• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

How do you be a Christian when the Bible is so faulty?

loverofhumanity

loverofhumanity

We are all the leaves of one tree
Premium Member
SerenelyBlue said:
I am of the opinion that Jesus was perhaps really god. There may be truth in Christianity. But the Bible is full of so many contradictions and mistakes that it puts me off. How can I become a Christian when the Bible is so full of imperfections?
Click to expand...

The essence of the Bible, the real guts if you like, is universal brotherhood. To consider all humanity as one family and love all.

There is no contradiction in the spiritual or altruistic texts of the Bible. It teaches us to love our neighbour, to be sacrificing and generous, to be just and of good character.

The Bible is like a mine full of the most exquisite gems such as forgiveness, compassion, generosity and goodness. Just read the beatitudes. These beautiful truths teach only goodness and promote only the noblest of virtues.

I personally consider myself blest to read such glorious spiritual truths as are found in the Bible.
 
Robert Vincelette

Robert Vincelette

Member
Duke_Leto said:
Not the OP, but:
Click to expand...
Did Satan disguise himself as God and tell Abraham to make himself guilty of murdering Isaac? It is written that the Ten Commandments which came later were already written in everyone's heart so Abraham had to know that murder violates God's law because it is evil.
 
rbj

rbj

rbj
RothschildSaxeCoburgGotha said:
The Bible isn't full of contradictions, I've closely examined alleged contradictions in the Bible for years and there hasn't been one single contradiction presented to me by skeptics that wasn't a misunderstanding or misinterpretation. Not that there isn't contradictions, mistakes happen, but in the Bible, they are remarkably rare.
Click to expand...

boy, that's sad.

denial ain't just a river in Egypt.
 
Robert Landbeck

Robert Landbeck

Member
SerenelyBlue said:
I am of the opinion that Jesus was perhaps really god. There may be truth in Christianity. But the Bible is full of so many contradictions and mistakes that it puts me off. How can I become a Christian when the Bible is so full of imperfections?
Click to expand...

I agree, the Bible is a confusing read. It is no wonder that the last two thousand years of Christology have been fraught with division, schism, blood and guts over the interpretations of that volume. I have to wonder what God would send His Son to reveal 'something' to mankind, only to have it subject to perpetual argument. And if the purpose of the Incarnation was to make the invisible God known to the visible world, that the very subject of God remains ambiguous and subject to doubt and denial, suggests to me that something is wrong at the very heart of religious understanding. Whether theological interpretation successfully reflects the original teaching of Christ remains open to question. I have to ask myself whether theology is even a valid human intellectual endeavor. We probably won't know until the second coming takes place. But I have a suspicion that such an event is not going affirm any existing faith tradition, but more likely, to expose human error and offer a correction to our understanding of he Father.
 
Brian M. Leahy

Brian M. Leahy

Member
Might I suggest that one needs to understand the way that the Bible was constructed as to why it may appear to offer contradictions.
 
Samantha Rinne

Samantha Rinne

Resident Genderfluid Writer/Artist
I don't see the Bible as faulty. It's a very good allegory most of which people don't grasp. But there are incredibly slow parts like the middle of John where Jesus sorta talks and talks and there's nothing really happening.

Tell you what. You can sum up Christianity in about five lessons, then feel free to toss the book into the trash after you write that on an index card.
 
Sahjananda

Sahjananda

New Member
SerenelyBlue said:
I am of the opinion that Jesus was perhaps really god. There may be truth in Christianity. But the Bible is full of so many contradictions and mistakes that it puts me off. How can I become a Christian when the Bible is so full of imperfections?
Click to expand...
There was a time when I had similar difficulties. Now I look at the bible as the record of the human encounter with God. Human beings evolve in their relationship with God. As they evolve their understanding of God also grows. Human evolut
SerenelyBlue said:
I am of the opinion that Jesus was perhaps really god. There may be truth in Christianity. But the Bible is full of so many contradictions and mistakes that it puts me off. How can I become a Christian when the Bible is so full of imperfections?
Click to expand...
I had similar difficulties. Today I look at the scripture as the record of human encounter with God in different levels of consciousness. Human beings evolve in their relationship with God. Human beings journey with God is like climbing a hill. As human beings grow in their relationship with God their understanding of God also grows. What was considered to be a solid truth does not appear so. When we find mistakes and contradictions in the scripture it is the sign that our understanding of God has grown. Scripture should not taken as the record of infallible truths. When we read the scripture we see that it presents the fall of human consciousness in relationship with God. The Old testament presents us diffeent archetypes of divine-human relationships:
In the beginning one Adam- Humanity, then Adam and Eve, humanity divided as masculine and feminine, beyond good and evil, then fall of humanity into good and evil- Cain and Abel. Then the archetype of Noah, who experiences the God of justice, mercy and forgiveness. Then we have the archetype of Abraham, who experiences the God of faith, trust and testing. Then we have the archetype of Moses, who experiences the God of liberation, the God of Torah, the God of Law. Then we have the archetype of Judges, who rule people in the place of Moses. Then the archetype of Kings, a God who rules people through the kings. then the archetype of Prophets, a God who reveals his will through the prophets. What we see is continuous fall of humanity in relationship with God. God who walked with human beings in the garden of Eden becomes very remote. People know the will of God through the prophets only. Jesus Christ takes the human consciousness back to its original state, into the Garden, into the indwelling presence of God.So in the Bible, Old Testament, we have different levels of revelations of God. As we evolve in our relationship with God then we outgrow the lower levels of revelations. Mistakes and contradictions do not bother us.We look at them as belonging to the evolutionary process of our relationship with God.
 
Duke_Leto

Duke_Leto

Active Member
Robert Vincelette said:
Did Satan disguise himself as God and tell Abraham to make himself guilty of murdering Isaac? It is written that the Ten Commandments which came later were already written in everyone's heart so Abraham had to know that murder violates God's law because it is evil.
Click to expand...

I'm sorry; could you clarify your meaning?
 
Sahjananda

Sahjananda

New Member
Phantasman said:
For me, the Bible isn't Christianity. The Gospel is. I was orthodox for decades until I saw this.When you remove the influences that the Jews followed, the Gospel stands out on it's own without flaw. The difference between a perfect message intertwined with imperfection. When you see the Gospels of Luke, John, Mary, Philip, Thomas, Matthew, Mark, Truth all come together as one message, the rest is exposed as "before the Spirit (capital S) was given to man as the true teacher (of spirit). It's not hard when one see's beyond the forest.

Gospel of Thomas:
(2) Jesus said, "Let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled. When he becomes troubled, he will be astonished, and he will rule over the All."
(3) Jesus said, "If those who lead you say to you, 'See, the kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty."

Christianity is a path, not a religion.
Click to expand...
I do agree with you that Christianity is a path and not a religion.
the question then is : what is this path? according to Jesus it is the path of: repentance or rebirth:
what is repentance or rebirth? It has two aspects: transcendence and transformation.
Transcendence is transcending our narrow or finite identities that belong to time and space and discovering our identity that belongs to the eternal: Jesus said: the kingdom of God is like a man who found treasure in the field. He went home sold everything and bought that field. This is the path of transcendence. once transcended the finite needs to be transformed. Jesus said; the kingdom of God is like a woman who took yeast and put in three measures of flower until it was leavened. Yeast is the symbol of infinite, flour is the symbol of the finite. When the infinite enters into the finite then the finite is transformed into the infinite, it is divinized. The finite becomes the vehicle of the infinite. This is for me the path of Christ. It is not a religion
 
Japle

Japle

Member
On the subject of Biblical contradictions and dealing only with the creation stories, we find that there are two different creation stories and they don’t agree on some important points.

Were humans created before or after animals?

Were man and woman created at the same time or was Adam created first, then Eve? BTW, if Adam was created first, did he have reproductive organs? If so, why?

Were the stars made at the same time as the Earth – Genesis 1:1 – or on the fourth day – Genesis 1:16-19?

Were plants created on the third day, before humans – Genesis 1:11-13 – or were they created after humans – Genesis 2:4-7?

The answers to these and other questions depend on which parts of Genesis you choose to believe and which parts you ignore.

The Bible is supposed to be the Word of God, yet it wouldn’t pass a grade-school essay test.
 
Phantasman

Phantasman

Well-Known Member
Sahjananda said:
I do agree with you that Christianity is a path and not a religion.
the question then is : what is this path? according to Jesus it is the path of: repentance or rebirth:
what is repentance or rebirth? It has two aspects: transcendence and transformation.
Transcendence is transcending our narrow or finite identities that belong to time and space and discovering our identity that belongs to the eternal: Jesus said: the kingdom of God is like a man who found treasure in the field. He went home sold everything and bought that field. This is the path of transcendence. once transcended the finite needs to be transformed. Jesus said; the kingdom of God is like a woman who took yeast and put in three measures of flower until it was leavened. Yeast is the symbol of infinite, flour is the symbol of the finite. When the infinite enters into the finite then the finite is transformed into the infinite, it is divinized. The finite becomes the vehicle of the infinite. This is for me the path of Christ. It is not a religion
Click to expand...
The sword Jesus brought divided (completely) the flesh from the spirit. The flesh has it's fate. The soul can be saved by the Spirit (capital S) becoming one with the spirit man was given (in Eden) that gives us (true) life.

John 6:63:
It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.

Jesus was led by the Spirit. He gave it to man after he showed us how to use it. The Jews (OT) never had it. So I don't let the OT influence my thoughts.

John 6:32:
Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven.

The kingdom is now. Existing within the physical but not seen as physical or with eyes. Our spirit exists within it. Only the mind can get the images it produces (truth).

Gospel of Mary 5:
9) Blessed are you that you did not waver at the sight of Me. For where the mind is there is the treasure.
10) I said to Him, Lord, how does he who sees the vision see it, through the soul or through the spirit?
11) The Savior answered and said, He does not see through the soul nor through the spirit, but the mind that is between the two that is what sees the vision
 
BilliardsBall

BilliardsBall

Veteran Member
SerenelyBlue said:
I am of the opinion that Jesus was perhaps really god. There may be truth in Christianity. But the Bible is full of so many contradictions and mistakes that it puts me off. How can I become a Christian when the Bible is so full of imperfections?
Click to expand...

Be encouraged! The Bible is NOT full of faults and contradictions. Don't let a few atheists who take it out of context ruin it for you.

Ask Jesus for wisdom as you read. Trust Him for salvation, is what I did. Read John's gospel, asking Jesus for help in understanding what you're reading and learning about any "contradictions".
 
Audie

Audie

Veteran Member
loverofhumanity said:
The essence of the Bible, the real guts if you like, is universal brotherhood. To consider all humanity as one family and love all.

There is no contradiction in the spiritual or altruistic texts of the Bible. It teaches us to love our neighbour, to be sacrificing and generous, to be just and of good character.

The Bible is like a mine full of the most exquisite gems such as forgiveness, compassion, generosity and goodness. Just read the beatitudes. These beautiful truths teach only goodness and promote only the noblest of virtues.

I personally consider myself blest to read such glorious spiritual truths as are found in the Bible.
Click to expand...

What is a spiritual truth?
 
Audie

Audie

Veteran Member
Samantha Rinne said:
I don't see the Bible as faulty. It's a very good allegory most of which people don't grasp. But there are incredibly slow parts like the middle of John where Jesus sorta talks and talks and there's nothing really happening.

Tell you what. You can sum up Christianity in about five lessons, then feel free to toss the book into the trash after you write that on an index card.
Click to expand...
 
S

Susan Maneck

Member
SerenelyBlue said:
I am of the opinion that Jesus was perhaps really god. There may be truth in Christianity. But the Bible is full of so many contradictions and mistakes that it puts me off. How can I become a Christian when the Bible is so full of imperfections?
Click to expand...
By recognizing that ultimately it is Jesus who is the Word of God, not a book.
 
David T

David T

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
SerenelyBlue said:
I am of the opinion that Jesus was perhaps really god. There may be truth in Christianity. But the Bible is full of so many contradictions and mistakes that it puts me off. How can I become a Christian when the Bible is so full of imperfections?
Click to expand...
"Everything has a crack in it that's how the light gets in. "
Leonard cohen
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top