Bible Readers... The Danger of Being Piously Convicted and Marginally Informed

From my perspective, Isaac Asimov had it correct when he noted that the Bible is the best evidence against itself. Many Christians are excellent Bible READERS. Minister types in this area excellent Bible READERS. They can jump from one scripture to the next with finesse. For any scholar you could quote, they would quote one that confirmed their perspective. However, in some areas of the country you really just have to quote the Bible and skip the scholar part too.

It never ends. The reason it never ends is that for one the NEED to believe the inerrancy of the Bible is more than important. The NEED for the Bible to tell one consistent story and be totally true in its conclusions is WHO they are at this particular moment in time. One local minister when he saw I was reading a quantum physics book asked me what that had to do with the Bible. I said, "Nothing, it doesn't need to have anything to do with the Bible." He said, "Oh yes it does, the Bible is the greatest science book ever written." He needed to believe that and he was very wrong.

On the other hand, there are those who have passed through the literalism and inerrancy of scripture to see it for what it is. It usually takes a traumatic religious experience to provoke the change. My pastoring past supplied more than enough impetus for me to examine what I used to teach. It's not a matter of stacking your scholars against my scholars to see who wins the argument because personal growth is an inside job. Spirituality comes from within.

Religious belief comes from examining what a scripture SAYS and assigning it a meaning. People who assign scripture the same meaning for them as a group usually form a church or a denomination, but that may not translate into a real spirituality. I personally feel that most Churches sift out according to personality. Angry and fearful types tend toward the exclusive "we only" mentality, read the Bible like a newspaper and hold such beliefs as an everlasting form of punishment for deeds done in a very finite amount of time. Of course, it will be YOU that experiences the eternal punishment or punishing and not them. Other Churches are shame (I'm a bad person) and guilt (I do bad things) based, with most being a combo of both. We have social churches where the minister had better mind his own business and control churches where you know he is about to mind your business for you. It's always a "he". At the other end of the spectrum are churches of people burned by religion and desirous of spirituality only. They don't want to hear the phrase "God says", or "The Bible tells us..". Those phrases are burnout for them. These are perhaps the Unitarian types who don't argue doctrine and just be who they are for now. Leading Unitarians is a bit like herding cats. I myself consider myself Non-Condemnational. That's about all I can come up with at the moment.

Spirituality is not about scholars vs. scholars. It's personal and often painful. We can all find someone who backs our "position". I don't find Bible READERS very often the kind of people I feel comfortable around anymore. I don't spend time with them and rarely engage them in a discussion because the Meme (mind virus) of conditioning is firmly in place. There is no discussion. Only arguing and pushing back. One sees very quickly that most minds come preloaded with their own form of truth. Frankly, if we took religious caused conflict and mayhem out of the news, we'd only have ads from Wal-Mart to read.

Recently a fundamentalist tried every way she could to save me and to convince me that the bible was the BEST science book, the Best psychology book, the BEST history book, the BEST guide for morality. I asked her if so, why did Israelite soldiers get to save the virgins of other nations for themselves, i.e. for sex, and kill everyone else or why Moses, upon returning with the big ten got really angry and had over 3000 people killed for not waiting or getting really angry when people in the DESERT felt a need for a bit more water and food. ...she mumbled something about the justice and judgment of God and changed the topic. One could ask hundreds of questions like that about both Old and New Testaments. At any rate, she told the others around me that I was making up a God in my own image to suit me and said they should shake the dust from their shoes when around me. (I ain't kiddin!). I knew I had made progress when is simply was able to smile and go about my business.

Scholars, mine or yours have a place, it's how we learn and get to make those personal decisions about how it may actually be in the realm of spiritual truth and growth. I don't care if Elaine Pagels and I agree (which we do) near as much as I appreciate that she is so adept at explaining the EVOLUTION of God in the Bible from Canaanite storm and fertility gods to what we have today in three major religions.

If I had to pick a book that actually said what I had always wondered about it would be John Shelby Spong's book Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism. He simply and with great insight said what I was already noticing about the Bible. I understood I was not crazy for noticing stories and teachings that seemed at best ignorant and at worst contrived. For others, it simply made them angry and feel threatened to the point that a woman hit John Spong over the head with her umbrella from behind at his own wife's funeral and others to wish the next plane he took to crash. I consider the former types to be religious and John Spong to understand spirituality and reality at it's best. It's difficult to argue with a spiritual person. Religious people thrive on arguments. It drives them nuts when you don't feel the need to.

The "my scholar vs. your scholar" mode of spiritual awakening has never worked. Spirituality is always an inside job perhaps only understood best by the person experiencing it.

Dennis Diehl

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/93539

Ask, Seek, Knock Carefully in the Churches of God

If you wish to see the good, the bad and the ugly side of people of faith, just question what you can plainly read on the Bible or how churches arrive at the conclusions they do about how you ought to live and how much to give.

As a pastor soaking in Christianity and the Bible for three decades. I heard, read and studied all the plain and simple truth in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. I can tell you the truth is neither plain nor simple and I rather liked Paul's description of it all as being "the present truth." At least calling truth something that is currently understood gives some wiggle room for those times which shall come to grow a bit in the grace and knowledge that most Christians think they are open minded enough to really do.

Most I know grow neither in grace, unless they attach a few dozen laws that you must keep to be one of the good people, nor knowledge which seems to scare the bejesus out of them when they really run up against it.

For example:

The story of Annias and Sapphira in Acts 5 is not a story about Peter killing two church members for not coughing up all the money they had "pledged" to the church. The Romans would not miss that crime.  It is a spoof that the readers of Luke and Paul's community would understand of the buffoon Peter who, like the two church members who said they would give something to the church and didn't, said he'd never leave Jesus and fled. Peter who said he'd do one thing and did another is now punishing a couple who said they'd do one thing and did another. It was hilarious and a poke at Peter the Pathetic according to Luke and Paul. It was a message to just not follow Peter from Paul and Luke.

John mentions Peter three times in his Gospel and each time sandwiches (technically called "Intercalation") Peter stories between two comments about Judas. The point is not missed on the original audience.  Judas betrayed, Peter denied. No difference.  Don't follow Peter.

 (Side note: A really fascinating possibility is that the 21st chapter of John is the Missing ending of the pro-Peter Gospel of Mark. Someone needed to damp down John's actual dislike for Peter, in John,  so added Mark's real ending (John 21) to show Peter was forgiven.  Original John ended with Chapter 20. It was noticed that Mark has no good ending, no Jesus, no Resurrection, just scared women running and telling no one anything...well except "Mark" evidently, and John had two endings.  So they asked about that.  

Some wonder if Bar-Abbas  (Son of the Father) was really a person being given freedom when in reality the Romans never did this at Passover, or was it a Title for Jesus , just as "King of the Jews" was.  Was Pilate testing the crowd...yes...as to their loyalty to Rome?  Was he simply asking if this Jesus is their King or their religious leader?  "King of the Jews" or "Son of the Father", which Barabbas means.  In older versions of Mark Barabbas has the first name of "Jesus" thus being "Jesus, Son of the Father"  These are titles not two men.  The fate of the crowd depended on the answer evidently as this one man Jesus was toast no matter and was crucified as "King of the Jews" with the crowd assuring Pilate they had no King but Caesar.  Good answer .....  Or just an amazing coincidence that these were two literal men.  One named Jesus King of the Jews and one named Jesus Son of God.  Uh huh....

At any rate, to question the story is to run great risk of abuse at the hands of the faithful who need the stories to be literally true as they learned in Sunday School and that all the characters of the New Testament Church loved each other in Jesus and got along famously in the faith. That is very far from reality, but don't question it.

I can't tell you how many, while not near as many as those who appreciate the inquiry, take the time to write and remind me I will change my mind when I am frying in the fires of Hell in the judgment. No one has bothered to answer one question posed, but they just know I should go to hell for asking it. Some who write are subtle in their warnings to me. Some sound like a human form of God who will warn me to "gird up my loins" (my loins are just fine) and get ready to answer, but that's where it ends. I guess they feel God himself is about to break out upon me for asking questions about the faith. So far so good. Some talk to me like I imagine Moses talked to the Children of Israel when he was really angry at them in God's name. Some are not so subtle as one reminded me that "Dennis, words can get you killed." Well the history of religion that does not appreciate questions proves that!

Is it wrong to notice the inconsistencies, errors, goofs, bad science, poor examples, contradictions, animosities, politic and real history of the Bible? Depends who you ask. Those who believe that none of those things exist in the Holy Book would shout "yes!" In my view, the answer is "no it is not."

Why is it OK and even something one should demand of their honest selves? Because ideas have consequences. Because the stories and ideas expressed in the texts are used to control people in various life circumstances. Because some use the mythologies of the Bible to make up literally real laws that effect women and children, and generally not in a good way. Because many are kept in fear, guilt and life long shame being reminded way too often that they, as a human, are worthless without divine intervention. Being born right the first time, as I have said in the past, is a truth that is kept far from their consciousness.

It is always right to ask questions about that which seems like it deserves to have a question asked. If you can't imagine Joshua raising his hands and stopping the earth from rotating (which is what stopping the sun actually is)  without planet wide consequences...just ask your Pastor how can that be. Of course be ready to hear, "with God all things are possible," which is not what you asked.

If you can't picture penguins and polar bears ambling down to the middle east to get on the Ark, just ask your Pastor about that. If you wonder where dinosaurs or Homo Erectus fit in, just ask your Pastor. The answer might be ill informed, but it's OK to ask.

If you notice that Paul never quotes Jesus, yet gets to write most of the NT heavy meaning of Jesus, just ask. If you notice that Paul thinks Peter, James and John, the disciples of Jesus don't seem to have anything Paul needs (Galatians 1-2) to learn from them and he learns nothing from them, and think that's kinda strange...just ask. If you notice the Birth or Resurrection of stories as written in the Gospels don't match very well and seem contradictory, just ask. If you say "they seem to be contradictory," be prepared to have the word "seem" jumped upon, but you still have the right to ask. I'm not saying you'll get a good or correct answer. You might, but probably not. But you have the right to ask. And you certainly have the right to notice the many problems in the Bible if you know the Bible well enough to notice in the first place.

One thing is for sure. If you are a genuine seeker and you truly notice that the Bible has some real problems with what we truly know today about many topics and even within itself in the form of many contradictions and editing done by one to correct the problems of the other, it's OK to ask. A real seeker cannot not notice what they notice. You can't go back to the lame apologetics that many offer to explain away the problem as if there is no problem. You can't unsee what you do see. You can't unring a bell. Oh..you also have the right to expect not to be penalized for asking in the first place. Just don't count on it.

2018 Promises to be Another Crazy Year for the Church of God

It is hard to believe that we are entering year 8 with this blog dealing with the craziness of the One True Church.  Has there ever been a church that is filled with some of the absolutely craziest leaders we could ever imagine?  From self-appointed upstarts like Thiel and Malm who twist the bible to fit their perverted mindsets, to some of the most narcissistic leaders like Pack and Flurry.  The lies flowing forth from these men get more astounding every day.  2018 promises to be even crazier as the days go by.  Join us for the ride!

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