on the subject? It was a simple misunderstanding. Right. But countries go to war over such misunderstandings. Even today, people are still fighting over the so-called Holy Land. Why? Because someone, a very long time ago, believed that God had promised it to his people, eventually. Meanwhile, other people decided to call the land their home, since no one was living there at the time, and there were no billboards that said "This is my people's land. We're out for coffee but will be back in a few hundred years, so don't stay here." Fast forward, and it's "possession is 9/10s of the law" versus, "nuh-uh, God himself said we could have it." "Oh yeah? Prove it." "Ummmm...."
That's the thing, you cannot prove what God personally tells you. No one can. And here we come to the crux of what is clattering around in my head. The entire Bible is written by people who believed they were doing what God told them. This I believe. However, there is no way of knowing whether or not God REALLY told these people to write these very words. Yes, I believe it is a very good book, with some very good ideas on how to live your life as the best person you can possibly be. It is full of lessons both large and small. It inspires many people to do many great things. It is the primary source material for one of the largest religions on the planet today. However, anyone who has actually read very much of it will have to admit that it is probably one of the most inconsistent books ever written.
Conflicting ideas abound, and with good reason--look how very many people wrote these chapters. No doubt they believed they were doing God's work, but no one knows for certain that every author was a sane man, and that the voice only he could hear telling him to do things was actually God's and not a mad creation of his own psyche. Even if these men were actually writing God's story, they were men, and thus fallible, susceptible to misinterpretation of God's intended meaning, and liable to color their writing with prejudices and ideas of their own time. Even the fact that they are MEN is a testament to those prejudices. Surely there were women whom God would have instructed to write as well, had they been allowed to learn to write, and had anyone cared enough to give any credence to a woman's writings in the first place. Actually, I'm neither a theologian nor an historian, so I may be mistaken. Maybe some of the passages were written by a womyn, and I'm simply ignorant of that fact. If you know something I do not, please enlighten me. :-) Anyway....
In adddition to the possibility for human error, as evidenced by the many instances where one Bible passage directly undermines another, there are many parts of the book that lend themselves easily to non-literal interpretation. Do you think there will be a seven-headed serpent, and actual serpent with seven heads, coming out of Earth's water at some point? Or is it just possible that the phrase used in the Bible was a metaphor for something else, like, say, our seven continents? Ergo, the best way to approach this book is not as a "proof" for arguments, but as a stepping stone toward open communication and understanding. You can't logically just say, well here it says in this one tiny verse that, quote, this is how things are, so there is my proof. Some people do just this and it drives me buggy.
My point, I suppose, is this: to hold every single word of this book as sacred and true would be impossible. To try to do so is small-minded and ignorant. If you're so caught up in the words and their absolute righteousness, have you not lost the message entirely? The Bible is meant to be a guide and a testimonial. It exists for our benefit, not our detriment. Every person must come to his or her own conclusions about what is contained within. There is no sense in persecuting others for coming to different conclusions than you have. I am so very weary of people believing their interpretations to be the true and Godly ones, and fie upon everyone else whom they can't convince. You people are the epitome of intolerance, and surely you have missed the point God was trying to make in commissioning this book in the first place.
I think I've gotten the ranting out of my system for now. If you've enjoyed this installation of "Brandi Must Type or Something's Gonna Blow" please check back with us in the future for another wildly ranting glimpse into the psyche of a stressed-out Mommy. :-) In the meantime, I'll be playing with my wonderful little boy (who should be up from his nap very soon) and basking in the wonderfulnes of watching him toddle around on his own, babbling on the "phone" (usually a TV remote control), and learning more about the world around him every day. And in knowing he will be raised as a tolerant, loving, sympathetic, open-minded, fair, trustworthy, trusting, kind, confident, honest little man, who is always surrounded by the people who love him.
Toodles!
MommyFaerie :-)
posted by Brandi Rae | 10:05 AM
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