The slippery slope
I know many people talk about a "slippery slope" in all kinds of contexts. For me, the slippery slope went like this:
- I went to Bible to find answers to troubling questions.
- Instead of finding answers, I found contradictions, both internally and with the physical world.
- This led to more troubling questions.
- I concluded that the Bible could not logically be 100% accurate.
OK, most liberal Christians admit to this; and most conservative Christians reject much of the teaching and the historical accounts in the Bible even if they don't admit this. But:
- How are we supposed to figure out which parts are true and which ones aren't?
- If God is supposed to inspire us to know, why do so many groups view different parts of the Bible differently? This leads to completely different worship systems and bitterly divides Christians internally.
- If God is supposed to inspire us to know, why do so many parts of the Bible seem to contradict each other?
- I can't answer these questions in any way that makes sense, so I concluded that maybe God isn't supposed to inspire us to know.
- Well, if God isn't supposed to inspire us, how do we know he inspired the writings to begin with?
- Why did God inspire writings with apparent contradictions? If he is all-powerful, how could he allow this to happen? (Forget natural disasters and evil in the world -- why didn't any original documents survive? Why do the earliest and best writings conflict with each other in ways that totally change the Christian worldview? (e.g., the earliest writings leave out the verses that the Trinity is based on).
- I can't answer these questions in any way that makes sense. Natural disasters and evil might be part of God's plan, but creating such chaos around The Word of God makes no sense and there is no reasonable explanation that I have found. So I concluded that maybe God isn't omnipotent.
- If God isn't omnipotent, and he didn't inspire the Bible, then what, exactly, does the real God have to do with the God in the Bible?
There's nothing that proves any of this conjecture, of course, but the physical evidence (including the words of the Bible itself) support the idea that the Bible is not infallible. And if the Bible is erroneous in places, how can anyone conclude that God is omnipotent and omnibenevolent? How can anyone conclude that God is revealed to us accurately in the Bible? How can anyone conclude that the Real God is the same God of the Bible?
I could have stronger faith, I guess, but that would be ignoring evidence of the physical world. Ignoring evidence of the physical world, in my opinion, is admitting that God is trying to trick us. (Kind of like he did with Job.) I guess that could be the case, but if that is so, then God is mean and unjust and not loving. (Well, that would be the OT God, I guess.)
And whether or not God is real, I have no interest in following an unjust, cruel, unloving God, just to get to heaven. A God that delights in pain and suffering does not have morals that line up with what I believe is right. I don't know how I have determined what I think is right, but delighting in pain and suffering ain't it.
The thing that really makes me mad is that many Christians call me "misled" or "ignorant" or "stupid" for thinking like this. "Read the Bible," they'll say. Uh--yeah, that's what got me into this mess in the first place.
Now I know why the old Catholic church said that laymen weren't allowed to read the Bible -- that only clerics could. Yeah: all it takes is an open mind to realize that the Bible is conflicting and inconsistent. It takes a very intelligent person with a gift for persuasion and rhetoric to resolve those conflicts and inconsistencies in any way that makes sense. (And often these intelligent people use fallicious reasoning and circular arguments to reach their conclusions.)
In this context, how can I be Christian?
And: Are any of these questions and problems even important, or do they attempt to put the concept of God into a box that can never fit? Does spirituality exist outside the realm of reason and logic? If so, how does anyone ever be confident in a spiritual path?
Oy. My brain hurts.
- I went to Bible to find answers to troubling questions.
- Instead of finding answers, I found contradictions, both internally and with the physical world.
- This led to more troubling questions.
- I concluded that the Bible could not logically be 100% accurate.
OK, most liberal Christians admit to this; and most conservative Christians reject much of the teaching and the historical accounts in the Bible even if they don't admit this. But:
- How are we supposed to figure out which parts are true and which ones aren't?
- If God is supposed to inspire us to know, why do so many groups view different parts of the Bible differently? This leads to completely different worship systems and bitterly divides Christians internally.
- If God is supposed to inspire us to know, why do so many parts of the Bible seem to contradict each other?
- I can't answer these questions in any way that makes sense, so I concluded that maybe God isn't supposed to inspire us to know.
- Well, if God isn't supposed to inspire us, how do we know he inspired the writings to begin with?
- Why did God inspire writings with apparent contradictions? If he is all-powerful, how could he allow this to happen? (Forget natural disasters and evil in the world -- why didn't any original documents survive? Why do the earliest and best writings conflict with each other in ways that totally change the Christian worldview? (e.g., the earliest writings leave out the verses that the Trinity is based on).
- I can't answer these questions in any way that makes sense. Natural disasters and evil might be part of God's plan, but creating such chaos around The Word of God makes no sense and there is no reasonable explanation that I have found. So I concluded that maybe God isn't omnipotent.
- If God isn't omnipotent, and he didn't inspire the Bible, then what, exactly, does the real God have to do with the God in the Bible?
There's nothing that proves any of this conjecture, of course, but the physical evidence (including the words of the Bible itself) support the idea that the Bible is not infallible. And if the Bible is erroneous in places, how can anyone conclude that God is omnipotent and omnibenevolent? How can anyone conclude that God is revealed to us accurately in the Bible? How can anyone conclude that the Real God is the same God of the Bible?
I could have stronger faith, I guess, but that would be ignoring evidence of the physical world. Ignoring evidence of the physical world, in my opinion, is admitting that God is trying to trick us. (Kind of like he did with Job.) I guess that could be the case, but if that is so, then God is mean and unjust and not loving. (Well, that would be the OT God, I guess.)
And whether or not God is real, I have no interest in following an unjust, cruel, unloving God, just to get to heaven. A God that delights in pain and suffering does not have morals that line up with what I believe is right. I don't know how I have determined what I think is right, but delighting in pain and suffering ain't it.
The thing that really makes me mad is that many Christians call me "misled" or "ignorant" or "stupid" for thinking like this. "Read the Bible," they'll say. Uh--yeah, that's what got me into this mess in the first place.
Now I know why the old Catholic church said that laymen weren't allowed to read the Bible -- that only clerics could. Yeah: all it takes is an open mind to realize that the Bible is conflicting and inconsistent. It takes a very intelligent person with a gift for persuasion and rhetoric to resolve those conflicts and inconsistencies in any way that makes sense. (And often these intelligent people use fallicious reasoning and circular arguments to reach their conclusions.)
In this context, how can I be Christian?
And: Are any of these questions and problems even important, or do they attempt to put the concept of God into a box that can never fit? Does spirituality exist outside the realm of reason and logic? If so, how does anyone ever be confident in a spiritual path?
Oy. My brain hurts.
posted by SuperSkeptic at 7:31 PM
4 Comments:
I'm with you every word ;)
I'm not mentally in a place where I can answer any of the questions you've asked here to anyone's satisfaction. But I wanted to at least say something so that you know that someone has heard your angushed cry of doubt.
How can anyone conclude that God is revealed to us accurately in the Bible? How can anyone conclude that the Real God is the same God of the Bible?
What if we can't know anything about God? What if there are no human descriptions of God which are perfect in every respect? What if the Bible is a human product, a collection of ideas about God compiled over a great expanse of time by a single culture? Does it follow from that that we can learn nothing of God from the Bible, that the whole book is worthless?
I think that you are struggling with a shift in your understanding about the nature of the Bible. It was easy back when you could assume that the Bible was penned by an omniscient and omnipotent God who wanted to reveal to you true propositions about the divine nature. But as you read the text you learned that the text is neither systematic nor propositional. That is, the whole thing is not a single work on a single subject by a single author with a single belief system which contains no contradictions of any kind, and further, the Bible is not a list of metaphysical propositions.
It contains stories, myths, laws, some rough theological concepts and some pastoral letters, not to mention an interesting admixture of myth and history which can't really be classified as either - mythologized history. So, as such, it fails to meet your expectations. The question is, now what? What do we make of it, and what do we make of the religions which produced it just as they were produced by it?
If you want to eliminate the possibility of error, simply put, you can't. That is the problem with all absolutist dogmas, as I suspect you've noticed. Be it radical atheism, which says that the whole thing is false, or fundamentalism, which says that the whole thing is true, absolutist dogmas seek to eliminate the possibility of false beliefs. But, while they seek certainty they fail to produce it. Simply put, some is truth, some is falsehood, some is a combination of the two, and sometimes we simply don't know.
But because the Bible is neither systematic nor propositional, there is no Biblical concept of God, if by that we mean a single concept of God which is in all parts of the Bible and not refuted by any part of the Bible. In the Bible God has many different names, some of which compete with each other. Sometimes God is a masculine single, sometimes God is plural, and sometimes (though rarely) God is even feminine single. Sometimes God is distant, sometimes God is near. Sometimes God is all-powerful, and sometimes Moses talks God out of doing something stupid (hardly the mark of an all-powerful and all-knowing being). Sometimes God has regrets, sometimes God makes mistakes, sometimes God throws temper tantrums. Sometimes God seems very, very human, and sometimes God seems the opposite of human, whatever we mean by that.
Sometimes God has a fixed identity, and sometimes God is elusive, undefined, a mystery. We should not be surprise, because each of these are human ideas. But that they are human ideas does not mean that they aren't the product of a divine-human encounter. It is just that that encounter, that revelation, is not a propositional one. That is, the content of our revelation from God is not a list of statements about God which are always and everywhere either true or false. The content of that revelation is instead an experience of the person of God.
As you know, I could go on and on about this, but it wouldn't address your immediate needs. You need certainty, but life won't provide that for you. You suffer now just as we all suffer, because of the distance between your expectations and reality. But reality won't change for you. Reality never changes to suit our needs. Your expectations must change. Simply put, if you want peace, you have to be able to accept a degree of uncertainty.
My first experience of religion was as a fundamentalist, so I know how hard it is to let go of the need for certainty, the need to say that we know everything that there is to know about God. But it is quite possible that we know nothing about God, even as we through our faith and yes through our reading of the Bible and a whole host of other religious texts, a whole host of other human products of the divine-human encounter experience something of the person of God.
Faith then, religion, must be something other than knowledge something other than belief. Faith, religion, is not an intellectual exercise aimed at arrive at some certain propositional truth. Rather it is the embrace of an experience, of a way of life, which orders life, provides it with meaning, and ushers us into an experience of the God who lies beyond all descriptions, even the authoritative descriptions of our religious traditions.
Hi Skeptic -
I am reading your posts and I am fascinated by your hunger for answers. I think it's very cool. I know this is going to sound very simplistic, but many of your questions and confusion about God as He is portrayed in the Bible come from the way that churches teach the Bible... which is not based on a real true understanding of the Bible. It is not possible to just read the current English versions and translations of the Bible and understand it. There are many apparent contradictions in the current English translations of the Bible. It is easy to understand why people become confused.
It has to be studied according to Biblical research principles, in its original languages, and from a cultural and historical perspective. You are right.... no one wants to believe in a God that is all about pain and suffering. Without proper understanding and instruction, it is easy to see why a person would read passages in the Old Testament and conclude that God is a ruthless and sadistic killer. But that is not the case. You have to understand Hebrew idioms, figures of speech, orientalisms, and Judean culture to understand why things were revealed and written that way. You also have to understand the Bible from a complete context, not just reading some passages and then drawing conclusions. The Word says that no prophesy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. The word "private" in the Greek is the word "idios", translated as "one's own". It is not subject to individual interpretation. It says that all prophecy of the scripture is God-Breathed ("theopneustos" in the Greek). It is by revelation of God. The Word says that holy men of God spake as they were moved by the holy spirit (which by the way is not the third person of the trinity).
Your comment about early versions of the Bible not referring to a trinity is absolutely accurate. There is no trinity in the Bible. It is a man-made doctrine dating back to between 300 and 400 BC. There are many verses straight from in the Bible that actually disprove the trinity. Jesus Christ is the Son of God.... but He is not God Himself. And he was not "God in the flesh". The Word is very clear that Jesus Christ is the "Word of God made flesh". Jesus Christ himself denied that he was God, but always declared that he was the Son of God. People are going to fire off 3 or 4 scriptures that refute what I just said, but I can name 10 times as many that show that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the agent of our salvation, our Lord and example, but not God. If Jesus Christ was God (an not the Son of God), then our salvation is null and void. Jesus Christ being the propitiation for our sins (he bore our sins and infirmities on the cross for us), being the sacrificial lamb, had to be a man in order to pay the price for our salvation. The Bible says so. If you want more detail, let me know.
The Word says that "no man has seen God at any time". Did people see Jesus Christ? Of course they did.
The Word says that "God cannot be tempted neither tempteth He any man". It also says that "Jesus Christ was tempted in all points as we are yet was without sin". How then can Jesus be God according to these two opposing statements.
The Word says that the head of the woman is the man, the head of the man is Christ, and the head of Christ is God. How can God be His own head? Jesus was the Son of God, but he did have the fullness of the spirit of God in him. That, however, does not make him God.
Jesus Christ told Peter, "Why callest me thou 'good'. There is none good but God." Why would Jesus Christ say that if he was God?
The Word says that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. It doesn't say that God raised himself, or that Jesus raised himself.
The Word says that Jesus Christ was obedient to God. Why would God have to be obedient to anyone.
It says that Jesus Christ grew mighty in the scriptures. He had to learn the Word about himself. If he were God, don't you think he would know the scriptures and not have to study them.
The Word says that Jesus Christ was subject to his parents. Why was God subject to human parents?
The Word says that by one man sin entered the world, and by one MAN it was taken away.
The Word says that there is one God and ONE mediator between God and man, the MAN Jesus Christ. First of all, it says that he is a man. Second, why would God need a mediator between him and himself.
Anyway..... I say too much. By what I wrote I open myself to being labeled a heretic. Everything that I say can be proven from the Bible.
And again, I will give my standard disclaimer.... The Bible is what I believe. Belief is a personal thing. I do not say that I corner the market on truth. People are free to believe what they choose and no one has the right to judge anyone else's beliefs.
I was held down by God's apostles a few days after birth. They ripped my foreskin off without pain killer or remorse . I remember every detail of the mutilation , and I know there is a GOD . Furthermore , sense I have no sensation in you know where , my anus has assumed the task. What did you think would happen when all the sensation was ripped away ?
Yep there is a GOD . If God asks me to rape , I'll do ti , kill , no problemo ,cause I am a victim of the knife , I can use it too.
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