It might be a bit hard to understand
why I have chosen to focus so much on problems people have with
Christianity, verses the idea of God in general and why I believe the
proof of God is evident and completely rational. I am saving this
discussion for my final article, as I am merely walking us through
the problems I faced in deciding what I believed. The questions I am
answering here are the questions I asked ten years ago when I found
myself surrounded by doubt, and since I understand God, through the
person of Jesus and the gospel message, then I obviously started with
my own understanding and went from there.
Atheists seem to have a hard time with
the concept that a believer can take issue with the same problematic
fundamentals of Christianity and still come out a believer in spite
of this. I have had numerous conversations where I unwittingly
defuse the conversation by nodding my head and exclaiming, “I know,
right?” The truth is, all of the atheists I know (and I mean all)
used to be Christians, and therefore their understanding of God is
also filtered through the story and person of Jesus. A lot of what
made them give up on the concept of God started with the same
questions I had to get past as well. I have already discussed how I
understand the concept of hell to be presented in the Bible verses
how the Church handles this discussion today, and how attacks on the
authenticity of historical Christianity are not open and shut cases,
but rather stories that do still hold merit, and are only subject to
what we prefer the “truth” to be based on our own assumptions
about things that history continues to interpret differently.
When discussing the Christian Bible,
obviously it doesn't do anybody any good to pick it a part piece by
piece. I will acknowledge that the Bible is clearly not without
error, and that the majority of the errors are due to the English
language doing a poor job in containing all the meaning and emphasis
of the Greek language, and scribes who made small errors here and
there in preserving these books and letters for future generations.
I still hold that the crux of the gospel message is still intact,
given how the early Church responded to it and how their
understanding of the sacred books is not all that different than it
is today.
Bart Ehrman, a New Testament scholar,
and Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, has written several books on this subject.
He became an agnostic after becoming an evangelical Christian and
struggling with the concept of evil and suffering (which we addressed
in my second article on this subject). I have read some of Ehrman's
work, namely his book “Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who
Changed The Bible and Why”. In this book, Ehrman concludes
that various early scribes altered the New Testament texts in order
to deemphasize the role of women in the early church, to unify and
harmonize the different portrayals of Jesus in the four gospels, and
to oppose certain heresies. Ehrman contends that certain widely held
Christian beliefs, such about the divinity of Jesus, are associated
not with the original words of scripture but with these later
alterations. While I found the glimpse he painted of the early
Church and how the scriptures were copied and in some cases altered
fascinating, I also disagreed with the conclusion that our present
understanding of the divinity of Jesus is due to these changes. I
look to early Church thinkers such as Justin Martyr, and I see a view
of Jesus and the gospel message that is very much in line with what
we understand today (though clearly what we understand today is a lot
more polluted by theology and years of false assumptions).
It
might be likely that the amateur scribes in the early Church did make
errors, but the only proof that Ehrman really put on the table had to
do with situations where the error was discovered and corrected.
Perhaps the biggest problem I see in our current understanding of
scripture has more to do with the fact that we live 2,000 years after
it was written and some of the ideas, concepts, and dialogue was
written specifically for those in Rome, or at least under the empires
influence. In order to clearly understand scripture, you can't just
read it for face value, but rather in the context to which it is
being written.
Some
things admittedly do not make any sense at all, especially when Paul
is writing about cultural issues. Remember, Paul's letters were
considered helpful and beneficial to the Church, which is why they
were included in the canon of scripture the orthodox Church put
together, but I do not think that Paul was correct in every thing he
said, nor do I think he was referring to his own letters when
describing scripture as being “God breathed”, or rather
“inspired” by God. He may have had great insight into some
things that were hidden to others, but his words have also caused
more division and and confusion than any other document in the Bible,
and since we know that God is not the author of confusion (Paul's
words, not mine), than it is safe to say that Paul, being human,
wrote things that may not apply to anyone other than the people he
had intended as it's recipient. Some of his words, he claims were by
revelation, but I do not think he claims the whole as such. In the
same fashion, the sacred scrolls that made up the Old Testament, were
written by people and not by God. God inspired them, and being the
creator of all things, could no doubt decide what was saved and what
was forgotten, but it's incredibly naive to believe that Bible is
without error.
Perhaps
the greatest testament to the Bible as it sits today however is in
how few errors there are considering the fact that it contains 66
books, written over a period of about 1,500 years, and the message of
death and redemption remains just as fluid and vital as it ever has.
What
I have learned however is that many people who leave the Church do so
out of a misunderstanding of scripture, not by error of their
assumptions, but rather by those who they look to for answers, such
as preachers and seasoned Christian friends. There comes a time when
the questions can no longer be dismissed with a “just believe”,
and they can no longer go on pretending that it makes sense through
the filter of a rational mind. As I stated in an earlier article, I
like to leave some things up to mystery, but if we can't rationalize
with the most fundamental things about a certain philosophy or
religion, then it cannot be fully believed for it no longer resonates
as truth.
I
am a firm believer in “experiencing” truth, and this means that
if something doesn't sit well with me, it must be understood to the
point where it does, or left behind to be replaced by a truth that
does. This may seem like a “new age” principal to some of you,
but I am not speaking of “feelings” here, but rather the taste I
get when I know what I just heard, or saw, or experienced was true.
It's like sitting through a sermon or a lecture struggling to listen
while arguing in my head about a point being presented to me, only to
be replaced by a revelatory experience when something is said that I
deem to be profound in that it helps to draw into focus an
understanding that I didn't before have.
Years
ago when I was trying to figure out what exactly I believed, a good
friend of mine suggested I read a book called “Conversations with
God”, written by Neale Donald Walsch. The premise of the book was
simple: A man was struggling with his faith, he felt the impression
to sit down and write a question to God, and then miraculously his
hand was guided to answer the question by the super natural. Again,
if I believe in the concept that a creator exists and all of life
came from His imagination, then the notion that God could direct a
persons subconscious to write answers to very difficult questions,
doesn't seem all that far fetched; so I read it.
Over
the course of the several weeks I spent on this book, I saw certain
scriptures interpreted differently, and at times I even had a moment
where I put the book down and had to really contemplate several new
notions about God and our own divinity. I was thoroughly confused
and perplexed throughout the reading and found myself considering
what the book had to say. In many ways the concepts and ideas were
exciting, and I found myself wanting them to be true. The book, as
it turns out has a very Eastern take on religion, one that shows up
in Buddhism a great deal, and many New Age philosophies. In fact,
some of the concepts even show up in ancient gnostic writings (early
church writings deemed heretical) as well as Mormonism, and several
Universalist Churches. I can't pretend that this reading didn't have
an impact on me in how I viewed God and the role of man, but in the
end, once I closed the book, I didn't have the taste of truth on my
lips.
Listen,
last night on my way home from work, I stopped at the store to buy
some ice cream, and mistakenly picked up “lite ice cream”. Now
for anyone who knows me, you know that I do not believe in artificial
sweeteners, and I try to stay away from poisonous things such as High
Fructose Corn Syrup and Sucrose. The experience is always the same:
It tastes just like the actual regular ice cream except I know at the
bottom somewhere in my taste buds and collective memory that it's a
tad bit sweeter and there is something bitter in the sweetness. That
is what I experienced after reading “Conversations with God”, and
that is what I experience every time something seems to be true but
just doesn't resonate the way truth resonates. It tastes a bit too
sweet, with a touch of bitterness.
The problem we face in today's age is
that we replaced experiencing truth with abstract thought, and have
built structures around our hearts that keep us closed off to things
that cannot be understood through deduction and reason. This goes
back to what is commonly referred to as the “Golden Age of Reason”,
where man, maybe for the first time, started to understand that
things could be understood through observation and deduction, rather
than some deity giving knowledge out like presents to those he deems
worthy. In this age, the “Scientific Method” was discovered, and
through it, we were personally delivered out of the dark ages and
into an age with endless possibilities. Superstition started to
become a thing of the past, and man reasoned that if given enough
time, he can understand everything there is to understand.
In his book, “What We Talk About When
We Talk About God”, Rob Bell (A great book worth checking out that
goes a lot deeper into these things than I intend to go) points out
that this Enlightenment Leap has “handed us a number of ways of
understanding the world that have worked on us and influenced us for
several hundred years now in positive ways. But these understandings
also have limits, limits that we become acutely aware of when we talk
about God”.
He mentions the first limit being how
we filter knowledge, and how reason and logic has become more
prominent, while the other ways of knowing have become less
emphasized. He asks if everything we know has to be proven
intellectually, then what about that which we know absolutely and
positively to be true, but would be hard pressed to provide evidence
if asked? He goes on to say that “most things in life we're most
sure of, many of those events and experiences that are more real to
us than anything else, lots of sensations we have no doubt actually
happened (such as falling in love, being moved by a song, etc) these
are things we cannot prove with any degree of scientific validity.”
The point he made, and the one I am
trying to make here, is that the human experience is more than just
logic, and that truth can be understood not just through a
microscope, but also through our other sensations. Perhaps I have a
leg up on some people because I am an artist and I experience this
world through sensations that lead me to be inspired and to stir up
my creativity. When I go a long time without refilling my tank on
what inspires me, I not only become a worst artist, but I tend to
become an awful human being. It is the way I am wired, that I only
feel rested and tranquil when I have experienced things that resonate
truth and life in my bones.
When I went through my “intellectual”
phase of trying to reason and understand everything, I also went
through my darkest phase, where I became less peaceful, more of a
cynic, and borderline depressed. It wasn't that the notion of God
not existing somehow made me hopeless, but rather that I wasn't
experiencing life the way it was meant to be experienced. It's like
eating a diet of nothing but bran flakes and wheat germ, eventually
you lose the taste for food and eating no longer seems all that
interesting or appealing.
What does this have to do with “Blood
Shed, and Problematic Scriptures”? Well, when I read the Old
Testament during my days of doubt and intellectual reason, I grew
extremely angry at the stories of Israel being told by God to go and
commit genocide. I detested the notion that God would have Abraham go
through such a daunting test as to actually come inches away from
sacrificing his very own son. Don't get me started about how unfair
it was that God hardened Pharaohs heart to the point where He sent
plague after plague on Egypt and eventually killed all first born
males. Then there's what happened to Lots wife as they were leaving
their home behind, when she looked behind to see the fire reigning
down from heaven, and was turned into a pillar of salt. Yes, it was
great that Israel finally made it to the promised land, but why did
they have to kill so many in their way, including women and children?
Then, once they arrived, they occupied cities they didn't build,
harvested from fields they didn't plant, and benefited from the toil
and labor of those who they drove out.
Then, let's talk about how unfair God
was to His own people. If God didn't commission them to go out and
fight a battle, they would lose, and lose badly. When they went
through times of rebellion, God would allow them to suffer and be
taken as hostage. At one point He decided to allow His entire
people, you know, the chosen children of Israel, to be slaughtered
and only keep a scattered remnant alive. Then of course you move on
and see how God loved the world so much that He sent His only son to
die a brutal death he didn't deserve, and how all of his disciples
faced certain death for their role in keeping His legacy and story
alive.
The Bible is not a clean, tidy little
book. In fact there are many stories I won't read to my children
because they are just too graphic. The beautiful depiction of Noah
and the animals escaping on a giant boat might fit well within Sunday
School, but the implication that God got fed up with the flawed
people He created and that this flood meant certain doom for millions
of people and countless animals. Then when you ask a religious
person why all this happened and their best answer is because man is
flawed and we live in a fallen world, it's enough to make you want to
slam your head into a giant family Bible...repeatedly.
What about Adam and Eve, and how they
lived in a garden and God put a tree there he told them not to eat
from. Imagine your father making a delicious breakfast and filling
the table with meats and fruits of all kinds, only to place a plate
of chocolate chip cookies in the middle while instructing you to eat
anything you want but not the chocolate chip cookies, for if you do,
you will surely die. According to the story, Adam and Eve had never
disobeyed God before, and we can only assume they had never been lied
to before. This story implies that the temptation was there, and
then God allowed His enemy to coerce these naive creatures into doing
the one thing God told them not to.
Now, I have my own conclusions about
all the things written above, and have studied a great deal in trying
to understand these things, but for the sake of time, I wanted to
explain what helped me get through it more than anything else. No,
not booze, and there certainly wasn't a peace pipe involved. No, it
was reading one very simple verse found in the book of Ezekiel, that
records the words of God to the prophet Ezekiel where He says “For
I take no pleasure in the death of anyone who dies, therefore repent
and live”. Reading all of these stories with that one scripture in
mind, suddenly things became a lot more clear. In fact, starting
with this verse found in Ezekiel, there are many verses in the Bible
that record God's words to His prophets that imply that God isn't out
to torment His people or make them children of war, or to suffer, but
rather that He wants them to be set a part so as to be a light in a
world that is increasingly evil and hostile. He gave people
opportunity after opportunity to make it right, explaining that if
they would heed the words of the prophets and return to Him, then He
would continue to protect them and give them favor, but if they
refuse, hey bad things are going to happen because that's just how it
is.
Ever notice how people tend to seek out
God during hard times? Maybe they are just looking for answers, but
I think going through the fire makes us willing to seek actual truth
that resonates, verses how we live when times are great. The entire
human story is one about death and redemption, ebb and flow, and
while man's understanding might have progressed to contain knowledge
that was never before even conceived, there is still a lot that we do
not understand, or only understand through experience.
The cosmos itself is a great example of
this, and while Scientists can explain a lot of what goes on in the
cosmos, (though only about 4% of the Universe is even actually
knowable), nothing can take away from what we experience when we
travel beyond the city lights and experience the night sky through
the unfiltered spectrum of standing in a dark field and seeing it
through the eyes of experience. Some of my most profound spiritual
experiences have happened under such skies, and in that moment, there
is no doubt of God's existence, even though it is not something I can
fully comprehend. It's something experienced that resonates deeply
within my bones that this story is much bigger than man, and much too
fantastic to fit within the tidy boxes of theology, philosophy, and
anything our finite minds could ever fully understand.
In her book “Pastrix: The Cranky,
Beautiful Faith of a Sinner and Saint”, Nadia Bolz-Weber recounts
how she was stuck in traffic one day as she became lost in thought
while staring at the vivid blue sky through her windshield, and
recalled thinking about the outrageous out-there-ness of space. “The
beauty of our sky is really just a nice way for the earth to protect
us from the terror of what's so vast and unknowable beyond. The
boundlessness of the universe is disturbing when you think about it.
It's too big and we're too small.” She writes, “Suddenly, in
that moment, all I could think was: 'What the hell am I doing?
Seminary? Seriously? With a universe this vast and unknowable, what
are the odds that this story of Jesus is true? Come on, Nadia. It's
a f***ing fairy tale.' And in the very next moment I thought this:
'Except that throughout my life, I've experienced it to be true.”
In the next paragraph, Nadia writes
that even when her mind protests, she still cannot deny her
experiences. I think this is true for countless others who would
classify themselves as seekers. They aren't religious, and they
aren't dogmatic, and they understand that they could be wrong, but
there is something buried inside that cannot be denied and continues
to navigate our lives even when we are trying so desperately to get
away from it.
Rob Bell writes in his book mentioned
earlier, that “faith and doubt aren't opposites. Doubt is often a
sign that your faith has a pulse, that it's alive and well and
exploring and searching. Faith and doubt aren't opposites; they are,
it turns out, excellent dance partners”.
Even when things seem to fall a part,
and life itself brings more hurt than we deem necessary, it's vital
that we not forget our own story and experiences. This is the one
thing that led me out of my own dark ages, it wasn't a scientific
theory, or a profound discovery that the Earth wasn't flat after all,
it was remembering my own story, and what I have experienced not as a
Christian, but just by being alive enough to experience things that
no Science book could ever teach me.
It seems odd to me that so many people
want proof of God's existence through the Scientific method, when God
is the very life force behind everything we can scientifically
observe. I'll explain what I mean in my next post, What Science
Actually Says About the Existence of God.
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