Hello everyone. First of all, I am new here so I am not sure whether this is the right sub-forum to start such discussions, as it is not really a "struggle" but rather mere curiosity from someone who has never been religious.
Even though I am not by any means religious in the Christian sense, I find theology and the psychology behind it quite interesting, as it is rather alien to my way of seeing the world and I keep having questions when I read about it. I think the best way to address them would be to ask religious people directly.
The first question I wanted to ask in this forum is. As a Christian, what is the criteria you use to choose the bible as the "ultimate truth" and reject others such as the Qur'an, Talmud, Book of Mormon, etc...?
I am hoping for answers with arguments as objective as possible and, of course, arguments that are valid in the general sense (for example, not simply "because I was raised that way")
Thank you for taking your time to answer!
Good question. For me, that wasn't even likely, that I would ever consider one text better than another, being agnostic.
I was an explorer though. One great find was Bill Moyer's 6 hours of interviews with Campbell -- The Power of Myth -- illustrated with many stories done beautifully on screen in art. A lot of fun, rich. You learn that myths have valuable insights into the human condition.
They are stories in metaphorical form about life and how to live.
I did want to find wisdom though in more than only a few good stories.
So, as you would expect then, I went about doing so. I read Lao Tzu--The Tao. I read Emerson, the transcendentalist. I read parts of Plato, Nietzsche, and many other philosophers. I read through entire books of quotes, searching out the originators that seemed the most potent in wisdom, and then reading more from those individuals.
I read extensively in psychology. I read Jung, many hours (deep and challenging to read, great intellectual exercise).
I read history, plenty of it. You begin to see that the human condition is a tendency to war. It's what humans do.
So, that made me interested again in an old bit I'd read once, earlier, the stuff that said --
"Love your neighbor as yourself."
Because it....is a way to avoid the war thing. See, it's more than just a nice day, or a pleasant thing to do.
It's like how to avoid having dozens, hundreds, thousands of people killed in some new little war, or millions in some new large war....
Especially when you get more of that text, and then you encounter this:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’
But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also....
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’
"But I tell you, love your enemies... "
!
See? It's actually what it takes for us to stop killing each other.
If you read more in that text you find such things as this:
"So in everything, do to others as you would have them do to you..."
After a while, I began to realize it was an intersection set of all the best truths from all the other philosophies and religions.
See?
After I actually tested the radical "Love your enemy", and found it to my real surprise that this antagonist of several years was suddenly truly a friend and truly loving me....(!!???!).... Well, you start to wonder then. Is everything He said true?
Each thing I tested of Jesus of Nazareth turned out to work better than any other way. All of it.
That was very suggestive, so I began to really seek to learn more of what He said, in the accounts called the "gospels".
