sojourner
Annoyingly Progressive Since 2006
What you believe is immaterial here.
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How to Read the Bible, and Still be a Christian
- Thread starter Windwalker
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sealchan
Well-Known Member
Yes. Crossan goes into this in some detail in his book this thread is titled after. The Deuteronomic tradition in the OT is born out of the Northern Kingdom under the thumb and rule of Assyrian tyranny. Jehovah takes on the same characteristics of the god Ashur which is a very viciously violent deity. And the style of the Covenants, which originally were fashioned after the Hittite Kings in a more inviting relationship, to the Assyrian style covenants which were more threatening, "Do this or be cursed without mercy" form.
That is very true, and as already indicated you see that very thing in the Deuteronomic tradition coming out of the Northern Kingdoms, as opposed to the Priestly traditions. Paul's vision of the kingdom of God was far less hierarchical than you find in the Jerusalem vision.
Where I take this a little further is that images of God that shift around in the Bible like this reflect the human push and pull against the divine pull. The Divine is all about persuasion, and never force. But the world human system is about force.
As we surrender to the ways of God, we go with the flow, so to speak. When we draw back into trying to control the situation, we exercise force to make that happen. There is a great deal that can be said here. This is quickly revealed to anyone who practices meditation. The Spirit guides, if we surrender control. But the human mind, the egoic mind, seeks to protect itself, to defend itself, to gain for itself through the force of the will pushing for the desired goal held in mind. (Why a key component of a good meditation practice is to let go of any mental expectations of outcome).
You can see this entire dilema on display in the Bible, with the projected image of God being displayed, reflects that mentality of Force over Persuasion, or actual Power. Power vs. Force is a better descriptor, as true Power is invitational. It never forces itself. It is like Yin/Yang this way, where Yin is passive and does not force itself to overcome Yang's force. Rather it invites for Yang to empty itself in it it, into Ground. It then becomes the Source out of which creation springs forth through Yang or force. The balance of these in ourselves results in true power in the world, as opposed to the egoically guided summoning of force to get what it wants. It is the spiritual Will that ground and centers both of these in ourselves, and gains access to true Power through surrender of the ego to Spirit, or God, or the Tao.
That's interesting as I'm typing this line of thought out here. It is that natural cycle we are seeing here in this "biblical heartbeat" that Crossan termed. When Yang settles back, then Yin or Spirit can be heard inviting to surrender to the Way, as opposed to fighting your way into peace. Sorry if this is a little stream of conscious here, but I've been exploring the deeper aspects of the Taijiquan form that I practice daily as meditation, and I'm seeing certain threads of realization crossing over several different symbolic systems here. I'm jumping language systems here, and introducing confusion.
There is definitely a lot here to explore for quite some years yet to come for me. It creates a very cool metalayer image of what goes on at a cosmic habits level. I tend to see the world in these emerging bigger picture views as systems, and systems within systems, and the unitive whole aspects. Rather than get stuck at arguing exactly which hue of blue this strip of paint is colored, as if that will resolve the grand answer to life itself. It all relates and moves as a Whole.
I think we have a lot in common...many of the things you say you are exploring are things I definitely keep tabs on. Systems, the Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate, etc... And you certainly don't have to apologize to me about stream of consciousness. I'm sure I am a big "offender" in this area.
BilliardsBall
Veteran Member
For every NT verse about Jesus's first advent, there are ten verses describing His return, like "[t]aking vengeance in flaming fire upon those who don't obey the gospel," or "[f]rom His mouth comes a sharp sword to slay His enemies".
The God of both testaments created justice, endowed us with its sense, and created Hell.
Lovely!
So then why should Christians seek to "love your neighbor as yourself", when Jesus is portrayed as ten times more violent than non-violent? I would think the Beatitudes would seem rather inconsequential to his teachings, considering his actions are ten times over more violent. Why don't preachers tell us to take up our swords and slay the enemies of God, like our Lord demonstrates as the way of righteous behaviors? Are Islamic Jihadists are the right path, and the non-violent followers of Jesus on the wrong one?
Something is radically wrong here. That is what this thread is about. Yes. Those violent verses are there. But why are they there? They are incompatible with each other. They are flat contradictions. They portray Jesus as the gentle Dr. Jekyll and the murderous Mr. Hyde in the same person. Is this who Jesus really is, forgiving, compassionation, loving as he teaches on the mount to his disciples, yet rageful, murderous, and brutal beyond comprehension in his actions yet to come?
You would not accept this in any human being. Why should you accept this in Jesus? Would you act this way? Should you act this way, since that is the example the Lord teaches you?
There are answers as to why these contradictions exist in the Bible. That is what this thread is about. The only knot that keeps someone such as yourself from seeing the obvious, is your marriage with this flawed, modern theology that the Bible was dictated by God and is a whole, intentional message from God, inerrant, consistent, and literal. That modern, poorly informed theology makes God have a multiple personality disorder, a Dr. Jekyll and a Mr. Hyde.
Once you recognize that that is bad theology, then a reasonable, and consistent understanding of the nature of Love and God and Jesus can be seen, without all this bad rationalizations about so-called "justice" in the form of brutal punishments and executions performed by the teacher of peace Jesus Christ. Cognitive dissonance drops away right away, without the need to try to rationalize it by saying Jesus teaches both forgiveness and vengeance. These are not compatible with each other.
There are two contradictory presentations of justice in the Bible. One is non-violent distributive justice (what Jesus taught and I believe in), and the other is violent retributive justice, which Jesus taught against. Both exist in the Bible, both are attributed to God and to Jesus, and and they are incompatible with each other. Do you condone that behavior in others? Then why would you excuse it in God, let alone celebrate it as goodness, truth, and mercy?
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BilliardsBall
Veteran Member
Since both testaments, and descriptions of God the Father and Jesus include justice and patience, wrath and love, and since we're made in God's image, and exhibit these qualities and more, there is no need to find an a priori contradiction--you do so to justify a slippery slope and subjective morals IMHO.
Respectfully, either prove using literary documents, archaeology, etc. how you magically know which verses Jesus SAID and which are LIES, or ...
Yes, both testaments contain both of these contradictory images of God, love vs wrath, forgiveness vs condemnation, peace vs. violence, etc. And yes as well, humans exhibit both extremes (which is my point about it being a projection of our contradictory natures).
But these are considered sins by us, not excused as being made in the image of God. We have laws against these things and put people in prison for acting on them. They are not considered good, or godly, or reflective of God's image, on any level.
Yet, we should accept that this is "good" when God is portrayed as exhibiting this, violent, rageful, murderous proclivities? Would you be okay with finding out your father and mother were axe murderers?
These are not just individual morals, they are collectively agreed upon by nearly every human being alive, and rightly so. Jesus himself taught against violence. That is the correct path to follow. Is God allowed to tell us to be good, and not kill, and then act the opposite of that himself? That's not moral. That is amoral, as well as hypocritical. "Do good to those who despitefully use you, unless it's me killing them because they deserve it and I'm all powerful and can do anything I want?"
That is why I offered the links to both the book, and the presentation in the video in the OP. This is all very well supported using multiple disciplines, including cross-cultural anthropology and archeology. You can see the same things in other writings in other cultures. It's a human thing.
And BTW, nobody said they were "lies". That is what you call them. I wouldn't choose that word. It's simply a different image of God, that contradicts that other one. Some people see God through the eyes of hope, faith, and love, and others see God through the eyes of fear, guilt, and shame. The former is welcoming and peaceable, the latter terrifying and vengeful. These are different realities.
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BilliardsBall
Veteran Member
Thank you, but biblically, righteous wrath is not a sin, for God or for people. For example, Matthew 7 doesn't say "don't judge" but does say, "judge rightly".
Are you allowed to kill sinners for disobeying Jesus? Is this something that Jesus Christ really intends to do? How well does that fit with his teachings to us to the following?
"Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous"
Does Jesus instruct us in the path of meekness, humility, grace, and forgiveness in his Sermon on the Mount, and then plans to demonstrate later a complete reversal of this for us in his ruthlessness with sinners in the last days, where at the end of the day his robes are soaked in their blood? How does this impress you as the same Jesus? How does it impress you as someone seeking the path of love through the person of Jesus?
I'll add here again, understand that there are two different types of justice being expressed in the Bible. One is the path of distributive justice, and the other is the path of retributive justice. The former is the way of the Spirit, which Matthew 5 beautifully unfolds. The latter is the world system of force and violence. The former in invitational, the latter is forceful. The former is nonviolent, the latter is the violent way of the world system. Justice is part of God's kingdom, but it is about equanimity and fair distribution (as in the quote above), not retribution, as in the book of Revelation.
BilliardsBall
Veteran Member
Yes, Jesus will return with "thousands of His to judge all the ungodly ones". The Bible explains that Christians from the apostles on down will judge men and angels, applaud God's judgment, and join God in destroying the armies of Earth at Armageddon.
Either kindly explain how you "know" which verses are "right" and which are "wrong" or stop ignoring thousands, literally thousands, of Bible verses about God's character.
Thanks.
I think it may help to explain some of my history, and why this thread and what it touches upon helps me to understand the contradiction of my Christian faith which I experienced as a student of the Bible many years ago in college with the intention to enter the ministry. You will see why what I am saying is not meant to be cruel, but to address head on a major conflict I had in my faith as it was presented to me through fundamentalists eyes. And I think Crossan's title of his book captures that dichotomy quite succinctly, "How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian: Is God Violent?"
My entrance into Christianity began following an experience of the divine, prior to any religious associations of any kind. The experience was an encounter with Absolute Love, beyond all descriptions. It was timeless, absolute, and free. The weight of infinity could crush you, yet all held in absolute Grace, beyond fathoming.
When I was pulled into the Christian religion through a co-worker in my youth, it was the form of the religion which sounds very much akin to the types of things you have been taught yourself. As I was in their classrooms studying the scriptures, their descriptions of God sending sinners to a lake of fire, for eternal suffering, jarred deeply against everything my experience of God had shown me of God's Reality. There was absolutely no place for a threatening, fearful, punishing, tormentor, let alone a place such as hell itself. There was absolutely no place that could be a reality in God, or of God in any way shape or form.
Of course, being young and the novice in all of this theology they were teaching me, I had to assume there was something I didn't understand about God, and after all, doubt is the devil trying to steal your faith, so they taught me as well.
So I tried "faith" in the sense of denying genuine doubt, but because my experience was so absolute and undeniable as to its reality, and the power and depth of that absolute Love I that embraced me and filled me like a fountain of absolute Joy and Love and Life springing from the Wellspring of Absolute Reality, I had to face the reality that "I know more than all my teachers". ~Ps. 199:99
In the process of discovering the teachings of Christianity, there was also Truth. My first sermon was on Jesus' Two Great Commandments. And I said at that time that no other sermon need ever be preached but this one. I still say that to this very day. There were many real truths that did align with my experience of God. Many insights, language, poetry, and spiritual depths that are found in the Bible. And then there is also that other, completely non-reality stuff about God in the Bible. I didn't understand how it can speak to my experience of God, and of unconditional love itself in the world, with this other "foreign" image of God.
Fast forward many years of sorting this all out for myself. While I've lost faith in the things I believed in, I have never lost Faith, with a capital F, in the reality of God. Though I can doubt all things I conclude with the mind are "truths", the Heart knows that God is Truth, and that beliefs can come and go. That is what Faith with a capital F is. Not contingent upon rationalizing and justifying the arguments for one's beliefs. That sort of faith argues against Faith. It relies of the abilities of the reasoning mind to comprehend, rather that trusting in the Unknown, which is God, not understood with the mind in some "owner's manual" sort of way, but as intimate and close as one's very own breath itself breathing Peace.
But how do I think make salvage of this in Christian faith? There is Truth there, as well as a picture of human cruelty projected on its page as the face of the God of Creation. How can I legitimately say, these things of Christian faith still speak to me, while I in sincerity facing the truth of what is on its pages which represent something else, something like you find in the brutality of human societies attributed to God as the lead character?
No, Jesus is not coming to destroy sinners. But God is there to save those who abhor the savager of this world and its violence and retributions for wrongs. God does not force itself upon anyone, now or in the "last days".
What is the test of Truth that Jesus spoke of? "By their fruits you shall know them. A good tree cannot bear evil fruit, and an evil tree cannot bear good fruit". What is the energy you feel when you imagine Jesus, having put his donkey of peace down with a slit to the throat, mounting his war horse and charging forth with sword swinging and decapitating enemies, heads rolling and blood splattering all over his pure white robes? Does it make you feel tight in the chest? Clenching your jaw? Fearful?
There is your answer.
BilliardsBall
Veteran Member
I agree, and have experienced some of this absolute love of God!
God wants me to love people, to tell them outside RF that He loves them so much, He was ripped to shreds on the cross to save them from eternal Hell.
I hope you read the same Bible as I, where Jesus makes some pretty stern warnings about Hell...?
I do not feel threatened by God. Nor should anyone. Love does not use fear to call us to itself. Love does not use fear to keep us in line. Love never threatens.
In your experience of God, could you imagine that Love, casting people into hell, or is that something you read that put that idea in your head? Did your experience teach you this, or someone interpreting the Bible? I can tell you in my case, it certainly was not the former, and most certainly the latter. How about yourself?
As far as hell goes, yes, metaphorically hell exists as a state of being, not a place with flames. It it not a "place", nor is it really real at all, as something created by God to send naughty people to for their bad things they did in life. That is a child's imagination of what is a metaphorical truth. What is that truth? What is hell?
Hell literally is the state of separation from the divine in our conscious awareness of self and the world. To be separate from the Source of our being in our minds, creates a condition of existential anguish. People just live with this, creating fictions of reality in their minds which they identify as. We live and act out of accord with our true nature, which is simply being a child of God. We all are that by birth. But we "fall" from that Grace that gave rise to our very being itself, as we slip into a state of a separate self, losing sight of the wonder of life and reality we had as children while our eyes were still open and could see the miracle in everything.
This then gets mired in muck as we struggle with our failings, our sins as it were, then compounded by feelings of guilt and shame and regrets. This all then gets wrapped up in fear, and everything we see begins to be colorized by fear's constant presence in our lives as the guardian of our guilt. Eventually, we no longer see the miracle in the world, but instead we see a reflection of our own self-image which we hold as fearful. The world moves from inviting, to threatening.
And most people do not see that shroud over their faces and their eyes. It's like seeing through a smokey haze so long, that is just what the world looks like. Until the haze is cleared and you can see clearly, "even as you are known". Then, we know what being alive is. We know what Freedom is. We see the whole illusion as it is, a great show for us to believe in, which created this state of separation from the Divine, which we knew in our childhoods, in our innocence.
All these stories of the bible are beautiful metaphors for just this. Hell is what life is right now, in the present, and potential futures as we live blind to Reality or God. Once we have tasted that "Salvation", that Liberation from that prison, then you understand what hell is. It is not a literal place of fire, but it is a literal state of being in existential anguish, being alone, isolated, separated in this world, from our Source, from the world, from others and from ourselves.
What troubles me for you, is that to imagine God is literally capable of directed violence, creates a face of terror rather than Love. Love is invitational. It never forces. It never is violent. "Love works no ill". How can we know true love in its purest form, of unconditional acceptance as we let go of our own shame and embrace it wholly, if we are holding onto fear? How can we accept Love, if we believe it is capable of autorcities? How could we fully trust ourselves into a being which threatens, rather than is a Refuge?
Muffled
Jesus in me
i believe that is correct. A person with a wicked heart will be sickened by anything good in it but glorify the evil in it.
Desert Snake
Veteran Member
When they canonized the bible, they included some things in the ot that are extra writings.
In the nt, some of the verses are either mistranslations, or added. There really aren't that many, though, and it's fairly easy to tell which verses those are, with some consideration and study.
Where you are incorrect, is in presuming there is no HELL, so forth.
No, with cross reference, there is not only hell, there is eternal hell.
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Extra writings example, being for instance the conquest of canaan, verses that can't be correct, some in Book of luke and some in Acts. Bad translation or added, some parable verses.
None of these support your general argument, they are basically obscurities that invite their way into any large text.
The things I am pointing out generally has the consensus of modern scholarship as the underlying supported structure, such as which are considered the authentic letters of Paul and which are not. This is far from a few verses here and there, but include entire books, for instance.
I'm not sure whose, if anyone's at all scholarship to support you thoughts on the texts of scripture you are using. But it sounds to me to be somewhat more, ad libbed, as opposed to employing the tools of scholarship in actual research. When I am citing Crossan, you can be assured there is a great deal of actual scholarship supporting it with evidences.
I cannot ignore this data as a thinking, reasoning person of faith. What do we do with what is brought forth? Dismiss it because we don't like it? Make up our own stuff, and consider it on equal footing with actual scholarship? I cannot do this, personally, because it lacks integrity for me. It would be a compromise in my spiritual life to simply ignore legitimate scholarship.
There is no presumption at all on my part. It is not possible for it to be real, based upon my experience of God, or the Absolute. I start with experience first. If what I am told later by someone talking about God does not jib at all with that, then I will become suspicious of them. Experience is not presumption, it is not conceptual in nature in order for it to presume anything at all.
Secondarily, logically, using just the conceptual mind, there can be no hell. The reason being is because if hell is a literal "place", it cannot exist anywhere in God. It is typically viewed as "outside" God, because it is the opposite of God, instead of Love you have Hate, instead of Compassion you have Violence," etc. Now you may think this seems logical to you then, then it must be outside of God because sin cannot exist in God. Correct?
But do you believe that God is not Infinite? That God is a finite creature with other creatures outside of himself, as though he were a type of Bigfoot-like creature? Most Christians consider God to be Omnipresent, Omniscience, and Omnipotent. That means there is no where, no place possible that God cannot exist or be present within. That includes everyone and everything, and everywhere.
If hell is a "place", than it has to exist within God and is part of God. Do you believe that in the belly of God's Love, is the furnace of his Hell? It is unimaginable, and utterly impossible to imagine that with my mind, with my heart, and with my soul. Hell is a non-reality we believe in and create torment for ourselves with. It doesn't exist, and cannot exist within God, and nothing exists outside of God.
Hell is not real. It is a projection of our own dissociation with our own existence in God. It is the ultimate anguish to experience separation from God. And that is how most of us live our lives. To me, finding God, or becoming Enlightened, is to move from illusion into Truth, for in Christian parlance, from hell to heaven.
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Desert Snake
Veteran Member
Actually it seems like you are trying to give your opinion, saying it's scholarly, while not considering anything, even though you posed the premise in a question format. You are really just making your argument worse, with this type of argument.
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IndigoChild5559
Loving God and my neighbor as myself.
If you are going to read the Bible and still be a Christian, you have to completely rework the Tanakh (what Christians pretensiously call the Old Testament) to the point that you are ignoring what it teaches at a very basic level. Some Christians make no bones about this, never even cracking open the Tanakh. Christianity is essentially contained in the Christian Scriptures (what they call the New Testament).