What's more important, truth or the Bible?

[DreamerOfTheHeart]

I'm aware that the great majority of Bible believers will probably say something along the lines of "The Bible IS the truth", "One can only find the truth in the Bible", "they are both one and the same (truth/Bible)", etc... and that's fine. Even though I myself don't believe the Bible to be true any longer, I was born and raised christian, I was very active in church, always participating in Bible competitions, finishing in the top spots most of the time, I'm also I musician so, I was part of the worship ministry most of the time, pianist of the choir, etc... What I'm trying to get at is that I know exactly what it feels like to really, really believe the Bible is the absolute truth because I truly believed in it pretty much all thirty years out of the first thirty years of my life.

So, the question is not "do you believe the Bible is true" or "do you think the Bible and truth are one and the same", no... my question is 'What's more important for you, is it truth, regardless of all its implications, or is it the Bible, regardless of what the truth actually is?

I would love to hear your positions!
Cheers!

Many false and lifer infant Christians attempt to twist verses of the Bible to their own liking, and they call their twisting out of context "the only reading". Despite the hypocrisy and obviousness of their errors.

Is the Bible truth? Yes. But, is it likely to be properly understood? No. For 'God's ways are above human ways as the heavens are above the earth'.

I find enormous truth in the Bible, but are these truths I find always what mainstream Christianity finds?

Flatly, no.

If not painfully obviously no.

 

[skepticlogician]

Maybe apply some scepticism and logic to your own OP.

What does that have to do with asking for some clarification regarding a claim? You quoted me asking for clarification as to why my question is a false dichotomy. How is your suggestion of 'maybe apply some scepticism [sic] and logic to your own OP' applicable in this case?

 

[TNF_13]

no... my question is 'What's more important for you, is it truth, regardless of all its implications, or is it the Bible, regardless of what the truth actually is?

I would love to hear your positions!
Cheers!

I would go with truth. I believe there is sufficient evidence for the Bible that I need not be concerned with whether the truth runs contrary to the Bible. No, truth and the Bible are not one and the same. But I believe that truth is more important than the Bible, because without the truth, the Bible would hold no meaning.

 

[elliott95]

I'm aware that the great majority of Bible believers will probably say something along the lines of "The Bible IS the truth", "One can only find the truth in the Bible", "they are both one and the same (truth/Bible)", etc... and that's fine. Even though I myself don't believe the Bible to be true any longer, I was born and raised christian, I was very active in church, always participating in Bible competitions, finishing in the top spots most of the time, I'm also I musician so, I was part of the worship ministry most of the time, pianist of the choir, etc... What I'm trying to get at is that I know exactly what it feels like to really, really believe the Bible is the absolute truth because I truly believed in it pretty much all thirty years out of the first thirty years of my life.

So, the question is not "do you believe the Bible is true" or "do you think the Bible and truth are one and the same", no... my question is 'What's more important for you, is it truth, regardless of all its implications, or is it the Bible, regardless of what the truth actually is?

I would love to hear your positions!
Cheers!

I always appreciated the question Nietzche asked something to the effect of 'why truth; why not a lie?"
Is there any absolute value on the truth, where it is more important than anything else, such as the results?
In terms of believing in the Bible, and in God as a result, if the results of believing in it is a happy person committed to morality and purpose and meaning to live one's life, and the results of disbelieving is nihilistic disbelieve that anything is ultimately worthwhile or meaningful, might not the lie be the better choice?

American philosophy under the influence of people like William James has led to a very pragmatic definition of truth. To paraphrase to the extreme, 'whatever works is true'.

With a track record of creating successful societies that have lasted over many millennia now, there is a functional truth to the Bible. It is the job of theologians therefore to presents ways that demonstrate just exactly how the Bible remains true, in this our age of scientific skepticism. The one answer would be that the truths of the Bible are archetypal. They touch upon and stimulate values that have been physiologically built into the human mind through literally millions of years of evolution.
There is much more to human psychic experience than the conscious will and rational thought. We tend to think of the cortex and the type of thinking that it generates uniquely for humans as being the acme of evolutionary development. What might be more true is that the rationalism and logic that are made possible through the evolution of the cortex of the brain are but the tip of the iceberg, and are likely less advanced that the more primary modes of processing information that emanate from more ancient, more primal, deep brain structures.
Now we look at the stories of the Bible rationally and logically and are bemused by the naiveté of it all, with the talking donkeys and snakes, and the histories that are difficult to fully align with known archaeologies. That is the truth for moderns.
But like anyone who survived the Titanic would be able to tell us, there is more to the iceberg than meets the eye. There is more to truth than just scientific inquiry. We are free to ignore that truth about icebergs at our own peril.

 

[faroukfarouk]

The Lord Jesus said: "Thy Word is truth" (John 17.17)

 

[faroukfarouk]

American philosophy under the influence of people like William James has led to a very pragmatic definition of truth. To paraphrase to the extreme, 'whatever works is true'.

The tip of the iceberg might be perceived to 'work', temporarily at a certain level...

 

[elliott95]

The tip of the iceberg might be perceived to 'work', temporarily at a certain level...

I am not sure of what you are trying to say. could you elaborate?

 

[faroukfarouk]

I am not sure of what you are trying to say. could you elaborate?

To put it differently, in relation to what William James said about truth supposedly being (no more than) what works, while you can see what works, yet if one takes as an example the tip of an iceberg, one might think: Hey this is okay; what I see is all I need to know. But what you don't know is what is happening to the submerged greater part of the iceberg (whether melting, disintegrating, etc.).

So whether of not people in North American society think they are for now getting along fine, with what they think they need seemingly working okay, yet as far as forces they don't see are concerned, things may be very different in actual fact in the future.

So it is in the spiritual real of God's Word.

 

[elliott95]

To put it differently, in relation to what William James said about truth supposedly being (no more than) what works, while you can see what works, yet if one takes as an example the tip of an iceberg, one might think: Hey this is okay; what I see is all I need to know. But what you don't know is what is happening to the submerged greater part of the iceberg (whether melting, disintegrating, etc.).

So whether of not people in North American society think they are for now getting along fine, with what they think they need seemingly working okay, yet as far as forces they don't see are concerned, things may be very different in actual fact in the future.

So it is in the spiritual real of God's Word.

That is not what I paraphrased James as saying though, as you yourself know with your parenthesis.
And, therefore, the elaboration of how I used the James quote went on a completely different direction than your own.
"The Bible" is what works, as I have said. The Bible has been what works for 2500+ hundred years, and millennium more, when the true ancientness of the unwritten sources is considered.

There are depths to our human condition that our sciences have not been able to touch.
But the Bible taps into those depths. It gives a truer understanding of the world, therefore, than materialistic science is able to, because it does not assume that what is on the surface and available to our senses is all that there is.

 

[faroukfarouk]

That is not what I paraphrased James as saying though, as you yourself know with your parenthesis.
And, therefore, the elaboration of how I used the James quote went on a completely different direction than your own.
"The Bible" is what works, as I have said. The Bible has been what works for 2500+ hundred years, and millennium more, when the true ancientness of the unwritten sources is considered.

There are depths to our human condition that our sciences have not been able to touch.
But the Bible taps into those depths. It gives a truer understanding of the world, therefore, than materialistic science is able to, because it does not assume that what is on the surface and available to our senses is all that there is.

Some excellent comments there; and I must admit I may have lost the thread of what you said earlier also.

Pragmatism historically is a doctrine which does not admit much to the power and need for Divine revelation.

But yes; if one reads passages such as Ephesians 2 and 1 Peter 1, the power of God's Word does indeed show far reaching consequences for the glory of the Saviour and the blessing of the sinner.

 

[faroukfarouk]

@elliott95 :

Just another example:

If someone saw a photo of someone with studs on his or her earlobes, and this was the only information they had, they might guess that the ears were pierced, or they might surmise that it's possible that they were magnetic studs instead. Without knowledge further revealed, there is no way of having certainty on the basis of the observation of the photo, however strongly some people may argue one way or another about the nature of the studs. Until they learn about the clasps behind the lobes, there is no way of knowing HOW the studs work.

All examples are imperfect from one aspect or another. But it's important that people don't jump to conclusions about spiritual things unless they are given the necessary knowledge from information revealed.

 

[elliott95]

@elliott95 :

Just another example:

Are you ears pierced? if so, if someone saw a photo of you with studs on your earlobes, and this was the only information they had, they might guess that your ears were pierced, or they might surmise that it's possible that they were magnetic studs instead. Without knowledge further revealed, there is no way of having certainty on the basis of the observation of the photo, however strongly some people may argue one way or another about the nature of the studs. Until they learn about the clasps behind your lobes, there is no way of knowing HOW the studs work.

All examples are imperfect from one aspect or another. But it's important that people don't jump to conclusions about spiritual things unless they are given the necessary knowledge from information revealed.

I think my current perspective is being informed by Jordan Peterson's YouTube station.
Jordan B Peterson
His lectures are not really systemic and his reasoning not at all sequential, but I might liken one of the points he is making to modern science looking at the story of Jonah and the Big Fish, and noting that no one can live in the belly of a fish. Case closed, right?
Whether or not people can live in the belly of a fish for three days though, is not even looking at the iceberg above water and assuming that that is al there is. To delve no further into the matter is not just not deep, but it is not even shallow. What it is, is hubris.
Modern ways of deriving at truth through science have their own biases too. The assumption that is very modern is that it is the later brain development in human that is most important, and it is the 'higher' faculties of the cerebral cortex, exponentially developed in humans, that is at the core of our psychology.
But might it not be that the more important driving forces of our will and psychology lie in deeper structures of our brain, parts of the central nervous system that developed even before language and civilization came about?
Consider the snake. Modern people see a story of a talking snake and they presume myth, a fable, something intermediary from the passage from superstition and magic to science and rationality.
Seen from the perspective of brain structures developed in our former lives in trees, snake imagery speaks to a whole different reality. Those who did not evolve an appreciation of what "snake" meant, would not pass their genes on to the next quantum leap of evolved progeny.
And of course our 'snake' receptors have developed a whole set of awareness of snakes that are present in all of our non-arboreal, more terrestrial environments too, even our urban jungles of our day.
The hubris that presumes that walking, talking snakes are just fables for children and primitives are ill-equipped to deal with the reality of such snakes when they meet them someday.
And they will. We all do.

 

[faroukfarouk]

@elliott95 :

...All examples are imperfect from one aspect or another. But it's important that people don't jump to conclusions about spiritual things unless they are given the necessary knowledge from information revealed.

To the last para. I would add:

And this revelation is found in the Scriptures.

 

[faroukfarouk]

I think my current perspective is being informed by Jordan Peterson's YouTube station.
Jordan B Peterson
His lectures are not really systemic and his reasoning not at all sequential, but I might liken one of the points he is making to modern science looking at the story of Jonah and the Big Fish, and noting that no one can live in the belly of a fish. Case closed, right?
Whether or not people can live in the belly of a fish for three days though, is not even looking at the iceberg above water and assuming that that is al there is. To delve no further into the matter is not just not deep, but it is not even shallow. What it is, is hubris.
Modern ways of deriving at truth through science have their own biases too. The assumption that is very modern is that it is the later brain development in human that is most important, and it is the 'higher' faculties of the cerebral cortex, exponentially developed in humans, that is at the core of our psychology.
But might it not be that the more important driving forces of our will and psychology lie in deeper structures of our brain, parts of the central nervous system that developed even before language and civilization came about?
Consider the snake. Modern people see a story of a talking snake and they presume myth, a fable, something intermediary from the passage from superstition and magic to science and rationality.
Seen from the perspective of brain structures developed in our former lives in trees, snake imagery speaks to a whole different reality. Those who did not evolve an appreciation of what "snake" meant, would not pass their genes on to the next quantum leap of evolved progeny.
And of course our 'snake' receptors have developed a whole set of awareness of snakes that are present in all of our non-arboreal, more terrestrial environments too, even our urban jungles of our day.
The hubris that presumes that walking, talking snakes are just fables for children and primitives are ill-equipped to deal with the reality of such snakes when they meet them someday.
And they will. We all do.

Interesting.

 

[Jenniferdiana]

The bible is spiritually discerned. It speaks the truth in a way the natural man can't speak them. They are spirit and life. Only something spiritual can reveal such things in its platform.You can't add to them or take away from it. Because the words ends in truth. So it's absolute. and no one knows the deep truths of God. at least not the natural man. Unless spirit revealed it to them.

 

[faroukfarouk]

The bible is spiritually discerned. It speaks the truth in a way the natural man can't speak them. They are spirit and life. Only something spiritual can reveal such things in its platform.You can't add to them or take away from it. Because the words ends in truth. So it's absolute. and no one knows the deep truths of God. at least not the natural man. Unless spirit revealed it to them.

Yes, indeed. And the Holy Spirit is like the nameless servant of Abraham and Isaac who sought for Rebekah as a bride, in order to bring Rebekah and Isaac joyously together: the servant didn't pursue a profile for himself. Like the Holy Spirit Who illuminates God's Word in order to unite the believing sinner to Christ.

 

[Jenniferdiana]

Yes, indeed. And the Holy Spirit is like the nameless servant of Abraham and Isaac who sought for Rebekah as a bride, in order to bring Rebekah and Isaac joyously together: the servant didn't pursue a profile for himself. Like the Holy Spirit Who illuminates God's Word in order to unite the believing sinner to Christ.

Yeah. And its impossible for the natural mind to reveal such truths and spiritual things of God alone. Unless it was revealed by God/spirit itself. Man can not make up such things in such a way. There's just no way.

 

[faroukfarouk]

Yeah. And its impossible for the natural mind to reveal such truths and spiritual things of God alone. Unless it was revealed by God/spirit itself. Man can not make up such things in such a way. There's just no way.

Yes, indeed; God Himself needs to teach it to us by the Spirit through the Word; we would never find out by ourselves.

"All of grace, yes grace surpassing,
Such a portion to bestow,
But the love, all knowledge passing,
Grace has taught us now to know.

Love that bore the stripes and sorrow,
Love that suffered on the Tree,
Love that shares the bright tomorrow
With the love ones, you and me."