I remember being 18 and sitting through Rod Meredith's 'Harmony of the Gospels' class and venturing to ask a question about an apparent contradiction in the accounts. (Harmony in the Gospels is hardly an accurate course description). It was a sincere question. RCM asked someone in the class to explain it to Dennis, implying I was not listening or something. Very embarrassing to me but it is where I learned not to ask him questions again.
No one else answered it either. Around lunch time I headed to the dining hall and RCM was running around the track and saw me going in. He called me over. "He's going to apologize for embarrassing me," I rather naively thought to myself. What he did was ask me if I had repented yet... Um....of what? He never really said and I went to lunch. I guess I've been out to lunch ever since.Between GTA's calling me in to ask why I hated him (I didn't) and this, I should have just gone home and saved myself the next 30 years of the same.
As the years in ministry went by, I realized that asking questions was a dangerous thing. I learned not to ask questions about Biblical contradictions in science, history and origins. I learned not to ask questions about whatever was going on in the drama filled WCG that I was supposed to represent. Once I asked about the "rumor" HWA was divorcing. The return call was JWT yelling into the phone to "squelch it!" What a nutso church. Personally I learned that 100% of any question I had was answered in ways that turned out to be, in truth, the opposite of what I was told. No wonder, when the end came, the minister could not win getting stuck between believing what they were told by those over me and congregants who knew more than I did because of their contacts. WCG could make a fool out of a local pastor in a minute and did.
I have thought a lot about why in all that time, I never heard anyone ask any good questions about the many and very obvious contradictions in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. No minister ever asked me, "Have you ever wondered about....?" or "Doesn't this seem troublesome?" Even Friday night studies where GTA or someone would answer Bible questions, were rather lame. One always knew the question was a bit too troubling because the more troubling the question the more sarcastic the "explanation."
I wish I had known enough back then to have asked HWA after years of the never ending "story of the two trees," if he understood the Trees in the Garden of Eden were off limits because their fruit was god food? The Knowledge of Good and Evil was a God topic and not for man. Why not I never knew because if Adam and Eve weren't allowed to take of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, how could they be blamed for any sin? They didn't know good from evil or weren't supposed to. We see the consternation this caused the "gods" El and his council of the gods (Let US make man in Our Image etc...) reflected in one of the council members telling El that man must be driven out of the Garden, "lest he eat of the tree of eternal life (also a god tree and not for man) and live forever.
Of course this is pure rewrite with a Hebrew twist, of an Ancient Sumerian creation story that better explains the pagan origins of even the Hebrew Sabbath. The original story was explaining how the god's needed rest from man's persistent complaining as worker bees for the gods. The gods ate food then and man's purpose was to till the ground and make it happen. In the original tale it was El (originally a Canaanite god adopted by the Hebrews) and his council that wanted rest from man. It's why, "from now on, with the sweat of your brow shall you till the earth..". It used to be easier for the human slaves to the gods in the original "Edin." Basically it was the loving El telling humans, "if you think you have it bad now, just hear this punishment." Rather like Egyptians expecting quality brick by limiting the straw needed to make it so.
Whoa.....how fun a question would that have been to ask or explain instead of having to endure, "there were two trees in the garden....."? Not to worry. There never was a real garden nor a real Adam and Eve really sinning and condemning us all to the need for a blood sacrifice. It's mythology. If you wish to know where real humans first came from and how, get a good up to date book on recent findings. Or even do as I did and have your DNA traced back 100,000 years to Africa. (http://ezinearticles.com/?Biblical--Adam-and-Eve-Laid-to-Rest-by-National-Genome-Project&id=94643).
Come to realize that without a literal Adam and especially Eve as presented, we can't demote women to the status of obedient servants nor can the Doctrine of Original sin hold any sway over us, but I spare you. It's mythology guys and to think otherwise in this day and age with so much good information and science available to us is pure ignorance.
If Elijah had known to dig down 30 feet in the cave he hid in and saw God's rear end, he would have found some of the best Neanderthal skeletons in the world in that cave on Carmel. Did "Jesus" know about Neanderthals, Homo Ergaster and Homo Habilis? No he did not and also would not have been able or willing to explain them. And no, they weren't the "and there were giants in the earth in those days, either.
So from 1968-1996 I personally asked few good questions of my peers or of the Bible itself. That came to a end when I read and resonated with John Shelby Spong's, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism. Finally a good answer to my question to RCM long ago in class. I wrote JSP and thanked him and that I was using his insights in my sermons and studies. He wrote me and said, "Thank you Dennis, you won't survive." Alas the nature of asking too many questions to those who the power but no clue as to the answer.
So, with that in mind, I present to my former minister friends the series I wrote to challenge them to think and realize an even more Present Truth than ever inaccurate Plain Truth.
The series is called, "Questions Your Pastor Will Hate." Some is written a bit cheeky and sarcasm, which reflected my sideways turned anger at the time, and a simple request to consider the Book was not written by God, unless God was drinking during inspiring much of its content.
And yes, I am well aware of apologetics which is an apt name for the art of denial when being confronted with the real contradictions and nonsense found in the pages of the "holy, inerrant word of God."
Here are the links to the articles.
So while we all get to watch, yet again, the birth of the Actually Now and Really Really True, Strife Without End True Church of God replicate itself, what ever would happen if they came to understand how they even got the texts to argue over in the first place? If they could just face the mythology of Genesis 1-11 is not literally true or historical, they would learn the meaning of personal crisis at the gut level.
It's no fun learning you were wrong about something so important for one to be the truth. I had to get counseling just to cope with the angst my changing paradigm brought me. Here is my counselor and my first session exchange. It is word for word as I memorized it to get through the angst.
Counselor: "Wow Dennis.....you got fired by God!"
Dennis: "Any other time I think that would be funny but please not now."
Counselor: "Just kidding you. I used to be a church pastor like you."
Dennis: "Well just understand that if you counsel me with Bible advice, I will find another counselor."
Counselor: "No, no. Just kidding. In reality this is what you are about to experience. Dennis, you outgrow your boxes quickly. We all come in a box and most never examine the box they come in. You have only two choices. You can go back into the box you just came from and everyone will be so happy and you will feel much more secure and safe. However, you will be on anti-depressants the rest of your life because of your repressed anger. OR, you can keep going and see what's in this box, but you will go ALONE." (This is where I tear up thinking about the truth of how what he noted has worked out.)
Anyway, John Shelby Spong, author of Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, also told me he was pleased I learn much from his books but that "Dennis, you won't survive," Only true prophet I ever met.
And so enjoy these questions that you as a minister also have a right to ask before you tell people what they should or must be, do , think, act like or become. Whether we like it or not and no matter the angst it may cause to surface, there is precious little harmony of not only the Gospels but in every book of the book beginning to end. This can be a hard thing to face which is why we don't and go on to believe as I was told during my debate in Texas with Art Mokarrow, "There is a good answer for everyone of those questions." Oh really? Do tell.....
