The Trial, Part 2

The point of examining my beliefs is not to examine every possible question that comes to mind. Christianity is a poor source for answers to certain questions like, "What brand of laundry detergent should I use?" "Should I as a Christian care about why the sky is blue?" As practical or interesting as such questions are, what I've decided to put on trial are my beliefs specific to Christianity.

Is there a God? What is God like? How can I know? These and many other questions are pertinent, and one source claims to hold the answers. The Bible is readily available to me as an American, where I can search it online, attend a church, visit a bookstore, go to a library, or even a hotel.

The Bible is a collection of stories, records, songs, poems, and narratives written over many years, and is thus a historical document. There are other tomes just as available, just as varied, and just as historical. What makes the Bible remarkable in contrast to other collections is its claim to be true.

Yet we know the documents of the Bible were written by human hands, just like any other literary work. We know the material on which the words were written was susceptible to deterioration over time. There are variations between copies of some of the source material. In translating the documents of the Bible, some have taken it upon themselves to alter the original meanings.

How could the Bible be true in its totality if it has fallen victim to all of these problems? How is it possible that the "inspired word of God" is wholly inerrant? That's what I'm here to find out. I do not accept the English translation of the Bible--any version of it--at face value, for several reasons.

1. People are fallible. A translator may be fluent in every language necessary to read the source documents of the Bible, and yet they are still susceptible to their own biases. In translating the text, a translator will bring their own experience with them, thus tainting the process of translation.

2. People are fallible. Once the source documents of the Bible were translated, there were those who took it upon themselves to argue over them. Those individuals and committees, full of their own agendas and notions, actually went to physical war over which books should be considered the sacred word of God, and which should not.

3. People are fallible. After the Bible as most know it today had been translated, fought over, and compiled, it was eventually made available to the clergy, and then to commoners. Those who read the Bible bring their own prejudicial perspectives and ideas to the experience of reading the Bible.

In essence, the process by which we have obtained the Bible seems much like a complicated game of "telephone." Line up a million people at random. One whispers to another, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," and down the line it goes. Logically, it makes a certain kind of sense that the last person in that line will swear the message was, "If you like to talk to tomatoes..."

And yet, I believe in God, and in the inerrancy of the Bible. Why? We'll talk about that in my next post.
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Waddler
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