God flowing into the Word

Religion and Secularism
1

I’ve been told I don’t understand the reality of the Bible. It’s been explained God acted infallibly through his human agents. At every stage along the Bible’s evolution God was there flowing into the pages to make it perfect.

The last time I listened to this opinion an image came to mind: There was a patient in an operating room, undergoing brain surgery. The world’s foremost surgeon was there, a doctor of vast knowledge and skill. But, instead of performing the operation, the expert stands over a child giving step by step concise and complete directions, while the child performed the actual task. What are the chances of the child getting it right? Can it be any different when God communicates with myopic self-centered children?

Claiming the Bible is direct and undiminished from God’s bosom is to imply people can be infallible. Isn’t such a thing called hubris? Like adolescents who know it all, blind to every complexity, question or doubt. Or put another way, claiming the Bible is perfect, complete and infallible is like claiming a photo album can convey the truth of someone’s life to a stranger.

Interestingly, when defending Biblical inerrancy scholars and preachers will quote the Bible, then follow with long winded personal interpretations. But, you know, if God where actually shepherding the Bible, those words would leap directly into the hearts of the reader/listener; without those endless and mostly dubious re-interpretations.

God is big, huge, beyond anything anyone of us can imagine. Won’t we recognize that when reading, absorbing, witnessing the Bible (or any Holy Book) we interpret it through our individual eyes while weaving our own spirit into our understanding and further telling? This isn’t denying the truths within sacred texts: it is admitting that God’s mysteries and plan are beyond our human ability to grasp.

Most importantly, continuing to demand that there is: My Way Only! is nothing less than suicide for humanity future. Does your inner heart actually believe that destruction is God’s plan for God’s own miraculous Creation? Even if it does, does that give you the right to act without regard for the future? Who are you to give up on God’s Creation, when you could be mistaken? Doesn’t God abhor suicide? How can we hope to leave our children a healthy future without absorbing some additional basic truths and lessons, then moving on to face the coming challenges.

 

2

Recently it occurred to me that one key to understanding the problem with religion and “god” is appreciating where our gods come from.

We have two options:

Believing that God is something that shines down upon you and flows into your being from somewhere out there in the universe.

Or appreciating that God is something that originates from within your own being. A product of our human minds processing a reality which is, well, frankly overwhelming and often incomprehensible, thus the human desperation for pat answers and dogmas to relieve us of having to struggle with our thoughts.

3

What leads you to believe that the Bible has got anything to do with God, rather than The Vedas, The Book of Mormon, The Quran, The Agamas or any of the world’s other holy books?

4
@philip456 What leads you to believe that the Bible has got anything to do with God, rather than The Vedas, The Book of Mormon, The Quran, The Agamas or any of the world’s other holy books?
 

Christians tell me so. But to your point, my answer would have to be: Nothing.

God is a product of the human mind trying to comprehend an infinitely complex and at times overwhelming reality that we are embedded within.

 

If you’re curious, ask me about the divide between our Human Mindscape and Physical Reality.

I believe that’s the first base to understanding human conceptions of “God”.

 

To be clear - I myself am an Earth Centrist, with Earth and her evolution being the fundamental touchstone for my understanding of physical reality as well as our human reality.

Interestingly, when defending Biblical inerrancy scholars and preachers will quote the Bible, then follow with long winded personal interpretations. But, you know, if God where actually shepherding the Bible, those words would leap directly into the hearts of the reader/listener; without those endless and mostly dubious re-interpretations.

God is big, huge, beyond anything anyone of us can imagine. Won’t we recognize that when reading, absorbing, witnessing the Bible (or any Holy Book) we interpret it through our individual eyes while weaving our own spirit into our understanding and further telling? This isn’t denying the truths within sacred texts: it is admitting that God’s mysteries and plan are beyond our human ability to grasp.

Most importantly, continuing to demand that there is: My Way Only! is nothing less than suicide for humanity future. Does your inner heart actually believe that destruction is God’s plan for God’s own miraculous Creation? Even if it does, does that give you the right to act without regard for the future? Who are you to give up on God’s Creation, when you could be mistaken? Doesn’t God abhor suicide? How can we hope to leave our children a healthy future without absorbing some additional basic truths and lessons, then moving on to face the coming challenges.

5

This essay and the other one I shared were written 2008, and I’ve learn much since then. At the time I was actually dating a Methodist Minister for a while, so attended her Church, to hear her speak and get to know her congregation. These days I’m not near as conciliatory and wishy washy about trying to relate to the Christian mindset. More interested in defining Earth Centrism, but Dad1 inspired me to share. I have one more waiting in the wings to complete the trilogy I wrote back then.

:wink:

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  1. If the Bible was God’s word, it wouldn’t evolve, it would be his fixed word.
  2. The Bible is far from perfect, it is full of contradicions (for instance Genisis says fruit was created before Man and then later that fruit was created after Man) and full of things we now recognise as immoral and unethical (such as condoning slavary, rape and violence against women because they are women and condeming the handicapped).
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So folks don’t get the wrong impression, here’s the context.

It’s not a claim I make, since I understand that God is created out of our human intellect coupled with our emotional needs.

8

Yes, every so often someone comes along that has the gift of poetry and leaves a river of enduring “words”.

But that is no guarantee of truth… some of the greatest stories are found in mythology.
image

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9

The software fed this one up. Worth review. The Bible, as referenced here, is a stand in for any scripture, or anyone’s conglomerated idealization of whatever they prefer, that put words to that inner working of our hearts and instincts that we all kind of know but struggle to express.

Every now and then something does leap into my heart. A movie, a song, a child’s meanderings. ALways incomplete. They move me forward, but sometimes fade and I move back

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I believe that’s called empathy, an emotion generated by the mirror neural network.

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