The Bible / Scripture
Someone once asked me, if the reason I do not take the Bible literally was all about not putting the label of "God's Word" onto that which is an "old fashioned" or "narrow-minded" practice. I responded simply, 'I suppose it depends on how you see it for yourself,' as accurate a statement as I could ever make since I believe we must all determine that particular sort of question for ourselves. Since he did ask for my input, however, I figured the least I could do was oblige the question with an answer.
It's never really been about "old fashioned" or "narrow minded" in my book. Mainly because both of those terms are stereotypically quite negative. But they are somewhat accurate, in "intent" anyway if not in negativity. All I'd say to such a statement is that times change.
Times have changed. I don't see a particular need to force the culture of our current day and age into the mold of a culture that sat over two-thousand years in the past. We live now -- not then. I find it somewhat humorous that when doling relationship advice out like chalky-candy from a Pez-dispenser, it is acceptable to insist people not live in their past relationships with exes. Instead, move on! Look to the future! Learn from the past, but live in the moment!
Somewhat hypocritical, to say the least.
At any rate, as to the direct reference to the Bible as "God's word" -- I don't think the Bible is God's word.
You don't believe the Bible is the Word of God?
At least not in the direct sense of the term, anyway. I see the Bible as a collection of the minds of men (and women). The individuals (all human, all mortal) who wrote the Bible, wrote down a lot of theological and cultural (time-sensitive) references and information that show how they were attempting to understand religion and faith, as well as the world around them.
They wrote about how they thought life should be lived; however, just as people once believed the world was flat, and the center of the universe, they did not necessarily write with the authority of literal fact. People wrote in ways they can comprehend, and they wrote with the facts known to them at any point in time -- Actually, that point alone is a reason I have undertaken the writing of this book at all. We've meandered far, far away from allowing humanity to express how they feel as individuals on any particular topic, allowing the rest of us to absorb that information, and decide if it is relevant to ourselves or our lives.
Humanity is well-meaning, yet flawed. It is difficult to imagine, and impossible for me to profess, ever taking every word in the Bible as literal fact. I don't believe any of it came directly from God, nor do I believe it was intended to be taken for all eternity as the final-say handbook on life, forever and ever. It was meant to inspire, to guide, to prompt us seeking God in our own personal lives. Even if it contains a narrative account of what happened at the time [which is debatable at best], it still wasn't written or inspired by God. It's just another cave painting. Ancient man would make use of his or her resources in drawings on the walls of caves or primitive dwellings in order to record stories, history, religious beliefs, politics (primitive politics are still politics, just look at the United States over the majority of the last decade), and so on. This practice has remained intact throughout human history, with the exception of the tools we use to complete the task: we moved from caves, to man-made walls and structures, to paper and books, and now onward to computers and technology.
The driving factor behind the practice itself remains generally the same: humanity's want and need to record not only what they believed, but what they felt, and what they thought. And something as especially subjective as religion and faith is always going to be influenced by time, culture, corruption, and basic human fallibility.
Simply put, the Bible is a human construction. It contains the writing of man, the promises of man, and the errors of man. It does not make good and decent sense to consider any book written by human beings as the "authoritative word of God".
If the Bible isn't directly from God... what are it's origins?
This is best explained along side a section that defines the origins of Christianity, which I'll get into in a different document. The most important fact to take away from that article, is the fact that the Bible and Christianity were not news... in fact, the religion itself along side the holy book that goes with it was largely based on spiritual beliefs that have been around for thousands of years before the birth of Christianity.
The Bible was never meant to be taken literally, nor were any other spiritual stories in human history. They are attempts to explain a person's spiritual perspective, how to connect with God, how to understand and live life, and so on... they are deep with allegory and hidden meaning, and they must be read and interpreted with an open heart and mind.
Similarly, just as the Bible is not a literal book, nor is it an historical book either. The writers of the Bible were not intent as historians. Their purpose was to write down spiritual concepts so that others might feel and know God for themselves.
So, you don't regard the Bible at all?
No, that's not what I'm saying. In fact, I do read it regularly.
Despite everything I just wrote, I don't think the Bible is "bad". The Bible's beauty and value should always be acknowledged. Throughout the book, it does offer a good examination of how other people attempted to live lives for God, and in turn it can show us a foot-hold from which we can gain our own grip on our individual religious or spiritual paths.
Many parts of the Bible are absolutely rich with metaphor and meaning. These stories can truly enrich our understanding of ourselves and others, the world in which we live, and existence in general as we have come to know it even today. It does have good moral values in it's pages -- and so does an Aesop fable. Some non-Christians, particularly angry atheists and Pagans (*ducks*), enjoy using the term "Fairy-tale" to anger their Christian peers. To me, the word is perhaps more factual than it is untrue, and it remains a term that holds no real insult in my book.
The Bible's ability to show us a lot about early faith in God is also incredibly valuable on many levels (historical [limited], theological, cultural, and literary levels alike). It gives us a starting point, a "jumping-off point", in examining and deciding how to live our lives faithfully and morally. The Biblical authors and early followers just wanted to please God.
Now that is a message I can get behind, and it's far from a negative circumstance ... but. To interpret every word as literal, and in the process to ignore literary device (poetry, prose, metaphor, allegory, and so on), culturally-sensitive and time-sensitive information, along with human error and fallibility... I personally can't do it, nor would I ever suggest to anyone else that they should in good conscience throw out common-sense, decency, logic, reason, culture of the modern day, and a personal relationship with God when reading the Bible for themselves.
While there is much in the Bible that is good on many levels (even if not on a literal level), it needs to be kept in mind that there is much contained and described in the Bible that is destructive in a multitude of ways: destructive of equality, unity, relationship, good judgment, self-esteem, common sense, progress, modern culture, and so on. These among many other things. I do think that the authors of the Bible (in it's original day, that is) did their best to describe their experiences of God, but unfortunately good intentions do not a perfect book make. The Bible has created a legacy of judgment, despair, anger, hatred, discord, and sorrow.
Personally, as a progressive Christian... I simply choose not to burden myself with such blatant negativity. I firmly believe we are all individually and collectively responsible to challenge the claims of both the Bible's content and humanity's claims to its inerrancy (which includes direct scrutiny and challenge to all human thoughts, words, actions and behaviors that suggest and/or support such claims).
The Bible is not "all bad"; but, it is imperfect, and it should be regarded with both an open mind and an air of caution.
What about the "Gnostic Gospels"?
There are other pieces of scripture out there that the Church disregarded in the early years after the death of Christ and the beginning of Christianity. There were actually many more pieces of scripture than what now appears in our New Testament.
In the early years of Christian faith, there were two groups of people at very different ends of the spectrum of faith: Those who believed the way to God was through growth in knowledge that was not limited to mere words, and more Orthodox by-the-book attitudes that demanded perfect order and obedience to one way and one way only. These two groups clashed directly at the First council of Nicea, and this is when the "other" side, the more Gnostic side, lost the game. Orthodox views became common place, great thinkers and philosophers were called heretics, great works once deemed full of knowledge were burned, and people who were once heralded as having great insight were threatened, tortured, and even murdered.
At any rate, once the two sides clashed at the Council and Orthodox views won out, Books were burned and outlawed, including any scriptures that went against what was chosen by "The Church" as being appropriate. This would have included the Gnostic scriptures in all forms.
People weren't even allowed to read scripture for themselves for many, many years anyway -- only Clergy taught them what it said and what it meant. As a result, all of the other works and scriptures were lost, and all of the knowledge along with it. Some works have been discovered in more recent times along the way, including what some now call the Gnostic Gospels, or the Nag Hammadi library, a collection of leather-bound codices found in the mid-20th-century. These works were found to contain alleged sayings attributed to Jesus, "secret" or "hidden" teachings and knowledge of Christ and/or God, and information on various ways some early religious/spiritual sects viewed God, creation, the universe, humanity, death, life, and so on..
Today, the source for both some of the Gnostic Gospels and some of the more common Gospels that we know (the four contained in the Bible) is actually able to be traced back to a common source: The Q, which is sadly now lost for ever. However, study of <i>all</i> the Gospel writings is allowing us to re-create portions of what Q potentially looked like. But.. to get into all of this here? Would just be silly and would take me into another entire document of it's own, as already mentioned. These scriptures however are worth a website of their own. In order to understand the Council of Nicea, the Nag Hammadi Library, and what the Church did in the early days... you really need to do this study on your own, and not allow anyone (including me) to influence what you learn on the way.
At the end of the day, even these additional writings are only small pieces of the greater puzzle that is God and spirituality.
You quote the Bible more heavily in some documents here and there. Why?
As mentioned above, I do consider the Bible a good resource in many ways, as long as we are taking a look at the meaning behind the words in question. The Bible does contain incredibly good spiritual information. It's important to learn how to properly derive meaning from what exists. It is also important for Progressive Christianity to build on existing roots (like existing Biblical scripture), to transform the faith not into something brand new, but into what Christianity should have been, and what it was throughout the first couple of centuries of its existence.
Someone once asked me, if the reason I do not take the Bible literally was all about not putting the label of "God's Word" onto that which is an "old fashioned" or "narrow-minded" practice. I responded simply, 'I suppose it depends on how you see it for yourself,' as accurate a statement as I could ever make since I believe we must all determine that particular sort of question for ourselves. Since he did ask for my input, however, I figured the least I could do was oblige the question with an answer.
It's never really been about "old fashioned" or "narrow minded" in my book. Mainly because both of those terms are stereotypically quite negative. But they are somewhat accurate, in "intent" anyway if not in negativity. All I'd say to such a statement is that times change.
Times have changed. I don't see a particular need to force the culture of our current day and age into the mold of a culture that sat over two-thousand years in the past. We live now -- not then. I find it somewhat humorous that when doling relationship advice out like chalky-candy from a Pez-dispenser, it is acceptable to insist people not live in their past relationships with exes. Instead, move on! Look to the future! Learn from the past, but live in the moment!
Somewhat hypocritical, to say the least.
At any rate, as to the direct reference to the Bible as "God's word" -- I don't think the Bible is God's word.
You don't believe the Bible is the Word of God?
At least not in the direct sense of the term, anyway. I see the Bible as a collection of the minds of men (and women). The individuals (all human, all mortal) who wrote the Bible, wrote down a lot of theological and cultural (time-sensitive) references and information that show how they were attempting to understand religion and faith, as well as the world around them.
They wrote about how they thought life should be lived; however, just as people once believed the world was flat, and the center of the universe, they did not necessarily write with the authority of literal fact. People wrote in ways they can comprehend, and they wrote with the facts known to them at any point in time -- Actually, that point alone is a reason I have undertaken the writing of this book at all. We've meandered far, far away from allowing humanity to express how they feel as individuals on any particular topic, allowing the rest of us to absorb that information, and decide if it is relevant to ourselves or our lives.
Humanity is well-meaning, yet flawed. It is difficult to imagine, and impossible for me to profess, ever taking every word in the Bible as literal fact. I don't believe any of it came directly from God, nor do I believe it was intended to be taken for all eternity as the final-say handbook on life, forever and ever. It was meant to inspire, to guide, to prompt us seeking God in our own personal lives. Even if it contains a narrative account of what happened at the time [which is debatable at best], it still wasn't written or inspired by God. It's just another cave painting. Ancient man would make use of his or her resources in drawings on the walls of caves or primitive dwellings in order to record stories, history, religious beliefs, politics (primitive politics are still politics, just look at the United States over the majority of the last decade), and so on. This practice has remained intact throughout human history, with the exception of the tools we use to complete the task: we moved from caves, to man-made walls and structures, to paper and books, and now onward to computers and technology.
The driving factor behind the practice itself remains generally the same: humanity's want and need to record not only what they believed, but what they felt, and what they thought. And something as especially subjective as religion and faith is always going to be influenced by time, culture, corruption, and basic human fallibility.
Simply put, the Bible is a human construction. It contains the writing of man, the promises of man, and the errors of man. It does not make good and decent sense to consider any book written by human beings as the "authoritative word of God".
If the Bible isn't directly from God... what are it's origins?
This is best explained along side a section that defines the origins of Christianity, which I'll get into in a different document. The most important fact to take away from that article, is the fact that the Bible and Christianity were not news... in fact, the religion itself along side the holy book that goes with it was largely based on spiritual beliefs that have been around for thousands of years before the birth of Christianity.
The Bible was never meant to be taken literally, nor were any other spiritual stories in human history. They are attempts to explain a person's spiritual perspective, how to connect with God, how to understand and live life, and so on... they are deep with allegory and hidden meaning, and they must be read and interpreted with an open heart and mind.
Similarly, just as the Bible is not a literal book, nor is it an historical book either. The writers of the Bible were not intent as historians. Their purpose was to write down spiritual concepts so that others might feel and know God for themselves.
So, you don't regard the Bible at all?
No, that's not what I'm saying. In fact, I do read it regularly.
Despite everything I just wrote, I don't think the Bible is "bad". The Bible's beauty and value should always be acknowledged. Throughout the book, it does offer a good examination of how other people attempted to live lives for God, and in turn it can show us a foot-hold from which we can gain our own grip on our individual religious or spiritual paths.
Many parts of the Bible are absolutely rich with metaphor and meaning. These stories can truly enrich our understanding of ourselves and others, the world in which we live, and existence in general as we have come to know it even today. It does have good moral values in it's pages -- and so does an Aesop fable. Some non-Christians, particularly angry atheists and Pagans (*ducks*), enjoy using the term "Fairy-tale" to anger their Christian peers. To me, the word is perhaps more factual than it is untrue, and it remains a term that holds no real insult in my book.
The Bible's ability to show us a lot about early faith in God is also incredibly valuable on many levels (historical [limited], theological, cultural, and literary levels alike). It gives us a starting point, a "jumping-off point", in examining and deciding how to live our lives faithfully and morally. The Biblical authors and early followers just wanted to please God.
Now that is a message I can get behind, and it's far from a negative circumstance ... but. To interpret every word as literal, and in the process to ignore literary device (poetry, prose, metaphor, allegory, and so on), culturally-sensitive and time-sensitive information, along with human error and fallibility... I personally can't do it, nor would I ever suggest to anyone else that they should in good conscience throw out common-sense, decency, logic, reason, culture of the modern day, and a personal relationship with God when reading the Bible for themselves.
While there is much in the Bible that is good on many levels (even if not on a literal level), it needs to be kept in mind that there is much contained and described in the Bible that is destructive in a multitude of ways: destructive of equality, unity, relationship, good judgment, self-esteem, common sense, progress, modern culture, and so on. These among many other things. I do think that the authors of the Bible (in it's original day, that is) did their best to describe their experiences of God, but unfortunately good intentions do not a perfect book make. The Bible has created a legacy of judgment, despair, anger, hatred, discord, and sorrow.
Personally, as a progressive Christian... I simply choose not to burden myself with such blatant negativity. I firmly believe we are all individually and collectively responsible to challenge the claims of both the Bible's content and humanity's claims to its inerrancy (which includes direct scrutiny and challenge to all human thoughts, words, actions and behaviors that suggest and/or support such claims).
The Bible is not "all bad"; but, it is imperfect, and it should be regarded with both an open mind and an air of caution.
What about the "Gnostic Gospels"?
There are other pieces of scripture out there that the Church disregarded in the early years after the death of Christ and the beginning of Christianity. There were actually many more pieces of scripture than what now appears in our New Testament.
In the early years of Christian faith, there were two groups of people at very different ends of the spectrum of faith: Those who believed the way to God was through growth in knowledge that was not limited to mere words, and more Orthodox by-the-book attitudes that demanded perfect order and obedience to one way and one way only. These two groups clashed directly at the First council of Nicea, and this is when the "other" side, the more Gnostic side, lost the game. Orthodox views became common place, great thinkers and philosophers were called heretics, great works once deemed full of knowledge were burned, and people who were once heralded as having great insight were threatened, tortured, and even murdered.
At any rate, once the two sides clashed at the Council and Orthodox views won out, Books were burned and outlawed, including any scriptures that went against what was chosen by "The Church" as being appropriate. This would have included the Gnostic scriptures in all forms.
People weren't even allowed to read scripture for themselves for many, many years anyway -- only Clergy taught them what it said and what it meant. As a result, all of the other works and scriptures were lost, and all of the knowledge along with it. Some works have been discovered in more recent times along the way, including what some now call the Gnostic Gospels, or the Nag Hammadi library, a collection of leather-bound codices found in the mid-20th-century. These works were found to contain alleged sayings attributed to Jesus, "secret" or "hidden" teachings and knowledge of Christ and/or God, and information on various ways some early religious/spiritual sects viewed God, creation, the universe, humanity, death, life, and so on..
Today, the source for both some of the Gnostic Gospels and some of the more common Gospels that we know (the four contained in the Bible) is actually able to be traced back to a common source: The Q, which is sadly now lost for ever. However, study of <i>all</i> the Gospel writings is allowing us to re-create portions of what Q potentially looked like. But.. to get into all of this here? Would just be silly and would take me into another entire document of it's own, as already mentioned. These scriptures however are worth a website of their own. In order to understand the Council of Nicea, the Nag Hammadi Library, and what the Church did in the early days... you really need to do this study on your own, and not allow anyone (including me) to influence what you learn on the way.
At the end of the day, even these additional writings are only small pieces of the greater puzzle that is God and spirituality.
You quote the Bible more heavily in some documents here and there. Why?
As mentioned above, I do consider the Bible a good resource in many ways, as long as we are taking a look at the meaning behind the words in question. The Bible does contain incredibly good spiritual information. It's important to learn how to properly derive meaning from what exists. It is also important for Progressive Christianity to build on existing roots (like existing Biblical scripture), to transform the faith not into something brand new, but into what Christianity should have been, and what it was throughout the first couple of centuries of its existence.
