I'm sure I'm a rather strange sort of Christian. Many Christians would say I am certainly no such thing, and many atheists would tell me I am just an atheist in disguise, sort of like my favorite philosopher and thinker, Benedictus de Spinoza. It is indeed, extremely complicated. I believe that, after Christ, Spinoza was the world's greatest teacher. Teacher with a small 't', whereas Christ has the big 'T'. How and why do I believe this? Well, you would have to be me, in order to understand that. Since you are not me, all you can do is get an idea, based on what I type here, in this space, about what I think, what I believe, and why.
We're all individuals, yet we are social creatures. The 'I' is precious, inviolate, and absolutely necessary; but taken too far, the 'I' becomes a mere animal, seeking nothing but its own survival. God, in His infinite wisdom, gave to mankind the ability to put a muzzle on the 'I'. Man (kind) saw that, in order to survive, I am forced to use my brain, since I, unlike the birds, who know how to make their nests without being taught, do not know how to make a teepee, or an igloo, just by instinct. I need to be taught how to do it. ie: I am like the other animals, and yet there's a difference, and a great difference.
etc, etc...but that's for other threads.
This thread is about the Bible. I do regard the Bible as sacred, but then I regard almost all text as sacred, since text is mankind's way of transferring information to other beings, and also storing, and saving information, external to the brain, on tangible objects, like stone, wax, or paper. The Bible is sacred, but so is Spinoza's Ethica, Milton's Paradise Lost, Keats's Hyperion fragments, and George Eliot's Adam Bede. Etc, etc.
I do not believe that the Bible is inerrant. In fact, I think it's just as "errant" as any other collection of texts. Let's not forget: the Bible is not one book. It's a big collection of books, written over the course of several centuries, in different languages, by various individuals, identified or anonymous, translated and re-translated, over and over, for two millennia. Naturally, such a collection of documents are going to be flawed. It seems so to me. As a matter of fact, I'd say it's a miracle that we have anything substantive and coherent, intercontextual, and in some kind of concordance, after so much shuffling, translating, selecting (Nicea), chopping, editing, embellishing, interpreting, etc, etc, over all that time, and in so many hands.
I'll have more to add later, as I need to go to work in a few hours.
All I can say is, I believe in God, the Father of fathers; I believe that Jesus Christ came to speak His word, at that time, in that place. I also believe that the game of telephone was on, instantly, due to our fallibility, our emotions, our private, personal designs and schemes, our corruption, our agendas, etc, etc.
I believe that Jesus Christ knew, from a very early age, exactly what He was supposed to do, and what that would entail. I believe He was a Man of supreme courage, intelligence, and perseverance. I believe He was also divine, though my puny human brain does not understand exactly what that means.