A genuine question regarding God as you see it:
EDIT: First, for those of you who’d rather not read this, go to Hammerpants Flash Mob!
Something that popped into my head during a discussion about religious doctrine in another journal led me to want to ask:
What is the accepted answer for why the bible continues to change as it is “updated”, and for why the church makes new decrees regarding what is and is not a sin, and what degree of sinning it is? Why were there parts of the bible, if I am not mistaken, discarded during an initial gathering of holy men?
I understand that men are considered imperfect beings, but the christian God is infallible, right? In the christian way, is this considered intentional – that God expects humanity to live through an imperfect Word, perhaps behaving by the declared letter of the law that could be wrong?
Is it considered more important to follow whatever rules are laid out in your lifetime by other humans interpreting the word of God than it is to follow his actual Intent? Is his intent considered flexible – that when those doctrines change, it is through his intent to have those rules change (vs a mistaken understanding)?
And if that’s the case, is his word perhaps less eternally static than a mobile definition that changes as our cultural values change?
The content that brought this up was a discussion about whether people believe marriage is for a man and a woman, two individuals, or multiple people, which led me to this humorous but incendiary article from 2005 about marriage:
IN DEFENSE OF BIBLICAL MARRIAGE
The Presidential Prayer Team is currently urging us to “Pray for the President as he seeks wisdom on how to legally codify the definition of marriage. Pray that it will be according to Biblical principles. With many forces insisting on variant definitions of marriage, pray that God’s Word and His standards will be honored by our government.”
Any good religious person believes prayer should be balanced by action. So here, in support of the Prayer Team’s admirable goals, is a proposed Constitutional Amendment codifying marriage entirely on Biblical principles:
A. Marriage in the United States shall consist of a union between one man and one or more women (Genesis 29:17-28; II Samuel 3:2-5).
B. Marriage shall not impede a man’s right to take concubines in addition to his wife or wives (II Samuel 5:13; I Kings 11:3; II Chronicles 11:21).
C. A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed (Deuteronomy 22:13-21).
D. Marriage of a believer and a non-believer shall be forbidden (Genesis 24:3; Numbers 25:1-9; Ezra 9:12; Nehemiah 10:30).
E. Since marriage is for life, neither this Constitution nor the constitution of any state, nor any state or federal law, shall be construed to permit divorce (Deuteronomy 22:19; Mark 10:9).
F. If a married man dies without children, his brother shall marry the widow. If he refuses to marry his brother’s widow or deliberately does not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one shoe and be otherwise punished in a manner to be determined by law (Genesis 38:6-10; Deuteronomy 25:5-10).
G. In lieu of marriage, if there are no acceptable men in your town, it is required that you get your father drunk and have sex with him (even if he previously offered you up as a sex toy to men young and old), tag-teaming with any sisters you may have. Of course, this rule applies only if you are female (Genesis 19:31-36).
I’m asking for your genuine thoughts to increase my understanding – I reserve the right to be a hypocritical dictator in the comments. ;)
The Bible is an outstanding example of creative editing.
Let’s see…..From where I stand, there are very few direct quotes from God the Father Almighty in the Christian Bible. The few being the 10 Commandments. (if you want to believe that God really did give the tablets to Moses.) Otherwise it is all apparently second hand knowledge, if not third or fourth according to the fact that the gospels were only collected into an “official” form 300 years after the birth of Jesus.
As the saying goes, History is Written by Winners, so can we truly believe that the Bible would not be a little one sided in favor of the people who put it together.
Now, to reconcile that with modern science and societal norms, believes must either become spin doctors, and dismiss things that no longer apply. Slavery is the big one that comes to mind. How can you be a Godly Person if you OWN another godly person?
(and that is the short version)
Re: The Bible is an outstanding example of creative editing.
This is pretty much what I was going to say.
That and add in that that’s why there are so many different flavors of Christianity. As a Quaker-leaning Mainline Protestant*, my views on the Bible and the religion were vastly different from my ex-husband’s who was Catholic and we both struggled, very much so, with the Evangelical and Fundamentalist sects.
* Though technically, The Society of Friends is Mainline, there so little similarity with the others that it feels very distinct and like it just doesn’t belong in that group. For example, it’s relatively trivial to go from a Methodist church to a Presbyterian one, but it’s a very different experience to go from a Methodist church to a Quaker Meeting.
Re: The Bible is an outstanding example of creative editing.
Quite true – I’ve been to methodist and catholic mass/ceremonies, for instance, and they are quite different both in attitude and content.
It never ceases to amaze me how much more simple life and decisions are when you take “god” out of the equation. The world becomes so much more open and love so much less restricted.
I’m sure those who are firm believers in God would say that that’s the problem. I hope the lovely pagan and secular folks who comment here don’t discourage honest commentary from christians, as I meant this as an honest, not a leading, question.
I don’t think you need to “take god out” of an equation to get well thought out answer. Just depends on how a person thinks of the higher power/religion. I think that religion should be between a body and their god. IE- MY religion ends at the same place my skin ends and I am neither going to force a person to believe as I do anymore than they can force me to believe as they do.
I do think that the answer to my question probably must be approaching God as a “hands-off” entity, and I’ve always been of the belief that if there is a God, one must interpret him and his meaning for one’s self.
Damn it! I went the wrong way.. I decided one wasn’t a good fit, so I brought in a gaggle of them.
Then I decided that they wouldn’t necessarily gaggle, as be aspects of something more, which we are part of.. then I decided that the machines are the way to go.
When the metal ones come, stand with me and you shall be protected.
Anyone following the comments here may want to check out my facebook, where the always-insightful (and former Jehovah’s Witness) Trase has left a lengthy comment with her perspective.
I’m on study break, so I’d like to check this later when I have a bigger block of time. Could you Facebook me?
From an ex-Catholic’s perspective:
The old testament already existed as the Torah before being *zoinked* by Christianity for the Christian bible. Most of that stayed intact through the Council of Hippo (393 AD and on.) At that time the new testament was pulled together from the beliefs of the many differing sects of Christianity flourishing. The ideas at the time were often contradicting and wild and an effort was made to pull everything together into a single dogma. They mostly succeeded.
Now the rationalization regarding changing dogma is part of the “…on Earth as it is in Heaven” thing. Which is a simplification of what Jesus says to Peter, “I will give you, Peter, the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
So Jesus was saying, You the man now Peter, whatever you say goes ’cause I’m not gonna be ’round much longer. Ya’ dig?
So while the Bible for the most part doesn’t change much, interpretations can and do, precisely because the Pope is “Jesus.” Because the real Jesus left to go live with his Father in Heaven. (Movin’ back in with the ‘rents.)
It also serves to allow the Church to change with the times without a dead document weighing them down and helps them remain relevant.
Those quotes above are humorous, I’ve seen them before. They are also all part of the old testament. Christians, to a lesser or greater degree, put less faith in the words of the old testament than the new. So while there is some pretty crazy shit going down in the old testament, mostly it’s seen as historical in nature and used for abstract lessons.
A quick search through an online Bible tells me that the times in the New Testament that marriage is mentioned it’s either about Joseph and Mary, the wedding feast (water to wine) or applicability of scriptures to the culture at the time.
I very much appreciate your commentary – that does indeed help me understand the perspective better.
I often wonder if, 400 years AD, there wasn’t more incentive to rework history a little in order to put a little more power in the hands of the church.
That lust for power paid off handsomely about 1000-1200 years later when half of Christendom actually started reading the Bible and successfully rebelled against the Roman Catholic Church.
I commented on your Facebook, so I’ll let those comments stand over there.
I was raised a Congregationalist and still believe in that manner (yes, I know, shocking that I’m a physicist who believes in God.) I think it’s the liberal interpretation of Biblical scripture and the flexible philosophical doctrine of Congregationalism that have allowed me to be who I am. Philosophically, only the Unitarian-Universalists are more liberal in their beliefs than my denomination. I can clearly trace my beliefs back to Martin Luther’s radical idea that “a man (or anyone for that matter) might be his own priest.” With that in mind, anyone has the right to read the Bible and interpret it as the Holy Spirit moves them to (though, there needs to be a degree of humility, reverence and self-honesty to this, lest it become entirely a self-serving act.)
All that said, I disagree strenuously with the fundamentalist, literal interpretation of the Bible. First off, most of the people who believe and worship in that manner have standardized on the King James translation of the Bible, which is not the best translation between the original ancient languages and English. The New International Version took pains to translate directly from the oldest known extant original sources into English. In short, a “literal” interpretation of the KJV is risking significant error in understanding. Secondly, while we are still human beings with most of the same failings as people had thousands of years ago, the world we live in today would be utterly unrecognizable to the denizens of the eras in which rabbis and scholars were writing the books of the Bible. Therefore, it’s folly to take scripture at its literal word in today’s world. We must, perforce, interpret it for it to have much relevance at all.
Personally, I see a very strong scriptural argument in favor of expanding our legal definition of marriage. The story of Jacob, Rachel and Leah comes most clearly to mind. Ultimately, I suspect that heterosexual plural marriages, like the one Jacob, Leah and Rachel had are what are actually driving the Fundies to fits. After all, the homosexual population is a small minority in comparison.
Getting legalistic, legally, all of the rights which we now enjoy ultimately derive from English Common Law, upon which our Constitution was based. All of the rights of English Common Law were considered to have been bestowed to each of us, individually, by God.
Now, back to religion, I cannot believe that the God who sent Jesus (among others) to teach us that we should all love one another as we love ourselves would be against two people seeking to marry (thus proclaiming their love for one another to the world) just because they were of the same sex.
Take this idea for a spin.
What if you think that a marriage contract is just a binding document between two adult that are not related by blood as a way of creating a “next of kin” who would then be the closest relative that you could entrust with all matters concerning financial, legal, and health.
if you remove the numerical restriction, that’s a decent start. In general, I favor maximizing the freedom/liberty of all people, with the understand that liberties and rights also entail responsibilities.
Pragmatically speaking, the way out of this is to split the concept of marriage into civil unions (for everyone, regardless of sexual orientation) which confer the legal powers and rights you mention (in addition to others), and the institution of marriage which is a religious or spiritual institution between the people involved. Churches could marry, but not give civil unions, and the state would not be able to marry people.
But now I think I’ve wandered far afield of‘s original questions.
That is the very point I brought up elsewhere, though, regarding marriage. I think the whole thing is a gross failure of semantics.
I quite concur. I further say that civil unions should not be restricted to type of partnership— should Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert from the _Anne of Green Gables_ series be restricted from co-parenting and owning a farm together because they’re not (so far as anyone knows) having sex with each other? (Not that it’s a valid to use fictional characters as examples, but I hope it’s clear what I mean).
Re: From an ex-Catholic’s perspective:
Thanks for saving me the time of having to write pretty much the exact same thing. Pretty much right on the nose from the standpoint of Catholic interpretation.
I was going to mention the Synod of Hippo, but someone beat me to it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea is worth reading.
Um, everytime I’ve asked this in my fundamentalist Baptist church I get this artful response: “Jesus is the new covenant, replacing the old covenant of the Old Testament.” Hmmm, I just looked at the Southern Baptist Faith and Message, i.e. the official statement of the church. Here’s the excerpt from Section XVIII, Family:
God has ordained the family as the foundational institution of human society. It is composed of persons related to one another by marriage, blood, or adoption.
Marriage is the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime. It is God’s unique gift to reveal the union between Christ and His church and to provide for the man and the woman in marriage the framework for intimate companionship, the channel of sexual expression according to biblical standards, and the means for procreation of the human race.
The husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God’s image. The marriage relationship models the way God relates to His people. A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family. A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation.
Children, from the moment of conception, are a blessing and heritage from the Lord. Parents are to demonstrate to their children God’s pattern for marriage. Parents are to teach their children spiritual and moral values and to lead them, through consistent lifestyle example and loving discipline, to make choices based on biblical truth. Children are to honor and obey their parents.
That is an interesting decree, for certain, but I am curious how this could be arrived at solely from the New Testament, presuming the old testament is discarded as no longer applicable, you know? Especially with the whole “Love god with your heart (etc), and love your neighbor as you do yourself”.
I do not believe I am comfortable with the idea that the male is the symbol of immortal divinity, and the female is the symbol of frail and fallible mortality, y’know?
You’d be surprised at the ingenuity of pastors.
Hmmm, I’m not a seminary student, so I’m afraid that I’m not exactly qualified to answer your question. However, I’ll try my best to address it next week (i.e. whenever I have enough time to collect my thoughts and my brain isn’t zapped from schoolwork).
I was raised by a Methodist mother and a father who refused a label. He believed in the Old Testament as a somewhat exaggerated telling of spiritual events but he wasn’t so sure that Christianity was the correct path from there. He has since fully embraced Christianity.
But I specifically remember him telling me several times to take everything in the bible as a lesson rather than literally, because it was man’s interpretation and translation of the original stories, not the actual word of God. He would then smile and say “Because what will you do, otherwise, if you get there and the big guy says ‘call me Allah’?”
I spent a lot of time contemplating that and looking for almost the same answer that you’re looking for in this post. I never got it. I think my favorite non-answer was from Sister Margo, who told me “You just have to have faith, Jennifer. Once you believe, God will make sure that you understand.” (I eventually gave up & wandered away.)
I wish you luck :)
I suggest you read “The Genesis of Justice” by Alan Dershowitz some time. It’s a fascinating study of Genesis as an account of human and divine learning to speak each other’s language.
$0.02
At the college I studied at, the Bible is required reading, and it’s pretty obvious that God is a round character, moving from the petty and tyrannical el-Shaddai of Genesis to a mature being with an almost beat-poet sensibility toward the end of the OT, then offstage for much of NT and finally going completely batshit in Revelations— arguably as a response to His creation and the society that worshiped him. The “infallible” thing is mostly just people going, “Look, He’s God. He usually has a good reason for this, and He knows more about this than we do.” Plus, you know, advertising and flattery; again, arguably because we humans are such utter children sometimes that God, like the parent of an overly-tired toddler, just has to say, “Look, I’m the daddy and that makes me right and I get to say what’s right around here, okay? And what I’m doing may LOOK mean, but you’ll be glad of it when you get a little perspective.” And what the clerics say is: humanity grows up, the laws relax to reflect that, but my point is that in theory, if you try to come at it without being afraid of being smited (smote? smitten?), humanity grows, God grows, and the law is, one hopes, dynamic. (I certainly hope so; otherwise, they’re going to have to cut me into many, many pieces to burn them all to death separately for my “sins,” current and present.)
I’m surprised there’s not more Christ quoted in the above document. He’s very clear: it’s not okay to have a family. What you do is, when you’re inspired to become a Christian, you sell all your possessions, give the proceeds to the poor, and don’t pretend your past filial obligations apply, just go preaching from door to door; God is your family now. He’s also pretty frowny on the idea of having kids, when all is said and done: it’s selfish of Christian women to give birth: they ought to always sit on a soft suface when they’re breastfeeding, because when the End Times come, they’re going to disappear *pop* into the sky like Nightcrawler out of panel three, and the babies are just going to sort of fall… down. (Which conflicts with the idea in Revelation that only 144,000 Jewish male virgins are going to be allowed into the Holy City, but you know, whatever…)
Also of note: to make a very, very proper Christian’s vein throb, ask them about the prophet Micah/ Mikiah, who is quite frank when he says, “God told me to lie to you about this…”