I figure that if God exists, he A) is not exactly like what anyone believes he is, B) not a ‘being’ of any type that we can imagine.

One of the most telling statements from the Bible that God makes (don’t care if you don’t buy it, I’m just thinking out lo…through my keyboard) is when he is asked by Moses what his name is.  God says, “I Am”.  Since names defined the person in the OT, the best one that God could come up was I Am…a proclamation that his most defining trait was the fact that he exists.

Thinking a bit deeper, names are meant to distinguish the individual.  What does I Am distinguish someone from?  The opposite of existence is (feel free to argue) non-existence or nothingness.  So the only thing that God feels the need to distinguish himself from is nothingness…not people, or other gods, but nothingness.  He’s saying, there are two things…him and nothingness.  And nothingness is nothing, so that leaves just him as the only thing that exists.

So where does that leave us and the universe?  Perhaps we’re just thoughts in the mind of an infinite being that we happen to know as God.  Anyway, take this thought process for what it’s worth…seems like an interesting idea to me.

Christianity has always seemed rather unique as a religion to me. This is going to sound cliche, but I think it’s because in every other religion you have man reaching out to God(s) or some kind of higher level existence or some ideal, while Christianity says that there’s no way people could have reached God, so He reached out to people.

It probably sounds a bit ridiculous at first, but just consider this. What was Jesus like? He wasn’t some powerful god-king who came and demanded to be worshiped and served. He didn’t have wealth, palaces, or conquering armies. Heck, the bible even says that he didn’t even have that great of looks. Instead, he was the carpenter son of a carpenter. When he started his ministry, he didn’t set up somewhere with his followers and wait for people to come to him; he went out and spent his days in the cities, towns, and temples. He went to the people. He spent all of his time with people, talking to them, healing them, caring for them.

Just think about that. The God who coordinates and keeps track of everything that happens in the universe cared enough about people to talk to them. He would just sit (or maybe stand) for hours with these huge crowds of people and just to talk. And he wasn’t just there to be heard, either. He compassionately saw them as people who needed loved and who had needs. When they were hungry, he provided food. When the sick and disabled were brought to him, he healed them. When children came to him, he held them and loved them.

He is not a god who wants someone to say the right magic words, or prove themselves with righteous and pious works.  He is the God that wants to know his children.

I’d also point out that Jesus’s answers to the world’s ills and suffering was not to transcend (aka, ignore) it or accept it as the status quo.  His answer was: if you want suffering to stop, stop causing others to suffer.  He wanted people to love and take care of each other.  He made this idea…this taste of heaven on earth…one of the central tenets of Christianity.

And that is what stands out about Christianity to me.

I posted about this awhile back, but I want to get some more of my thoughts out on the subject. And seeing as how this is my blog, it sees like a good place to do it.

One of the things that really bothers me is that there are a good number of Christians who hold several peculiar beliefs that I disagree with:

1. The Bible is the infallible Word of God
2. Any part of the Bible can be used for instruction, or in other words, the entire Bible is scripture.
3. All parts of the Bible must be true, or the whole thing is false.

Here are my points that I have been thinking about that address those beliefs:

The Bible is almost entirely written as historical record. Why would God’s word be given to us in the third person perspective, or to phrase it another way, why isn’t the Bible directed at the reader? Everything is written from the perspective of a writer recording events that took place. Nothing is written down as a command to the reader. Even the Ten Commandments, when taken in context, are not commands given to the reader of the book of Exodus, but instead were written down as part of the history of what happened to Moses and the Israelites.

For the portions of the Bible not written as historical record, they are addressed to a specific person or group. For example, look at all the epistles. Each one is addressed to a specific church in a city, or to specific person. These letters are not written with the reader from 2000 years in the future in mind. My wife went to a Bible study group once, and when she asked who the book of Hebrews was written to, the group replied, “Us!” She explained that she meant the original recipient, and the group still replied, “Us!” No one there seemed to understand that these parts of the Bible were written to specific people at specific times in the past. My point is, they aren’t written to us today.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that the Bible has no significance or value. I am saying that it’s not the literal word of God…and there’s no reason why it has to be. Christianity does not lose anything by the Bible being a collection of historical records and letters instead of the word of God. The illustration of man’s sin and need for a savior is still there, and the account of Christ’s death and resurrection is still there. Whether or not God wrote/inspired the writings is inconsequential because the truth is still there.

A down side to viewing the Bible as the word of God is that a lot of people, Christians and non-Christians alike, think that if one part of the Bible is proven wrong, then the whole Bible is wrong. When you view the Bible as a collection of historical writings, that way of thinking makes no sense. For example, a lot of people get bent out of shape about evolution because they realize that there are some pretty big differences between the creation account and the evolutionary time line that make creation account somewhat questionable. That in turn makes the whole Bible suspect…unless you understand that the book of Genesis was written by a different person in a different time than the book of Matthew or John was written. That means that the accuracy of one book in the Bible has absolutely nothing to do with the accuracy of the rest.

And that makes sense. I wouldn’t think that my National Geographic is false because I found out an inaccuracy in Time Magazine. But years of Christians being conditioned to see the Bible as one big book has lead to people making that rather obvious mistake.

It comes down to this. The Bible is not the word of God, and it has no authority of it’s own. There is no place in the Bible where it A) collectively claims to be a anything, much less the word of God, or it B) claims any authority over the reader. The Bible presents the reader with the history of the Hebrew people, the account of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, and the account of what happened during the early Church, along with some letters written between early Christians. The reader of these things is never commanded to do anything…which is logical…the Bible is a book, it has no power, no authority of it’s own that it could command anyone to do anything. Instead, the reader must consider the information presented, and decide what his or her response will be.

I frequently visit Reddit.com to read news, comment on the news, and attempt to debate with other people.  I wrote this comment ealier in response to another commenter in an article about Barack Obama and some statements he made about having a nation based on the Bible.  I thought the comment I made would make an interesting read for anyone who sees this.  This isn’t the entirety of what I believe about the Bible, but it is a good summary.

Apparently you are missing point of the article, and really don’t understand the bible at all.

If you read the article, then you realize that Obama’s points make sense. The Bible contradicts itself several times, and is nonsensical throughout many passages.

That wasn’t his point at all. He was pointing out that while many Christians say that we need to follow the Bible, a lot of them don’t even know what parts they want followed. And it’s not a matter of contradiction….it’s a matter of how things changed from Old Testament to New Testament. The New Testament, very basically, says that the stuff in the Old Testament is no longer needed to absolve sin, because Christ did it once for all men with his death.

Calling such things contradictions is like reading the beginning of a book where someone is alive, then reading the end where the person is dead, and calling it a contradiction because the book said the person was both alive and dead. You have to read the stuff in between to understand what happened to make that change.

Honestly, though many parts of the Bible are beautifully written and expound beautiful truths, there are other parts that are just awful.

Here’s the trap that a lot of people, Christian and non-Christian alike, fall into. They see the Bible as an instruction book, when it’s really not. I blame the Christians for this, because they’ve been touting it as an instruction book for a long time.

The truth of the matter is that the Bible is a history book. It is a collection of writings from various ancient authors who recorded what happened. Just because something is in the Bible does not mean that it is good. Many evil things are recorded as having happened…as history is filled with evil things along with good.

Nowhere in the Bible is the reader commanded to do anything. The Old Testament is mostly history of the Hebrew people, prophecy, and some philosophy. In the New Testament, the gospel books record what Jesus said and did. The book of Acts records what the early Church was like. The books after that are the Epistles (mostly letters from the Apostles to various churches).  A lot of people read these Epistles as though they were written to them, and not to a church that existed 1700+ years ago.  Not everything is meant for us today, and it is left to the reader of the Bible to figure out what all of it means and what to do with the knowledge.

I read an article today about how the pastors of six “mega-churches” are being investigated by the Senate on suspicion of using their “non-profit” churches for their own gain. The wealth of some of these guys made me sick. One has a salary of near a million dollars. One drives a car worth more than a lot of peoples’ houses. Another has a house overlooking the pacific worth $10 million that he calls a “parsonage” to avoid taxes. You can read the article here. Apparently a lot of their success is due to a questionable (heretical?) teaching called the Prosperity Doctrine, which basically states that wealth is how God blesses people. That explains the large congregations, I suppose. People like to hear that they’re supposed to rich. Too bad they seem to have missed this inconvenient bible verse out of Acts:

“The whole congregation of believers was united as one–one heart, one mind! They didn’t even claim ownership of their own possessions. No one said, “That’s mine; you can’t have it.” They shared everything. The apostles gave powerful witness to the resurrection of the Master Jesus, and grace was on all of them.

“And so it turned out that not a person among them was needy. Those who owned fields or houses sold them and brought the price of the sale to the apostles and made an offering of it. The apostles then distributed it according to each person’s need.”

Acts 4:32-35 (The Message)

It seems to me that while wealth can be a blessing from God, it is even more a way for wealthy Christians to be able to bless those who were less fortunate. This verse clearly shows that. However, this message that says the wealthy should give generously to other Christians in need would be far from popular in these “mega-churches”. The Prosperity Doctrine tells the wealthy that they are good people because God has blessed them so much. The poor, on the other hand, must being doing something wrong because God has not blessed them. This leads to the logical conclusion that the poor need to be more pious if they wish to attain wealth, and the wealthy have no responsibility to help them out. This is sad, and could not be further from the truth.