Am I a Christian? December 3, 2007

This weekend my family and I were putting up Christmas decorations.  It is one of my favorite things to do because I love Christmas, and I love being able to spend time with my family.  We were putting up the tree and the lights, and then my Mom started to get the nativity scene out.  I looked over at the corny little ceramic Jesus and began to tell my mom about how I learned in class that Jesus probably wasn’t really born in Bethlehem and that the nativity story was just an attempt to link Jesus to the line of David.  But as I turned to inform my mom of this, she looked up at me with this innocence and trust on her face, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell her.   

 

I still call myself a Christian even though I think a lot of things in the Bible didn’t really happen or didn’t happen the way they were recorded.  Does that make me a bad Christian? Am I a Christian at all?  Should I just push away what I have learned in this class to the back of my brain and forget it forever?  Should I deny what I know?  Should I feel guilty?  Can I will myself to believe?  Should I have to?

 

Well, this class is coming to an end, and I am still as confused as ever about my faith. I can’t tell you what conclusions I’ve come to about Christianity – I don’t have any.  But what fun would the rest of my life be if I had it all figured out now? No, I would rather continue to wrestle with all of these questions. I think that is really the only way to Truth.  The people who have all the answers and have come to all their conclusions seem to be the most ignorant, so I think I’ll just continue this cyclical questioning.

 

But what do I do when I see my mom laying out the nativity scene?  Should I smile to myself and protect her from my knowledge? Should I say something?  And what do I do when I go to church and my pastor talks about Moses writing the first five books of the Bible.  Do I nod along and just push aside what I think is true?  Do I inform him of his mistake?  Can you question and still be a Christian or does it require blind faith?

 

Mother Teresa questioned her whole life, and she is a Saint whether or not she is officially made one or not.  She wasn’t sure she was called by God, but she dedicated her life to his service anyway.  God didn’t appear to her as a burning bush and tell her what to do.  He didn’t appear to her in a dream or send an angel to give his message.  Mother Teresa was given no sign; yet, she devoted herself to loving people and helping them in the name of her silent God. That is a noble faith.  That is the kind of faith I hope to achieve – to live as though I believe.   

 

How Does God Feel About Divorce? November 12, 2007

Divorce has always been accepted in my church.  No one has been shunned because she separated from her spouse.  If we did shun all divorcees and divorced men (can you believe that there is only a term for divorced woman and not for divorced men – ridiculous!), than we would probably lose about a third of our congregation.  I have grown up seeing divorce everywhere.  I have been lucky enough to have parents that stayed together, but divorce has always been visible among my friends’ parents.  It is sad, but divorce is simply an aspect of life that my generation is use to seeing.  We have come along way from the Puritans – no scarlet letters for adulterers these days.  Now divorce is simply the social norm.  So how do Christians deal with the idea of divorce today?  How does the Church respond?  What does the Bible say?

 

Unfortunately, the Bible is very dodgy on this point.  In some places, divorce is seen as completely acceptable: “He who desires to be divorced for any reason whatsoever from the wife who is living with him…must certify in writing that he will have no further relations with her, since in this way will the woman obtain the right to cohabit with another man.” (Jewish Antiquities 4:253) While other places are adamantly against the divorce of any man and woman that have made a covenant with God: “For [I] hate divorcing, says the Lord.” (Mal. 2:14-16)  So if the Bible doesn’t give a straight answer, what does the Church say?

 

I don’t think I have ever heard a sermon about divorce.  That might just be my upbringing – I don’t know if divorce is a hot topic in most churches.  But in my church, we try to avoid the subject.  It is a hard subject to deal with.  How do you approach it? Should the Church condemn all people who are divorced?  I definitely don’t think so, but if a church lives by everything the Bible says don’t they believe that God “hates divorcing.”  Or should we accept divorce under certain circumstances like how the Bible says: That a man can divorce his wife if “it turns out that she does not find favor in his eyes because he has found an indecency of something about her” (Deut. 24:1-4) In which case, we could only allow men to initiate divorce and for a reason that doesn’t make any sense at all! How do we apply the Bible to our current predicament? Are we even trying to any more?

 

Do Christians today really live by the Bible or do we just pick and choose the parts that we like? And is that wrong – to pick and choose? Because I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we all pretty much pick and choose when it comes to the Bible.  It’s why we have so many different makes and models of Christianity – everyone picks the parts that they like and base a faith upon it.  The RedLetter Christians are again a perfect example: they chose what they liked (just the words of Jesus) and based their whole thinking method around those words alone.  So what do we believe?  The Bible.  The whole thing? Certain parts? Certain interpretations? Do most Christians truly believe that all of the Bible is God’s word?  Do most of us really believe that?  Because we don’t act as though we do.  I don’t believe that every word in the Bible was divinely inspired.  Can I still be a Christian?

Gray-Letter Christians November 6, 2007

According to the Red-Letter Christians, they are: “a network of effective, progressive, Christian communicators urging an open, honest and public dialogue on issues of faith and politics.” Further, they claim to “believe and seek to put in to action the red letter words in the Holy Bible spoken by Jesus.”  

 

I have a few problems with this group.  First of all, I don’t like how they are tying a political agenda to their faith.  However, I do admire their honesty in admitting that they are just as concerned in issues of politics as they are in issues of faith.  At least they aren’t hiding their true motives.  But that still doesn’t make it right.  While I do understand the influence one’s faith has on her morality and therefore her political thoughts, I am a big fan of separation of Church and State.  But this political agenda is not the main problem for me.

 

The Christian group is up front about their political emphasis, but they are being completely deceptive by calling themselves “Red-Letter Christians.”  The idea behind this name is that they focus on the words in the Bible specifically accredited to Jesus.  Again, according to their site they claim: “Across the nation, the thirst for biblical truth and justice is creating a movement of progressive ideas and voices. The Red Letter Christians, with their distinguishable faith backgrounds and biblical knowledge, are speaking out and leading this movement.”  These people are not scholars, they are opportunists. 

 

Because of the “failure of biblical scholars to educate the public about the historical Jesus,” groups like the Red-Letter Christians are filling the void with their supposed “biblical knowledge” in order to push their political and social reform. Red-Letter Christians say that they are putting into action the “red letter words in the Holy Bible spoken by Jesus,” but they don’t even know (and are not trying to find out) the history of those words. 

 

Fortunately, groups like the Jesus Seminar are.  According to member of the Jesus Seminar, Robert J. Miller, the organization’s goal was to “assess the historicity of everything attributed to Jesus in all Christian sources from the first three centuries. This goal was pursued in two phases: first the words of Jesus, then his deeds.”  This group of scholars comes to their historical conclusions by voting and prints their findings according to this unique rubric:

 Red: Jesus undoubtedly said this or something very like it.
Pink: Jesus probably said something like this.
Gray: Jesus did not say this, but the ideas contained in it are close to his own.
Black: Jesus did not say this; it represents the perspective or content of a later or different tradition 

The members of the Jesus Seminar are the people who should be leading the movement to fulfill this nation’s “thirst for biblical truth” because they are some of the few who actually have the biblical knowledge to attempt to provide any biblical truths.  The biblical scholars should be leading this movement, not the Red-Letter Christians.  And I think that the Red-Letter Christians should be honest with themselves and take on a more appropriate title like “Gray-Letter Christians.” 

The Sacred Canon October 29, 2007

But why were these twenty-seven books included, and not any others? Who decided which books to include? On what basis? And when? It is one thing for believers to affirm, on theological grounds, that the decisions about the canon, like the books themselves, were divinely inspired, but it is another thing to look at the actual history of the process and to ponder the long, drawn-out arguments over which books to include and which to reject. 

        – Bart D. Ehrman

 

I have been studying and learning about the Bible my whole life, but I hadn’t learned anything of the history of the Bible until now.  Through this knowledge, everything that I have ever known to be True about the Bible has been challenged.   And not only have I been struggling with what the Bible does contain, now I am struggling with what was left out of the Bible – the secret texts. 

 

Reading secret texts is fun – way more fun than reading the plan old Bible that we’re supposed to be reading.  It is not that the secret texts are more interesting or insightful than the books of the Bible; it is that they are secret.  It is exciting to explore the forbidden. 

 

A few weeks ago during a really boring class (not yours, Donna), I started reading the Gospel of Thomas.  I felt like such a rebel, sitting there in class reading my forbidden text.   The Book of Thomas is a sayings gospel that claims to be the words of Jesus spoken to and recorded by Thomas “the twin.”  The first saying states, “Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death.”  This book claims to contain the teachings of Jesus and further to hold the key to salvation; yet, this book is not included in what we call the Bible.  Why?

 

I have always been taught that the books Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were written by the people for whom they are named.  I have recently learned that “most scholars today have abandoned these identifications, and recognize that the books were written by otherwise unknown but relatively well-educated Greek-speaking (and writing) Christians during the second half of the first century.” 

 

So who were those guys? Why were they considered more credible than Thomas or whoever wrote Thomas?  Why shouldn’t I trust in the secret texts when I can see no reason for them being left out of the Bible? Whose place is it to say what is divinely inspired and what is not?  Which texts are actually sacred? Maybe it is not the same for everyone.  Maybe my way to God is through one of the forbidden texts.

  

While I Was Away October 22, 2007

My church use to be a huge part of my life.  I was completely involved in my church’s youth program.  I went on the mission trips, attended all the worship services, led Bible study, went to prayer groups, and was always sitting there eagerly on Sunday morning.  I lived at my church.  Then I went to college…

 

I went back to my hometown this weekend to spend some time with my family.  I am a huge homebody so I love getting to go back.  While I was there, I visited my old church.  I almost didn’t recognize it.  They have built a new sanctuary, hired a new preacher, and replaced my old youth director.  I didn’t even recognize most of the congregation.  I went away, and while I was gone my church morphed into this big, strange unfamiliar place.  It was a bit unnerving to sit there in a building that I had once considered my home and feel completely out of place.  It’s almost like I’ve lost my place in religion. 

 

I don’t believe what I used to.  I would like to believe that I feel out of place at my church because of all the changes that have taken place there, but the problem truly lies in me.  Even if my church was exactly the same as when I was a kid – I still wouldn’t belong there.  I have changed.     

 

I use to have complete faith.  I knew that there was a God and if anything bad ever happened to me, he would be there to pick me up.  But then something really bad did happen, and he wasn’t there, and I had to pick myself up.  I’m okay with it now; I’ve made my peace.  What happened made me better, stronger.  It also broke down my faith, but that’s okay too.  I kind of think that I needed to break down my faith and start over – figure out what I believe myself instead of just believing what I was fed.  I am building back up nowadays.  So I guess I’m kind of glad that my church broke down with me.  And even though we may be growing in different directions, I will always remember the home that I once had in that church.  Maybe someday I’ll find my home in religion again.  I hope so. 

Religion in Schools October 14, 2007

I went to public schools, so I never had any type of formal Bible classes or anything like that.  However, Christianity always seemed to be present in my school.  People would pray at football games, assemblies, and awards ceremonies.  Many teachers would drop little references to their faith.  Some would even talk openly about Christianity and “Christian values.” 

 

My 8^th grade Civics teacher was the worst.  Everyday in 3^rd Period, I would get a little Bible lesson wrapped up in what was supposed to be the study of our country’s government.  She taught me that Bill Clinton is the spawn of Satan, Separation of Church and State is a governmental attempt to restrict our beliefs, and voting for gun control laws is equivalent to selling your soul to the devil.  Thankfully, I started questioning authority at a young age.  But most people believed and supported this teacher.  She had a way of turning the class against anyone who defied her and her rather closed-minded beliefs.  Unfortunately, I got to be her target.

 

I was in a group called “Teens for Tolerance” the year that I had civics.  It was a cool organization.  We met at lunch and just discussed different issues concerning racism, sexism, and ageism.  We’d swap prejudice stories and spark discussions off those.  It was my first real taste of the study of liberal arts, and I loved it.  I was really into promoting and supporting the organization.  We had these tie-die T-shirts that we wore every Thursday to try to get more people to join, and I had it on during Civics one day.  My teacher walked in, took one look at my shirt, and went off on me.  She said that tolerance was simply an excuse to let evil go on right in front of you. She asked how I could call myself a Christian and be in that organization.  She could speak persuasively, and by the time she was done, the whole class was glaring at me.  I just sat there and took it. I was mortified. Even now, I’ll think about what I should have said – how I should have defended my group.  I didn’t standup for the organization – my beliefs.  I even stopped wearing my shirt because I was actually afraid of what might happen if I wore it.  It was ridiculous.  I was scared to show my beliefs.  And what’s really frightening, is that my beliefs weren’t even that radical.  At that time, I was a relatively conservative Christian; yet, I still had to hide what I really thought.  What if a Muslim had that civics class?  How would she torture her?  Why do we let teachers get away with this?

 

Religion does not belong in public schools – not in the way it I experienced it.  My teacher abused her power to try and gain converts, and that is in everyway unacceptable.   Education is a method of expanding a student’s body of knowledge, not indoctrinating them into a specific faith.

  

No More Lies October 9, 2007

“At a time when the world is increasingly divided by religion, both domestically and internationally, and when many people are biblically illiterate, legitimate inquiries into the common origins of religions have never been more important. I believe that the public deserves – and wants – better. We have an obligation to challenge the lies and the hype, to share the real data, so that the public discussion can be an informed one.”

I completely agree with Dr. Eric H. Cline and his article “Raiders of the Faux Ark.”  Living in the Bible belt, I have been fed these lies about supposed archeological proof of the Bible my whole life.  It is ridiculous.  Just because I am not part of the scholarly mainstream does not mean I should be subjected to “biblical fraud, dubious science, and crackpot theorizing.”  I can handle the truth, and I believe the public can too.  Like Dr. Cline says, “the public deserves – and wants – better.”  It might be hard for some people to hear (especially down here in Bible country) but it needs to be said.   

Archaeologists have to step up.  I can appreciate how difficult their position is.  Just imagine how hard it would be to have this knowledge – to know that there is archeological evidence that contradicts the Bible.  How do you go about informing the public? Who wants to be the one to rock the boat and make people question their faith?  People would hate you if you waved that kind of information around.  Look at what happened to poor Charles Darwin.  So many people hated Darwin when all he ever did was state what was right there in front of him.  Dr. Cline makes a similar connection in his article:  “Biblical archeologists are suddenly finding themselves in a position similar to the evolutionary biologists fighting intelligent design – an entire parallel version of their field is being driven by religious belief, not research principles.”  Unfortunately, if archeologists aren’t the ones giving us information, someone else will.     

The public also has to step up.  People get really defensive when religion and science are concerned, and I understand that.  I know hearing this kind of information is scary and hard for a lot of people.  It is difficult to deal with contradictions, inconsistencies, and mistakes within the Bible, but they are there.  So what do we do: ignore what is right there in front of us and believe without questioning? Lie to ourselves? Is that really believing? Everyone has to come to terms with information that goes against the Bible in her own way.  Some will work through it and come out with a stronger faith, others will not; regardless, we need to be dealing with this stuff.  Archeologists “owe it to the ancient world, and to the people who inhabited it” to inform the public of their knowledge, and we owe it to ourselves to at least hear them out.   

Realization October 2, 2007

My friend Natalie and I had to write a re-narration of a Bible story for this class this past week, and we were assigned the story of the crossing of the Red Sea.  I thought it was going to be so easy.  I’ve read that story a million times, so we would just throw it into narrative form – no worries! Turns out, it was one of the most frustrating and revealing experiences of my life.  As I sat there trying to formulate this picture in my head of God hardening Pharaoh’s heart so that he would take his army to drown in the Red Sea to prove the Greatness of God while pillars of clouds and fire were floating around, I realized that I have never really taken the Bible seriously.     

 

I have been a Christian (I have called myself a Christian) my whole life, and I have never taken the Bible seriously, ever.  I have never lived by it, because it does not represent what I believe.  It is like a fairy tale.  I have been reading it since I was a kid, and I have always read it like a fairy tale.  It is a version of what actually happened.  I have also never quoted from the Bible to defend my faith, because it just never made sense to use it to justify my beliefs.  So when people would throw Bible quotes at me to defend whatever it was they were trying to defend, I never took it seriously.  It just doesn’t make since: to use pieces of ancient text (taken out of context) from a book that has been interpreted my many mistake-making humans, to defend a modern issue.  Why can’t we just read the Bible and incorporate its teachings into our faith?  Why does the Bible have to dictate our faith?  To me, the Bible is just a glimpse of God’s reality. It is a small piece of the puzzle, and should not be the basis of faith. Yikes!

 

So that brings me to what I was actually supposed to talk about for this blog: I am not afraid to learn about the faults of the Bible.  I know it was written by people.  I know it is filled with contradictions and mistakes.  I know that some people probably wrote or interpreted the Bible with their own interests in mind.  I know that the tradition and the culture of a people writing history at a given time does affect the way it is written or interpreted. I know, and I’ve made my peace with it.  I don’t need the Bible to be perfect.     

 

Naked Guy September 19, 2007

The first time I read the Bible “naively,” or without bias, was in a World Lit class last semester.  My class was assigned to read the Book of Mark, and my professor printed a handout for us.  Reading a book from the Bible in handout form in order to prepare for a class was a completely new experience for me.  It was like I had never read Mark, although I had been hearing the stories of Mark even before I could read them myself.  I was removing my interpretive lenses, or at least altering them.     

I thoroughly enjoyed reading the Book of Mark that day, and I think that was the first time I ever truly enjoyed reading the Bible.  I use to read the Bible all the time, but not because I got pleasure from it.  I read the Bible every night because I would feel guilty if I didn’t.  I read out of obligation, guilt, and mostly just plain habit.  But then I got this great chance in my Lit class to remove all those pathetic motives and simply read the Bible – to appreciate it as a piece of incredible literature.  I found some interesting stuff.    

Did you know that there is a naked guy in the Bible? There is: Mark 14:50-52.  Look it up.  I read Mark before, but I didn’t notice the naked guy until I read for the Lit class.  It isn’t a very noticeable passage.  Naked guy only has a few lines of scripture, but it is most definitely there. When I read this passage in my class handout, I thought it was just a mistake.  Naked men don’t just go running around in Scripture, but then I checked my Bible.  There he was.  I couldn’t believe that I had never paid him any attention.  All those times I read through Mark and not once did I notice him.  How could I have been so blind?  

I was so blinded by my perception that I couldn’t even see what was right there in front of me. All those years of reading the Bible, and turns out I never really read a line of Scripture in my life.  How was I so easily indoctrinated? What kind of lenses are skewing my perception right now?     

The Other Side September 17, 2007

In class this week, we were assigned to read Rev. Angus Stewart, the author of http://www.cprf.co.uk/articles/thedo…fscripture.htm.  The article definitely clashes with our previous class readings.  Lately, we have been focusing on scholarship and the use of scholarship to interpret Scripture.  But Rev. Angus Stewart takes quite a different approach towards the Bible.  Rather than using scholarship as a means of interpreting Scripture, Rev. Angus Stewart uses Scripture to interpret Scripture. 

After listing off some rather bleak absolutes, Stewart begins his argument stating, “We shall now consider what the Bible claims for itself.”  So, basically, we will be relying on the claims of the Bible to prove the credibility of the claims of the Bible.  Well, let’s give it whirl.

Rev. Angus Stewart continues through his article making lots of statements like this:

“The original manuscripts are without error. This must be so since: (1) The Bible is God’s Word. If it contains errors, God makes mistakes in His speech. Then God is not perfect, which is absurd.”

 And this:

“The Bible claims to be perfect (Ps. 19:7). Jesus said, “Thy word is truth” (John 17:17). He Himself was the truth (John 14:6) and told no lies. Since the Bible is perfect, it is without error. Christ teaches in John 10:35—”the scripture cannot be broken”—that it is impossible that the Scripture could be wrong.”

Sounds pretty good, but from what I can tell the Scripture does contain errors! If I operated under Stewart’s kind of thinking, I would not be a Christian.  I know that, as a Christian, I have to put my faith in God.  However, I will never have complete faith in anything written by man which, unfortunately, includes the Bible.  The Bible may be “God-breathed,” but it was man-written. And when I say man, I mean men – not mankind because I think it’s pretty safe to say that women didn’t have a large role in the constructing of Scripture.  But that opens up a whole other argument…

Throughout the article, Stewart attempts to understand the Bible through logic alone.  Unfortunately, the Bible is not a very logical piece of literature.  It takes other sources to even try to decipher the meaning of the Bible. We need outside knowledge to make since of the Bible, but Stewart refutes this kind of thinking.   

Stewart, whether consciously or not, is arguing on the premise that: “just because knowledge is not complete, it does not mean it is not true knowledge.”  This is a great example of Karl Dietrich Fezer’s second “scholarly sin,” the “sin of omission.”  Stewart is either purposefully or unknowingly leaving vital information out of his argument. He is only telling part of the story, which would be forgivable if he didn’t speak with such authority on the subject.