I spent 44 years as a Christian trying to get close to God. (And do not dare tell me I wasn't sincere or that I didn't really believe.) There is no evidence of a spiritual world and thus a spiritual aspirant is misguided. The Bible is not the word of any god and is certainly not evidence in favor of such an idea. That gods have been worshiped is evidence only that man is a seeker of patterns and an ascriber of intents.
BTW, try to get your story straight. You say the scriptures are evidence of god, then you say the only evidence is faith within myself.
I apologize for the lengthiness.
There's no doubt in me that your faith was unshakable. In fact if it's one thing I admire about Christians it's their strong Faith. It is impossible to get physical evidence of the spiritual world. The journey to realization/God is a personal experience. Scriptures are evidence that God did walk the Earth many times before. However if you truly wish to see solid evidence of God Himself you must turn within and put into practice the teachings of the scriptures. It is unfortunate that the Bible today contains more lies than Truth. Reason being is that Jesus parables have been misinterpreted due to the fact that those whom were translating it had no spiritual foundation to begin with. It has also been tampered with over history too much by the hands of men possessed by greed and power. It would take a true saint of high spiritual discrimination to actually find within it, verses, that are from the original text(what Jesus truly said). Hence Christianity is now elaborately designed by man to specifically have men shun the long practiced spiritual teachings of the East that came long before the advent of Christ and upheld by various saints even A.D. So much so that they intentionally left out the Gospel of Thomas because it too much resemble the teachings of the East.
There is no doubt that the Message of Jesus over time has been convoluted. Thomas Jefferson, the 3rd president of the USA and author of the American Declaration of Independence, wrote to his colleague John Adams, the 2nd president of the USA, and expressed his concern regarding the ‘corruption of Christianity’. He had cut up a version of the King James Bible and pasted phrases on different pages classifying them into those which he felt could be attributed to Jesus and those he was convinced were false. In his letter Jefferson states, “In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man, and that other portions are the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts as it is to pick out diamonds from a dunghill.” Indeed Jefferson was shocked and offended that the words of Jesus had been altered so much. All reputable scholars today recognize that the official gospels were compiled in Greek many decades after the Crucifixion of Jesus, by persons who had never heard Him speak or seen the original Aramaic. Furthermore, these reputable scholars agree that much of what Jesus was supposed to have said really originated in the teachings of the early church. What was actually the wisdom teachings of Jesus was replaced or obscured by teachings about Jesus. Jesus taught that the Lord, whom He referred to as the Father, not only existed, but that He loves everyone. He stated that to know Him, one must overcome egoism and attachment to the things of this world.
Jesus repeatedly emphasized ‘Kingdom of heaven is within you’. "If your leaders say to you, 'Look, the (Father's) kingdom is in the sky’, then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea’ then the fish will precede you. Rather, the (Father's) kingdom is within you and it is outside you. “When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty (meaning ignorance)." [Thomas #3]
A group of 150 Bible scholars named the Jesus Seminar, had studied all the 4 gospels as well as the gospel of Thomas which was found among the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1945, and had reached an overwhelming agreement on what Christ said and what He didn’t, I had something to test their work with. I thought their findings had to be very similar to or congruent with the spiritual teachings of the East because these are ageless truths that have been given to us by Lord Krishna in the Gita, and by many God Men who have lived in different ages(Buddha, Jesus, Allah).
These Bible scholars came from different churches and research centers, including universities. They published their findings in 1993, 1998, and 1999, which has shed light on what truly was the message of Jesus Christ. Surprisingly, their conclusions were that the Gospel of Thomas, which is not included in the Bible is the most authentic text available. It contains 114 sayings of Jesus without commentary. Sathya Sai has told us that Mathew was a tax collector who visited the fishermen, and was the one who knew to write and therefore put down what Jesus said.
Many sayings thought to be legitimate appear not only in the Gospel of Thomas but also in the Gospels of Mathew, Mark and Luke. For example:
The disciples said to Jesus, "Tell us what Heaven's kingdom is like."He said to them, "It's like a mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds, but when it falls on prepared soil, it produces a large plant and becomes a shelter for birds of the sky." [Thomas #20; Mathew 13/31, 32; Mark 4/30, 32 & Luke 13/18, 19].
"The Kingdom of Heaven is like leaven which a woman took and concealed in 50lbs of flour until it was all leavened" [Mathew 13/33; Luke 13/20, 21 & Thomas #96]
"Listen to me all of you and try to understand. It is not what goes into a person from the outside that can defile, rather it's what comes out that will defile" [Mark 7/14, 15; Mathew 15/10, 11 & Thomas 14.5]
"That's why I tell you don't fret about your life, what you are going to eat and drink, about your body, what you are going to wear. There is more to living than food and clothing, isn't there? Take a look at the birds of the sky. They plant or harvest or gather into barns yet your heavenly father feeds them. You are worth more than they aren't you? Can any of you add one hour to life by fretting about it? Don't worry about clothes, notice how the wild lilies grow. They don't slave and they never spin. Yet let me tell you, even Solomon at the height of his glory was never decked out like one of them. So don't fret and say what am I going to eat, what am I going to drink or what am I going to wear?" [Mathew 6/25; Luke 12/22; Thomas 36].
What Jesus did not say. There was an overwhelming consensus among the scholars of the Jesus Seminar that the text of the Gospel of John, the Epistles of Paul, the Book of Acts and the Book of Revelation contained only few words that could be attributed to Jesus. Most of them rather were likely to be the words of early church evangelists who taught that the person of Jesus was the message and that one needed to accept Him as one’s savior in order to enter the kingdom of heaven.
According to Elaine Pagels in her book Beyond Belief the Book of John was written by an unknown scholar, probably in Ephesus, at the end of the first century, in order to refute the Gospel of Thomas. Thomas’ gospel encourages one not so much to believe in Jesus, as to seek to know God through one’s own divinely given capacity. While John asks the reader to believe in Jesus to have his sins forgiven. This was a compelling argument for the establishment of the Church as it does not require any spiritual discipline. John’s gospel also differs from Mathew, Mark and Luke in many ways, especially in the final days. John also calls Jesus, Lord and God, titles which Jesus did not give to Himself in the other gospels. Only John presents a critical portrait of Thomas, and has invented the character “doubting Thomas”.
The Real Bible and Its Message Revealed by Sathya Sai Baba Baba
This would not be complete without mentioning what Baba stated at the time of materializing the miniature Bible on Christmas morning in 1996. He said:
" There is a book compiled in Britain around 1530 AD containing all the information about Jesus gathered during the preceding centuries. The Russians condensed all this material in a small book which they preserved in a place on the Black Sea coast. Baba then produced the little book by a circular wave of his hand and held it before the audience.
"This is the book. You can see the cross on the cover page. The book was designed to demonstrate the common features of all religions. What is contained in this book is not to be found even in the Bible. It contains an entirely new account of the life of Jesus. It is not open to all to understand the ways of the Lord. To know about God one has to develop godly feelings. In this book, there are book-mark threads which distinguish every faith by a sloka relating to it."
In this message, Sathya Sai Baba has made two important points:
The life of Jesus was different than what we know about Him in the Bible.
Respect for all faiths was seen by the authors of this Bible as an important part of understanding the teachings of Jesus, who showed His followers how to love everyone.
So the next time we read the Bible or listen to someone quoting Jesus, we can use the touchstone of Baba’s teachings to verify the Truth. ........................Materialise means to create by Divine will.
http://www.saibaba.ws/miracles/christianbook.htm
Christianity today will always instigate conflict. They are destructive towards many because of one thing and that is that they think they own God. They think that their God is the only true God. They limit the name of God to their religion and community. Jesus never said that the only way to God is through him alone. What spiritual Master in their right mind would say such an uncouth and ignorant thing? Something that can destroy a person both within and without. This is evidence of human tampering and mistranslations. All sages who came before Jesus knew the dangers of ego so they all preached against it. Jesus never said many of the things that is within the Bible today. In fact He lead a life completely different to the one the Bible insinuates. Jesus preached Love and Unity and never created a religion. He preached in accordance to the spiritual teachings that were taught since the beginning of time by countless sages and avatars. Do you know why so many follow this religion called Christianity today? It's because it's easy. There is no spiritual disciplining involved. No sense control. Instead it says, "Come to me, there is no need for spiritual development, there is no need to cast out the ego, control the senses or sacrifice the desires with which the body torments man and put into practice what sages and avatars taught from time immemorial, there is no need to undertake such tedious tasks that refines one to become eligible to enter the Kingdom of God, no, there is no need to practice God's word. You need just accept me and you can escape it. This is the Bible today which encourages one to disregard all spiritual teachings that came long before the time of Jesus. Even Jesus truly, never disregarded such teachings, instead He preached of the Uniting Love that it was and will always be. But today man has made Him/God into a selfish, hateful, jealous person,..they have made Him verily into a human being. People love the Bible because it provides an escape and an excuse for man to use whenever he does something ignorant towards another fellow human being. Many Christians commit suicide because they have no peace within, because they are indoctrinated into this religion, taught to follow God and fear God, taught that they're born with sin so therefor they must live their lives in repentance all without giving them a solid spiritual foundation for them to work on. This goes against everything Jesus taught in man's attempt to create a cult for power and control. You see the destruction is both within and without. The Bible today doesn't teach one to deal with the destruction of ego, pride, selfishness, desires, lust, hate, greed, anger that plagues man from within, so naturally this is manifested through their actions in the material world. People talk of Christ's sacrifice as evidenced by his crucifixion. But, he was surrounded and bound, and crowned by the crowd who captured him with the crown of thorns, and later, nailed to the cross by his captors. A person bound and beaten by the police cannot say that he has sacrificed everything, for he is not a free man. Let us pay attention to the sacrifice that Jesus made while free, out of his own volition. He sacrificed his happiness, prosperity, comfort, safety and position. He braved the enmity of the powerful. He refused to yield or compromise. He renounced the ego, which is the toughest thing to get rid of. Honour Him for these. He willingly sacrificed the desires with which the body torments man. This sacrifice is greater than the sacrifice of the body under duress. These so call religions today are more of an escape from such difficult, spiritual tasks and an elevator of animalistic qualities. There is only one religion my friend and that is the religion of Love. There is only one language, the language of the Heart. There is only one caste, the caste of Humanity. This is the Unity, Truth and Love when you strip away all the labels of religion. This is the essence of the teachings of great men such as Buddha, Krishna, Jesus and Allah, it is the essence of all religions, before man came in with their limited minds and disturbed it with their limited understanding of these sayings. This is why I said such is common sense to the spiritual aspirant who delves without bias into sacred spiritual texts in an attempt to understand or get closer to God.
Without such patterns to live by the world today would be in much more chaos than it is currently in. Without Morality, there can be no righteousness in the world. Luckily God has sent forth many teachings on moral behavior through the ages for man to uphold. Such morality can only be upheld/learnt if we have a God to look up to and to be the goal. Otherwise there won't be any inspiration to learn it. Where would the world today be without it? Nuclear War, that's where.