I'm in an...interesting...spot in my life right now, and it's brought me to rethink life in various ways. One of the results has been me coming back to something I first did in my early teens: gathering the primary and secondary texts of just about every religion you could name and reading them, meditating on them, and opening my mind to each in turn. I was born Christian(Catholic) and went through Christian school for most of my younger years; so I'm entirely familiar with the faith. All the same, I've pulled out my Bible and started once more. I've always looked up to Jesus, even if I didn't always consider myself a Christian. However...I just can't reconcile myself with a number of things. The savage brutality and awful behavior conducted and condoned by the Old Testament, the absolutely disgusting behavior of the current Church of all the various sects, and the incredible likelihood of the Bible I currently hold being an edited, re-arranged, heavily modified mess that is missing key texts by each Mary and Jesus himself, among others. So, talk to me. Please no simple "Well God is God and that's why he's God and that's why you should worship God" stuff, huh?
I'm no expert, but I can clear up two things; 1) You were not born christian 2) The old testament was more or less "written off" when Jesus came along. Don't get so caught up on it. It no longer applies (if you're a christian ie. follower of Jesus Christ) 'Reason' holds two very far apart definitions in the christian circle. Some reason with the words that were provided to them in that book. Others reason with the brain that was provided to them in their head. Just my opinion.
I was born into a Christian family and raised as such, I figured that bit was inferred. And I agree with you about reason; though I've never heard any 'official' teaching that goes along with your thoughts on the Old Testament. Not that I disagree - I like that idea very much.
What can I say? You're doing well to be asking such questions. Keep up the good work! The brutality of the Old Testament is obvious to all but the brainwashed True Believers. There is a lot of disgusting behavior in church circles; apart from pedophile priests, televangelists come to mind. And it is more than likely that the canon some consider to be "inerrant" is an "edited mess". In spite of this, I believe, but not what they believe.
Heterodox is disagreeing with established opinions or being at variance with established or accepted beliefs or theories, especially in the field of religion. I am christian in practice but not denomination.
I'm going to break this down. The brutality of the Old Testament is a hard one mainly because it is seen as inspired, the Word of God, and True. I like to make a semantic distinction between truth and Truth. The former are things like "Grass is green", "gravity acts upon all matter", "2+2=4 (within base 10 arithmetic)" et cetera. The latter consists of statements like "There is one God", "God exists as three distinct persons of one essence", "Jesus Christ was fully human and fully divine", and "The bread and wine at the consecrated said by the priest truly becomes the blood and body of Christ". All the stories in teh Bible are True, and some really happened. The authors of what we call the Old Testament lived in a brutal time, and many of the books were written when the Hebrews and Isrealites were forced into diaspora or worse. They struggled with the question as to why God would allow his chosen people to suffer like that. The answer most often come to was that they broke the covenant. Like it is imagined in Hosea thouhg, God returns to his unfaithful prostitute wife again and again with love and mercy. The overall purpose of God's inspiration in the Old Testament is to prefigure Christ, and pave the way for the Messiah. The Old Testament lays the foundation for Christ's revelation (which is the fullness of the revelation of God). Prophets like Elijah spoke about the coming Salvation to all nations. God's mouthpiece were the Hebrews, but his message was to the entire world. Some things like God ordering the slaughter of innocent women and children is a more difficult situation. I tend to think of it as the Hebrews using images from the time (it was brutal) as a way to show that God did indeed favour them. Did God really command the slaughter of them, I doubt so. It is not the Divine Church that commits these acts, but individual members of the also very human Church. If you look at other things as well, like sexual abuse in public schools,until recently similar strategies were used in dealthing with offenders. Principals would "pass the trash" so to say from one board or school to another. No one now has grave doubts about the public school system though. I think the failure is individual, rather than a systemized failure. Particular clerics and religious (including women for that matter) commit heinous crimes against humanity, and then are either dealt with (by good bishops) or moved around (by bad bishops who are nearly as culpable in particular situations). Within the Catholic Church, the situation seems to be turning around. They now have better systems in place for reporting and disciplining these predators. On a side note, the vast majority of cases, contrary to what the MSM would have you think, is not pedophilia (which is sexual acts commited against a pre pubescent child). Most acts of clerical sexual abuse in the Catholic Church have been homosexual acts commited against young men in their late teens. Pedophilia is a loaded word the MSM and those with other agendas use to furthur emotionalize an already horrific situation. Re texts by Mary and Jesus. If you look at the history of these so called Gospels, they reflect thought that developed much later than the current Scripture, often into the 4th CEntury of occasioanlly even later. Most of the texts also deny the humanity, divinity, physicality, or death of Jesus. Some texts have him laughing while been crucified, some have Jesus shooting rays from his eyes on the cross, some say Jesus didn't even consist of matter because all matter is created by an evil god (of the Old Testment) and that all Jews worship the evil god and that only some males (females need not apply) have little bits of "light" from the pure true god and that through knowledge (gnosis) those with the most may reunite these litle bits with the true god of light. Jesus was pure bits of this god with no matter (females are pure matter and their min goal in existence is to tempt, seduce, and otherwise stop men from attaining this knowledge). As you can see, this is vastly different to the texts in the New Testmament. Those who worked out the canon faced some serious opposition by others who did not even think Revelation or Hebrews should be allowed in because they were to close to these Gnostic "Gospels".
My story isn't so different from yours. I was born and raised as a Catholic then later on I moved away from Catholicism and into a belief that the God of the Bible was evil, so I started to believe in an ultimate power instead. I remember not so long ago I would argue with Ukr-Cdn about how marijuana was used in the Bible and I was pretty stern in my quest to prove it. Now I did a complete 180 and I now agree with him that thinking Jesus used weed as silly. I say all of this because it's hard to imagine seeing ourselves making such a huge shift in our beliefs in such a short period of time. I'll save you the whole "Well God is God and that's why he's God and that's why you should worship God stuff" and instead I'll point to some of the reasons why I believe the God of the Bible is the true God. One of the most striking features about Christianity is the literature behind it. Aside from what you may have heard, the Bible is many times more reliable than any other text in the whole world, and this can be proven by viewing the oldest manuscripts and comparing them to what we have now. Even the most skeptical can agree that what we have today is what people were reading thousands of years ago. I am of the opinion that if God loves everyone, then he would try to reach everyone. If God were to create a book, it would have the qualities such as reliability and survivability and it would be the most famous out of them all -- The Bible is the most researched and talked about literature on earth, so even those that don't believe end up studying and arguing against it. The other striking feature of Christianity is what Paul described as God's 'natural law'. Basically, it is where the natural order of the world contains with it God's message. There are interesting studies where tribal groups knew the gospel before any missionaries ever arrived at their location. To say the least, the missionaries were completely amazed. This, imo, is a fly in the face to those that believe "if you're born Hindu, you will be born Hindu". Many people come to the same understandings that Jesus has said through natural law only (simple truths such as; be faithful to your wife, don't be jealous for others goods, help the weak and the poor). It is also my opinion that all the worlds religions are manifestations and interpretations of God's natural law. (It i said that Jesus harvests those where he has not sown seed). Yet another striking feature of Christianity, that not even the highly skeptical Jesus Seminar disagrees with, is that the creed that Paul received from the witnesses of Jesus' resurrection contain all the qualities of an eyewitness testimony by what 500+ people had seen and does not contain any qualities of people trying to concoct a legend. Even the most skeptical agree that this creed was created only two years after Jesus' death. The facts that early rome had hated the Christians and were out to kill them for not paying homage to their rituals yet still did what they did and ended up creating the most popular religion on earth is a miracle unto itself. See, there is a difference between killing for ones beliefs and dying and leaving yourself open to death for your beliefs... all the while, trying to reach those that are set out to murder you. There is also the continued vision throughout the whole Bible which isn't something that can be proved so simply or quickly. Something like that takes a lot of personal time and meditation, but it's something that has been proven to me many times over. The most important thing for you to consider is that you should not take anyone interpretation as fact. Forget every single thing that every church, preacher, members of these boards, sects have said about their understanding of scripture. Instead, read the Bible as is and mediate on it with a open heart and mind.
It took me a while to reconcile myself with these things myself. I would have never reconciled with it if the Bible had said that God enjoyed doing and commanding these things. In fact, Isiah has called these situations 'God's strange and alien works'. They are strange and alien because it is unlike God to do these things but then it later states that if God had not done these things then the culture of Sodom and Gomorrah would have spread out to the whole earth before the arrival of the messiah. If that had happened, then the whole world would have gone back into peril... something God did not want to occur, and it pained him to order what he ordered. Don't take my word for it, though. I could be wrong, but I want to be completely honest with you that there are certain things in the Bible that were difficult for me to reconcile with... one of the others is homosexuality... With all of that said, while I believe the old testament is important in understanding God and Christianity, the main person we should focus on is Jesus. Jesus has never ordered any murders and his orders to his followers have been nothing other than "Do what is right, and never do any wrong". If whatever happened did happen, it will never happen again with Jesus around; There is no going back to it.
Jesus himself used the parable of a master leaving his house in the care of his servants. While the master is away, the servants end up causing a mess of things and people end up confusing the actions of the trouble makers with the house owner. Jesus had said that there will be two kinds of Christians. Those that he would call Christians and those he would call workers of lawlessness.
I was in a similar situation. I rejected Catholicism of Pagan and evil (a quick search of Burbot in these forums will reveal some hilariously ignorant questions and some funny remarks that def also knows about where I basically call Catholicism evil. All of my Christian friends were Lutheran and Conservative Evangelical or even cult-like groups so that is the Christinaity I first learned. I was not raised Catholic, and my first religious beliefs were similar to that of the Bahai Faith. Talk about a complete 180. From a book about Creation and Evolution by an Evangelical with a tripple PhD that I respect very much: The Bible is the Book of God's Words whereas all of Creation is the Book o God's Works. Creation is a witness to the Glory of God. Creation being a witness to God is the basis of Catholic Sacramentality. Our view is that humans are sensory creatures and therefore God ordained seven Sacraments (and infinite sacramentals) as a visible, auditory, olfactory, et cetera to be a witness to his grace. When we hear "I absolve you of your sins" from the priest in Confession, it is a perceptible sign of an internal grace. Same thing with baptism. Baptism is a visible act for inward grace.
Thanks guys, this has helped a lot...got my mind working in some different ways I wouldn't have got into otherwise. It's been inspiring, too. Still not quite sure how I'm going to go along whatever path is ahead, but hell...that's the fun. And I really like these teachings, by the way. Thank you
Every word that ever came out of that man's mouth was the TRUTH. A lie is still a lie even if it one handed down by a perpetuated OMISSION. That's why we are in the present day "mess" previous posters suggested. We don't have the whole story.
