If It Quacks Like a Duck, But Looks Like a Chicken...
I started reading The Bible in September. On a whim, I signed up for an on-line reading plan that gave me daily reading assignments designed to help me stay focused and finish within a calendar year. I knew I'd never be able to do it on my own. I'm not a reader and I had little faith in myself. I knew I'd need some kind of crutch to help me slog my way through. You see, I've always been more about the experience of God than what 'His' book had to say. Plus I was never really too keen on the Biblical stuff I'd stumbled upon or that had been thrown in my face over the years. The last thing I ever wanted to do was sit down and read the damn thing cover-to-cover. However, I was rapidly growing weary of people telling me that I didn't know God because I'd never read 'His' word (meaning The Bible, I think), so I decided I may as well see what all the fuss was about. It probably wouldn't kill me and at the very least it would give me a stronger spiritual platform, even if the only thing I ever did was refute 'The Word' with experience.
I stopped reading in December somewhere in the middle of 2Kings. God bless, it was awful. Amid all the eye rolling and audible sighs, I was bored stiff. I didn't see God in any of it. I saw the history of a people who explained their horrible existence on God's dueling love/hate relationship with them. Things would go good for awhile (evidence of God's love), then disaster would befall them (supposedly because someone fucked up and burned the wrong thing at the wrong time at the wrong temple). What is absolutely hilarious to me is that people STILL think all that was really God's Will and not just happenstance or the result of poor human decision making. What's even more hilarious is that such Biblical explanations aren't that different from those employyed by the pan-polytheistic religions of the Greek and Roman empires before being replaced by the monotheistic Hebrew religion. The ONLY true difference I see is the existence of ONE god rather than many. To our twenty-first century sensibilities BOTH should seem simplistic. Yet, a vast majority of the world's people still read The Bible as if it was actually written by God yesterday.
I will say that I stuck to my guns a lot longer than I wanted to because of Jesus. I like Jesus a lot and I thought that maybe I'd like him even better when I finally got to the New Testament. Hell, he would have to be a breath of fresh air after the beating of the Old Testament. My God. It's no wonder so many people followed him. If I'd spent my whole life following rule upon rule and worrying if God truly loved me one day to the next, I'd have fallen at his feet, too. Now, though, I hesitate to read about the life of Jesus as interpreted in the New Testament for fear that it bastardizes him just as the Old Testament bastardized God.
Ugh... Why does it have to be this hard? Why can't we just settle in, focus on God and/or Jesus, and go from there? Why does it have to be about His 'supposed' word or the edited interpretations of Jesus'? God bless my blasphemy and guide me toward what's right. I'm not saying that there is no value in The Bible or in Biblical scholarship. I simply recommend caution and a good solid dose of discernment. If it quacks like a duck, but looks like a chicken, it's probably none of the above.
I stopped reading in December somewhere in the middle of 2Kings. God bless, it was awful. Amid all the eye rolling and audible sighs, I was bored stiff. I didn't see God in any of it. I saw the history of a people who explained their horrible existence on God's dueling love/hate relationship with them. Things would go good for awhile (evidence of God's love), then disaster would befall them (supposedly because someone fucked up and burned the wrong thing at the wrong time at the wrong temple). What is absolutely hilarious to me is that people STILL think all that was really God's Will and not just happenstance or the result of poor human decision making. What's even more hilarious is that such Biblical explanations aren't that different from those employyed by the pan-polytheistic religions of the Greek and Roman empires before being replaced by the monotheistic Hebrew religion. The ONLY true difference I see is the existence of ONE god rather than many. To our twenty-first century sensibilities BOTH should seem simplistic. Yet, a vast majority of the world's people still read The Bible as if it was actually written by God yesterday.
I will say that I stuck to my guns a lot longer than I wanted to because of Jesus. I like Jesus a lot and I thought that maybe I'd like him even better when I finally got to the New Testament. Hell, he would have to be a breath of fresh air after the beating of the Old Testament. My God. It's no wonder so many people followed him. If I'd spent my whole life following rule upon rule and worrying if God truly loved me one day to the next, I'd have fallen at his feet, too. Now, though, I hesitate to read about the life of Jesus as interpreted in the New Testament for fear that it bastardizes him just as the Old Testament bastardized God.
Ugh... Why does it have to be this hard? Why can't we just settle in, focus on God and/or Jesus, and go from there? Why does it have to be about His 'supposed' word or the edited interpretations of Jesus'? God bless my blasphemy and guide me toward what's right. I'm not saying that there is no value in The Bible or in Biblical scholarship. I simply recommend caution and a good solid dose of discernment. If it quacks like a duck, but looks like a chicken, it's probably none of the above.
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