My Beef as a “Believer” with the Bible and Christians
HAPPY NEW YEARS EVERYONE!
It’s funny, I wasn’t even going to write a blog this week because when I sat down to write something, my mind hit a total block and I couldn’t come up with anything. I didn’t want to force anything so I left it alone and resigned myself to the fact that this was going to be a blogless week.
Then, a few days ago, I saw a video on Facebook titled “How the Bible Has Changed Over the Past 2,000 Years” and decided to share it with a post attached stating the questions I’ve been personally struggling with about the Bible.
It was then that it dawned on me that I could “cheat” just a little bit and share the thoughts I shared on Facebook right here.
Yea, I know, how unoriginal of me. Well, truth be told, I’m going to expand a bit on what I had written, so I’m not exactly cheating.
In any case, so no one thinks I’m some “blasphemous” unbeliever, let me just say that I consider myself a spiritual person with a foundation of Christianity. I was first introduced to God as a kid via Christianity, and though I don’t consider myself affiliated with any religion and have a walk with God where He guides me to different spiritual walks to teach me different things, give me wisdom and shows me His presence everywhere, most of my core beliefs about God originate from my Christian walk.
Thus, I believe in God and His Son Jesus Christ.
That being said, I don’t have any beef with God or Jesus. My beef lies with the people who we’ve entrusted in over the centuries who passed the Bible on to us.
The Bible is touted as Christianity as the ultimate word of God and defines the ENTIRE spiritual and physical reality of many Christians. Many Christians will tell you that if you can’t find something in the Bible, it doesn’t exist, or that if something isn’t covered in the Bible, we just leave it alone and accept that it wasn’t meant to be answered because we can’t find it in the Bible.
Furthermore, the Bible is claimed to be infallible, indisputable and unquestionable in regards to the Truth.
Heavy stuff huh?
But wait a minute….the Bible, as we know it, is a collection of 66 separate books written in the Middle East over a period spanning thousands of years that were canonized by a council of over 250 men at Nicea which is somewhere in present day Turkey.
Does anyone see a potential problem with this?
How in the world can we blindly accept as the UNMITIGATED “truth” a group of books compiled under the discretion of a group of men who were from cultures thousands of miles away from where the books were originally written and who lived thousands of years after the books of the Old Testament were written and nearly 300 years after Christ walked this Earth?
How do we know whether they were being objective when deciding which books to put together or had some sort of selfish personal agenda? (Because, as we all know, man has never in his history manipulated religion to control people…*cough, cough*)
How do we even know whether they knew what the hell they were doing when they were deciding which books should be put in the Bible and which books should be excluded?
Couldn’t have the times they lived in plus the fact they were from totally different cultures cause them to make changes here and there to help fit their own perceptions that reflected the time and region they were from?
Even with the oldest person alive right now being born in the 1800s, it STILL leaves hundreds and hundreds and hundreds years where we cannot vouch for as to whether the Bible was tampered with or not yet many Christians accept it as the WHOLE basis of their entire mental, physical and spiritual being.
With all the intrigue going on in the centuries before we got here perpetuated by those in power, or those trying to acquire power, from slavery, to wars, to genocide, to crusades, to murder, to romance, etc, the Bible, held in high esteem by everyone as the ultimate revelation of God, has proven to be a wonderful tool to justify one’s selfish actions to the masses, who, for a long time, didn’t have regular access to it.
With all the heavy importance placed on the Bible, can we be so certain that the powers that were or were trying to be didn’t change things around to fit their aspirations?
After all, how do we know? We weren’t there.
Think about if you suddenly walked into a bar where a party was raging on for months and someone hands you a drink and confidently tells you to drink it, wouldn’t you investigate first whether the drink was safe to drink?
This is what I feel about the way people deal with the Bible. I think many Christians have more of a relationship with a “questionable” Bible than they do with an infallible, omnipotent God. Such people are so religious that they let their religion and the Bible get in the way of them having a one-on-on relationship with God.
I’m not saying that Christians should gather en masse and ceremoniously throw all their Bibles into the ocean. Neither am I saying that the Bible isn’t a wonderful tool that God uses to teach people. what I’m instead saying is that people need to go to God first and let Him guide them as to what’s true and what’s not. Some may even be guided to the Bible for Him to teach them and walk with them, and that’s fine. Some may not, and I think that’s fine as well, as long as you’re following God.
I just have a HARD time believing that with an omnipotent, omnipresent and all-powerful God, that the Bible is the ONLY valid tool out there to follow to gain an accurate understanding of God and spirituality, especially with the fact that Christians deem everything else not related to the Bible as “sinful” or “demonic.”
With all the questions that go unanswered by the Bible within its 66 canonized books, is the Bible our ONLY hope???
Is the Bible such an authority that if something is not answered in it, we just accept it and do no further research?
I don’t know folks, it’s not God I mistrust, it’s man. I mistrust his motives and agenda and think that it’s dangerous and naive to base your entire spiritual reality and health on something that was handed to you by another man when there is a God out there that’s bigger than the Bible.
Like I said, it’s fine if you use the Bible to walk with God, but why not trust God to take you further than that? Aren’t there further reaches to explore?
Hey, just my two cents
This is The Viable Alternative.
Hope this helps,
Ike Love
