I do believe wholeheartedly that my mother is going to knock me upside my stubborn head for this, but here goes - I don't believe that the Bible is intended to be taken verbatim.
Whew! There! I said it.
If it were intended to be taken literally and verbatim, then every verse must be taken literally and verbatim and we could not pick and choose what we do and do not do according to the "law" that God set down for the Israelites. I mean, seriously, let's go back to the days of Genesis when folks were wandering around acting the fool, plum naked (except for some kind of shrubbery apparently). Seriously, do you think someone actually plucked a fruit off of a tree and consumed it and magically knew right from wrong?
Wouldn't it be possible, even feasible, that God (who had already created them male and female) was running this test. For argument sake, let's say the Garden of Eden was His laboratory and Adam and Eve were the test specimens. He wanted to see how long it would take them to "sin" or basically stray from the path of simplicity that He set out before them. Man, they had it good. They had food from every plant and tree in the garden. Of course, there aren't a lot of details about the garden and just what all Adam and Eve were up to during the salad days, but boy howdy, just let someone step off the grid for one second and a serpent - get this - a SERPENT tells the chick to eat from the tree and it's okay because she won't really die she'll just see the world the way God sees it.
A serpent?
Now, the last time I listened to anything a serpent had to say I had been drinking heavily at a keg party and this lame guy was telling me that I was the most gorgeous creature on the planet and he wanted me to bear his offspring. I was laughing on the inside.
Still, let's go back to this serpent thing. Why, oh why, would any woman worth her salt listen to words that were apparently coming out of the mouth of some critter that her husband had just given a name here while back? You have to stop for a second and think about the credibility of that statement alone. A serpent. Ugh. Give me a real break.
So let us say, for argument sake, that Adam and Eve were told NOT to go to the ridge that is at the edge of the garden. They were told that if they went to this ridge, they would surely die. Mkay, well curiosity is a powerful thing and though it may have killed the cat (apparently curiosity takes 9 lives right away from ya) it doesn't do a thing for Eve. She just walks right out to that old ledge and looks down and sees a city. In this city she sees people and on these people are clothes. They are walking and talking and working and carrying on their daily lives, unaware that there is a garden, hidden amongst the forest atop that there mountain yonder.
Well, Eve spies a shopping spree in the making and heads her ignorant ass down the side of the mountain, panting and heaving, and wanders into the square, just naked as a jaybird. All the women stop and gawk at her and one of the nice men in the village grabs a curtain out of a window and wraps it around her. This, of course, scares the shit out of Eve, but they all calm her down and tell her she ought to refrain from wandering around without clothes on, somebody might think she was simple minded or something. So they tell her about life in the "big city" and she goes back to Adam, speechless.
Ole Adam is perched back on a nice mossy bed, nibbling on a piece of fruit and watching the odd shapes of the clouds on the beautiful, perfect summer day when Eve comes walking up and says "Dude, you are NOT going to believe what I did today."
Adam sits up and goes "what?"
Eve plops herself down on the moss and says "I went to the forbidden cliff."
Adam goes "Say what?"
Eve goes, "Uh, yeah, and please note how I'm still alive."
So Adam sits up and looks at Eve with this comical "I don't believe it" look on his face and says "show me".
Then Eve takes Adam to the edge of the cliff, follows the trail down to the village and the people all tell Adam how letting his shit hang out like that will invite bug bites and infection, and that he ought to cover that up.
Back at camp, Adam and Eve are now experimenting with some of the neat new tricks they learned from the villagers, when all of a sudden the voice of God comes booming down out of the heavens. Now, I still can't explain this since I've personally never had the pleasure of hearing God's voice - and believe me, I have spent days listening for it, but I still cannot fathom actually heeding a voice that comes out of the sky. I mean I might listen, guffaw, and go on about my business, but I'd be the doubting Thomas that would probably have to feel the wound to believe it was there.
Do I believe in God? Most assuredly. Do I believe God created everything we see? Absolutely. Do I wonder why God doesn't still speak to folks? Yep. Every day.
See it just seems to me that the further into the thing you read, you'll find that there are certain foods we aren't supposed to ingest and certain cloth that we aren't supposed to wear, certain times of the month when we are exiled to the crevices of our boudoir not to be touched by human hands, lest they too become unclean for a week or so. No. No, I think God basically intended the Bible to be written to instruct the children of Israel, who were ignorant, on how to keep alive and keep from getting diseases. Think about the instructions. Don't eat pork - it's unclean.
Have you ever bought pork chops at Wal-Mart and when you got them home and took them out of the package they were slimy? You didn't eat them, did you? Now these were pork chops that were prepared by experienced hands, packaged by experienced technology, cared for in refrigeration units, and displayed carefully for your shopping needs. Tell me, do you think they had that kind of thing back in the day? Hell no! That's why you didn't eat pork. Who had a refrigerator back in Moses' day? Anybody? No! So clearly, pork was out of the question, along with certain other foods that just wouldn't "keep".
Today, however, it's the other white meat. I don't even know the statistics on pig slaughter, but I feel certain it's astronomical, what with the craving for hot dogs at ballgames and such. Yes, Lord. We eat pork. Doesn't seem forbidden now.
So, do we follow the absolute measure of the Word, or do we pick and choose the rules we live by? Do we decide if the ten commandments was the law or was it what Jesus said, the only "law" he said "love your neighbor"? Which do we do?
I was raised Pentecostal, protestant Christian. I know the rules. I know that in Exodus 21 it says anyone who attacks his father or his mother must be put to death. Well my niece hit her mother. Shall we kill her? But no. We can't kill her because Exodus 20:13 says you shall not murder. Um, so we can't kill her, that'd be murder. So what do we do? What are we, as poor mortals, to think of this conflict? Seriously, we take my niece before a bunch of church elders and they are to execute her by stoning? That ain't murder???
We shall have no other gods before the God of Abraham. Well come on, duh. Who would want to? I mean, the Almighty is the One who created everything we see and tons of stuff we don't see. Who could compare? Ah, but then there is the definition of God. What do you worship? American Idol - America can't take its eyes off of American Idol. Days of Our Lives, The Young and the Restless, Law and Order. Television. We are addicted to the visual word now. As a human myself, I cannot remember a time when we did not own at least two televisions and I was born in the late 60's. To some, that is their God. That is what they spend the bulk of their time watching, listening to and learning from. Money? The world would not survive without currency. We have to have it to trade. Do you honestly think that was the way God intended? Bah. No. Not to this little white duck.
No sir, I think God intended that we should have a utopian society, where we all pulled on the same rope, in the same direction, to erect a better world for all to live in, not the rich get richer and the poor stay in their "place" to serve the rich. Bullshit. No. That is not how a loving creator intended this world to be.
I do not believe that God who spared the live of Abraham's only son intended that we should be gaudy and that heaven will be streets of gold and walls of jasper and every precious stone known to man. What cares God of such things? This is the same God who said 'Make an altar of earth for me and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, your sheep and goats and your cattle. Wherever I cause my name to be honored, I will come to you and bless you. If you make an altar of stones for me, do not build it with dressed stones, for you will defile it if you use a tool on it. And do not go up to my altar on steps, lest your nakedness be exposed on it.' Yet, the wisest man in the Bible, the son of the great King David, King Solomon built a temple the likes of which even the Egyptians could not parallel - for worshiping God?
Bah. God didn't want that. Who said God wanted that? You suppose the very same God that said for us to build an altar out of dirt and rocks, with our bare hands and no tools, meant for a temple city to be built in His honor? COME ON!! Are there any logical people left who read the Bible?
I am not reading it because I want to pick it apart. No, I want to study to show myself approved, because it says that in the Bible too. I want to understand why good Christians turn their noses up at people like me because I'm not doing what THEY think is right. Well, I'm not judging. I'm not judging the homosexual because they're gay. The Bible clearly says not to suffer a witch to live, but I believe the wiccans and naturalists are onto something. I believe they learned to use the earth the way God may have originally intended, using the natural forces of the world and the universe around us, just as Luke said - that there will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. Can you read the sun, moon and stars? Nope. Neither can I, but an astrologist sure can, as can most people who study wicca and the ancient art of divination.
Why? Were they jealous of these people? It just seems to me that when Saul went to see the witch of Endor he was the King at the time. Yeah, he had fallen out of grace with God, but uh, if witchcraft is evil, how is it that Samuel, one of the great prophets of his age, came to this witch's call and spoke to Saul? Why if it was evil would Samuel have had anything to do with it? And why put that in the Bible in the first place? Was it supposed to make Saul look bad because he went to inquire of a spiritual medium? Oh please.
Judge not, people of the Earth, the latent sinfulness in your neighbor, for your own sins will rest at your doorstep….that's what I say. Don't point your finger at that strange little feller down on Central Avenue who has every square inch of his face tattooed "like the heathen" and everything that can be pierced has something thrust through it. That is his body. I dare say that God Himself would find that humorous, but I don't know if that boy's soul is going to heaven and I can assure you if I approach him throwing stones, it's not going to enamor him to the Christian faith anytime soon.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is - am I nuts? Am I the only person who feels this way?
No comments:
Post a Comment