There Really Was a Bomb in Gilead
I can't imagine the sounds, smells and sights that must occur when a human being walks into the midst of a crowd of fellow humans and explodes among them. Those clustered closely to the suicide bomber are gone in a flash never to return much less recover. As you get further from the source of the blast people survive initially but many will die suffering way to much damage to survive long. Next, and further away yet, we have the severely injured who will have to suffer though months if not years of healing and recovery never really being able to return to whatever normal used to be for them. Still further away, we have wounded who can recover fairly quickly and yet emotionally and psychologically have to deal with having been there and yet, "for the grace of God, there go I."When the bomber is a theologian or Bible expounding organization, a few will literally die in the explosion of scandal and theological error recognized or truths thrown out depending on one's perspective. Messing with the theological hopes and dreams of a person is probably a more dangerous mistake than a literal explosion. Reckless change forced upon sincere people of faith, as the Tkach's and Company came up with is almost beyond belief. Endeavoring to change theological ideas that usually take generations and decades minimum to change carefully as the slowest of the slow catch up is organizational suicide. The WCG foolishly changed course overnight. History shows us those kinds of changes take much much longer if one is to be kind and caring about those who will suffer through it , "fall away" from these alleged new truths or adjust in some way.
The Tkaches and those like them should have simply left the organization, given up the benefits and friends and moved on taking spiritual refugee status with another organization of their choice. However we know this is not what happened. They walked away with everything we and our parents and even grandparents invested in and claim it for themselves. As I was told, "Dennis, we can't help you with retirement because Jesus worked out such a great miracle in the church and we lost support." To which I said, "That stinker Jesus tricked me into his Church and then changed the game from Hockey which I like to Basketball, which I don't?" I also noted to this minister, who has proven to me at least that changing as needed to get their own retirement works if you don't mind selling your soul. Of course, he also was failing to mention the funds just received for sale of everything we and our families had built over decades, but I guess he forgot about that.
I was told by another illuminary of the church who has reaped great reward for his own part in reckless change that receiving anything to maintain a roof over one's head and food would probably depend on staying loyal to the new organization.
At any rate, my problem. I made my choices early in my life and, as all of us on many topics, will have to live with them.
Back to explosions. In such explosions as we all have been a bit too close to, the wounded do several things. They simply recover and disappear into lives lived quietly, they find others who have not been affected by this particular explosion, join them and go on older and wiser for the experience. They regroup and start their own version of yet another bomb that may go off in their face at sometime in the future but we hope not. Finally, we have some who reassemble the original bomb, reload it and gather in the wounded promising them it won't go off again but is indeed the true bomb to hang around until it is no longer needed.....send it in.
And then there is another smaller group. These are those who survive the explosion, spend a decade or two screaming in pain, lashing out at all bombers, provide a place for others of like mind to process this insane experience having lost all faith in all things.....and then reconvert to an original and yet modified form of the ideas that went sour in the first place and launch themselves on a new path that seeks to reconvert those they gave comfort to in recovering from it.
Believer/Disbeliever/Rebeliever More power to them and I have no problem with that because it is a way and part of the journey some have in this search for truth and how to deal with the problem of death for we who are aware we are aware of this reality.
So I ask myself. "Why can't I do that?" I don't think you could have found a more sincere kid wanting to know "the truth" way back when I came to read and hear the way WCG viewed the Bible and its message. I sneaked my AC college application out under my parka in a NY snow storm to mail it so my parents would not see me do it. Dad and just about every male in my extended family eventually went on to become members, ministers, elders and deacons in WCG with a few deaconesses scattered among us.
So before this gets too long, what holds me up or makes in seemingly impossible to become a person of faith again? Here goes....
The fact is that I have found the Bible to be less than inerrant. It is full of misinterpretations, misprints, misapplications and misunderstandings. I have done my home work so if you disagree, don't do so with me unless you do yours.
The story of Jesus is truly the old old story of previous godmengodmen were born on Christmas of virgins and repeat the same astrotheological story of the journey of the Sun through the 12 signs of the Zodiac each year. That is just a fact. The heavenly story brought down to earth we call the Gospel Story personified. In short, all religion originates in some, yet similar form of Sun worship. Jesus and all godmen truly are the light of the world and are such whose power is from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof. That's because they ARE the Sun.
There is little or no evidence that the grand stories of a cultic people in the Old Testament are true in history, time or space. And yet all the grand doctrines of the New Testament depend on them being literally true.
The Bible is a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy...... And yet, how easy for a real Deity to simply speak up today in the now as it once did. We know they can. We never experience it. Faith seems work only as long as the facts are suppressed.
There is a heavy political war being waged in the Bible, OT and NT between conflicting views of the faith. Priests against Scribes, Disciples against Apostles and Apostles against each other.
James, Peter and John hated and disagreed with Paul's view of Jesus. Paul hated their view, condemned and mocked it. John told his group to forget about Peter, who denied Jesus, comparing him to Judas who betrayed him. Paul did the same through his apologist Luke.
James and Mark's community restored Peter and forgave him.
Paul, not Jesus is the founder of modern Christianity.
History has little or nothing that notes Jesus ever lived or that at least, that the Jesus of the Gospels did.
The Jesus of the Gospels is not the Jesus of Paul and certainly not the Jesus of Revelation
Jesus Birth stories don't match with most never hearing of them as told in Matthew and Luke. Mark has no birth story and even one about his family, including his forgetful mother coming to take him home as he was insane. Paul just says he was born of a woman. Which is it?
The Bible has been heavily edited at times to reflect the winners. I am supposed to trust the understanding of people who see flashing lights in their heads others don't see. Hear voices others don't hear and claim to have been to the third heaven but are not willing to tell me about it because only he could hear and see what he heard and saw.
I'm supposed to have faith in prophets whose prophecies failed and whose personal behaviors look like mental illness at best.
Many of the books of of the Bible, OT and NT were not really written by those whose names are affixed.
Religion, and especially Christianity seems to make its leaders particularly prone to weakness, sin and scandal. (Please understand, members are also prone to this. We all have the prones. But when the member is prone, forgiveness is abundant and just part of the game. When the minister is prone, he gets eaten alive and spit out in shame and a lifetime of mocking becomes the norm.
The men who are said to have walked, talked and lived around Jesus are not the men who get to make up the meaning of Jesus. The man, Paul, who never met Jesus in real life and for whom Jesus was a hallucinatory experience and voice with occasional light in his head gets to decide just what the truth of Jesus was and is. That makes me very uncomfortable.
No one seems to know just what exactly did happen after Jesus death. The Resurrection accounts are muddled, contradictory and unfixable. In short, they are contrived for whatever reason and by whomever.
I don't believe it is fair to people to expect them to believe the most important ideas in history as life saving truth when they have not experienced it or known the players personally or else go to hell. Salvation or damnation by hearsay seems wrong to me.
Salvation by execution seems unreal to me.
Not being able to forgive without the shedding of blood seems strange to me.
Believing humans who got the story from others who got it from others who got it from others doesn't seem trustworthy to me.
Blaming me for the Original Sin of mythological people and a talking snake seems risky and unfair and a bit bizarre to me.
The main OT character of Moses, who brought the big ten down from the mountain noting one is not to make images of things above the earth, on the earth or beneath, who then makes the image of serpent to hold up for the people to be healed from snakebite seems odd to me.
It bothers me that after receiving the Big Ten , including, "you shall do no murder/kill," orders "every man to kill his neighbor and in that day 3000 died," for looking to a golden calf for some answers and help after he disappeared into the wilderness for 40 days. I'd think he was dead by now too. Golden Calf? Serpent? What's the diff?
And a whole lot more stuff like this. I simply can't dismiss it or just have faith in it as presented. The stakes are too high being wrong one's entire life. Or maybe they aren't. Maybe it's just how Earth School works.
I honor the journey of those who get blown up, get skeptical, recover somewhat and reconvert. It's what humans do to process pain and yet still need meaning. They are , however, no better a person than those who still struggle or can't reconvert, now or perhaps ever to the story.
People handle the above problems by finding a place where their problems can be addressed or at least not cared about. I can't physically sit and listen to a man or woman expound on the scripture knowing they have done their homework or have repressed their findings.
There is seat for every butt in religion and perhaps we spend our lives looking for that perfect fit regardless of whether it is literally true or not.
I have found that those who are the most sincere get the most damaged when disillusioned by the failure of product specs. For better or worse, faith does suffer when the facts present themselves. Facts can be faced, denied or tweeked and messengers can be disregarded, made fun of or dismembered, but we still need them both.
Thanks for listening. I'm going to endeavor to write less about these things unless they are actually helpful to those of us who have survived the explosion we found ourselves in the varying vicinities of when first we believed.
Dennis C. Diehl
DenniscDiehl@aol.com
DenniscDiehl@aol.com
8 comments:
I wrote this quickly off the top of my head this morning in about half and hour before work. I trust you'll know what I meant when you meet the few typos. Like the ideas of others, we filter them out even when we read right over them.
I wrote this after reading a couple blogs of people who had put a lot of energy into seeing all the problems with the text and how organizations misuse them, and now have returned to their faiths or a faith of some kind, evidently now able to modify or filter out the problems they used to see in the text and story.
It is more scary to step outside the box and stay there than getting back into the box you came from, no matter how upsetting it once was and finding acceptance again and of course a kind of security you don't have when you question things. More power to them I guess.
But they don't return to their faith because they have answered well the questions they raised about the story originally. I see them ignore the former questions, spiritualize them away or upgrade their belief to allegory and types getting away from having to explain it as literally true. It's interesting to watch.
Believer-Unbeliever-Rebeliever...it's an interesting experience to watch and listen to.
About a year and a half ago, I was involved in a round table discussion about the beliefs of this and that system of beliefs. I said very little because I had learned that most just wanted to repeat what they had been told. About half way through the discussion I said, "Folks, all religion is man made." One lady spoke up quickly and said, "Except ours." I didn't return any comment and the discussion continued. After listening to the same ol' same ol' for several minutes I stood up and repeated my comment, "Folks, remember this, all religion is man made" and left the discussion and the building.
Exactly right, Homer. They'r all made up by people with an agenda, and that agenda always involves control for the benefit and aggrandizement of the controller.
Dennis, everything you post is helpful. I think you've treated this particular topic rather thoroughly for the moment, but I always look forward to everything you post.
Since there are strong arguments supporting many viewpoints, the veracity or lack therof of the Old Testament, and therefore the New, is by no means the open and shut case which you appear to want to make it. Interestingly, vital information seems to change periodically. I recently watched a documentary on PBS in which the historicity of both Solomon and David was established, although it does not automatically follow that this also verifies all of the narratives of their exploits contained in the Bible.
The same cultures which seem to lay the blueprints for the "god-man" character also support many aspects of the history of Israel, as recorded in the Bible. They are silent on others. Regarding the "god-man" we also need to consider the fact that genuine articles, and counterfeits can and often do exist simultaneously, with much discernment, education, and wisdom required for one to sort them out. The existence of numerous fake archetypes does not prove that the genuine article cannot or does not exist. The very fact that there are counterfeits suggests that the real article probably does exist.
Having recently read Josephus' Antiquities, I can share that he both paraphrased and expanded upon the information presented in the Torah, and the prophets. Apparently some landmarks and artifacts were available to Josephus which have since been lost to antiquity. It would be interesting to know what was available at the Alexandrian library. Since the fertile Nile region often provided relief from famine in other areas of the Middle East, the patriarchs, Israelites, Jews, Jesus' family, and some of the apostles made both Judaism and later Christianity very popular in Egypt as a result of their sojourns. This is why the Coptic canon exists, and is studied in comparison with Hebrew, Greek, Syriac, Ethiopic, and other texts.
Yes, Peter denied Christ, but we are told that all of the apostles with the exception of John abandoned Jesus at the moment of His greatest trial and need. The three disciples who were closest to Jesus all fell asleep at the garden of Gethsemane. I can't imagine that any of them would have had difficulty in forgiving Peter, although it might have been a bit more of a challenge for John, who seems to be the most outstanding example of love and faithfulness to Jesus.
What it all boils down to is that each of us needs to carefully consider all of the relevant facts, and to make decisions which put us on what we feel will be the winning team. The decisions will either reflect a personal relationship with God, or be arrived at in the absence of God. If we could convince others to believe as each of us as individuals do, it would be of no value, anyway, so I've learned that in the ultimate sense, you can't really proselytize. This is perhaps the most deeply personal area of each of our lives, and rightly so!
My experience is that if you are looking for God, you are going to find Him. If you are looking for God not to exist, then that is what you are going to find.
Some have elevated non-belief and objectivism into a system rivaling religion. In effect, it becomes just like what it is competing against. Free-thinking is one thing. Atheism today has become a de facto religion. Its poliferation is a relatively recent phenomenon here in the USA. You really need to give it a few generations to gain effect before it does away with all of the inalienable rights outlined in our Constitution and Bill of Rights, and becomes genecidal, like communism. There is much too much Christian influence in the USA to allow that to take effect at this time. I certainly hope that that remains true throughout my lifetime, even though I know that some abuse, and misuse it.
BB
BB noted:
"Regarding the "god-man" we also need to consider the fact that genuine articles, and counterfeits can and often do exist simultaneously, with much discernment, education, and wisdom required for one to sort them out. The existence of numerous fake archetypes does not prove that the genuine article cannot or does not exist. The very fact that there are counterfeits suggests.. "
I agree, but which are counterfeits and which is the real article? Is the original and oldest, copied by later cultures, or is the genuine article just the one I grew up in and came later than the original form?
The others say mine is wrong. Ours says theirs is wrong. Who's right? How do know? Did I really luck out and get born in the right one or did they?
I agree that each attempting to convince the other of the true position and story is futile for the most part. I never met anyone who knows they are in the wrong faith, wrong church, wrong group and maintain wrong ideas about such deep topics as who and what is God and what does he/she require of us...?
I have come to not trust second hand information that is thousands of years old or the views of those who stand to gain much if I believe them.
Spirituality is truly an inside job and a far greater and perhaps open view of life than one receives from mere religious views.
I am not ashamed or feel badly that all I can say is , "I just don't know."
As I have said before, if it is so important I/we get it right absolutely or pay some terrible price, it could be more clear, a real Deity could just talk to us all as evidently done in the past, to no avail either and we'd all see the same one truth. It is so confusing and investing in the wrong perspectives is so expensive.
"if it is so important I/we get it right absolutely or pay some terrible price, it could be more clear, a real Deity could just talk to us all as evidently done in the past,"
Right on, Dennis.
If the common belief is right, then the real God is a cosmic level monster who leaves the vast majority of humanity facing a horrible fate through the accident of birth place, etc. That supposed "god" has to get a great deal of pleasure out of pain and suffering. If he really existed, he would be worthy of our contempt, not our worship.
Balm, Bomb, God, no god, fiction, facts, who needs facts or vocabulary lets just make it up as we go.
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