In our first installment, we ended with the question: does this mean the bible is worthless?
The answer is of course not. When we realize that sacred scripture is not God’s handbook of do’s and don’ts, but rather a reflection of ordinary people like ourselves on their walk with God, we are really to grow up in our faith.
We no longer have to “worship” a book, but now we can stand on our own two feet and speak with God and experience Him for ourselves.
For that is what reliance on the Bible as the “word of God” really is after all, worship of a book. And honestly, is this the kind of clear cut laying out of rules and demands that one might expect of a real God? Would God write in such cryptic ways? Would he intentionally create errors both small and large? Would a real God make diametrically different claims to different peoples? Would he create that which he must know is flawed? Would he destroy that which he created? Would he create Satan? Would he rule by fear? Would he write four renditions of the same events, and have them conflict in some major ways?
That and more is contained in the Bible, and frankly it’s unworthy of any God, especially THE God. The very fact that apologists work tirelessly to “reconcile” these things, should suggest that we are looking at the bible incorrectly. Rather than reconcile what in the end cannot satisfactorily be reconciled, we should be rethinking what the Bible is.
And if we conclude as most experts do, and a huge number of regular Christians do, that the Bible is NOT the inerrant word of God, then is it good for anything?
Of course it is. It remains our best evidence first of all of Jesus’ life. We have developed many a tool for discerning from the writings some very clear facts about the man and his mission. Faith, like every other human endeavor, builds on the work of those who came before it. It is just as true of faith and God, that we grow in understanding and maturity over the years and centuries. We have done the same as regards every type of science, and we take that for granted.
Why should we not expect the same to occur in faith? We can look at history and we know that people from nearly the beginning of recorded time have explained the “unexplainable” by God. God controlled weather and seasons and other physical phenomenon. As we matured, we learned the real causes of such things, and we realized that God was not this pernicious and arbitrary.
The early Hebrews made the huge leap that there was but One God, not many, and not acting like petty kings over small fiefdoms. They determined that no God would require human sacrifice. Today, we no longer offer animal sacrifice. It is true, that other societies still favor multiple gods or hierarchies of gods, but even here, believers have matured their outlook I would suggest.
A God of punishment and retribution seemed natural to our ancestors. Life was punishing after all, and life was short and often mean. People were kept in line by their superiors by force or the threat of force, and so we assumed that gods worked in the same manner.
Jesus comes along and offers us a completely new and differing vision of God, one that does not involve punishment. Jesus showed that physical ailments were not the result of sin and thus punishment. He cured the blind and lame and the leper, showing that these things were not the result of sin, but were simply ills, to be cured, by simple believe that the one offering cure could do it.
Jesus teaches us about the God of love, forgiveness, compassion, and equality. He is a God of justice.
Yet, even today, this God rankles some. They prefer and need the God who punishes and exacts a horrific price for not living according to their interpretation of how life should be conducted. This is the God of the fundamentalist. This God they have created is their warrior, who in the end, will get back at all the people who have done them wrong in their eyes. This God will give them their due in due time, saluting their “sacrifices” of self to live according to the often contradictory dictates of a book.
They, not God will really have the final word. It is they who expect to sit triumphantly alongside of Jesus and meet their various enemies in life, watching them be judged wrong and sent to some eternal damnation. They will sit self-satisfied in their self-righteousness as they see they are in the select few.
I think they are horribly wrong. I think they have created God in their own image. But I don’t, on the other hand, expect them to pay any price other than embarrassment and humility when they discover their error.
No doubt I too create God in my image, in the sense that I posit a God who makes sense to me. They have done no worse I suppose. But I accept the obvious, that a book of scripture cannot substitute for God. I and only I can meet this God and wrestle with all the issues of human life. I cannot look it up on page 739, and go back to my beer and ball game.
The Bible is a magnificent document, history, wisdom, struggle, triumph, failure, most everything that can happen to humans. It is a book of hope and a book that beckons us forward and upward to live up to some of it’s writers highest expectations. It is not, however God. It is a tool in our repertoire and only that. We can learn from what our ancestors did and concluded. Beyond that we can ask no more. The rest is up to each of us, in our room behind the closed door.
Existential Ennui 