Ignorance is Bliss?
I’m really sick of religion of any kind insinuating that if you don’t blindly believe what they tell you at face value then you don’t have faith. This, of course, is not faith it’s willful ignorance. It’s much easier to just believe what everyone else does- to go with the flow- than to actually think for yourself and ask questions. I’m speaking mainly about Christianity here because, being a licensed minister and having devoted over twelve years of my life in service to God, Christianity is where I have my experience and educational background and is the primary religion that continues to make me sick to my stomach.
For those of you who feel the need to spread the gospel: I applaud your enthusiasm and I would never want to say or do anything that would dissuade you from getting to know God better or to feel comfortable talking about God with other people. That said, please for your sake, for the sake of everyone you’ll talk to, and for God’s sake most of all be sure you know what you’re talking about. I don’t mean being able to quote the bible word for word or being able to regurgitate every sermon you’ve ever heard. I mean know what you’re talking about.
If you’re going to quote the bible know the context behind what you’re talking about to make sure you’re not misquoting or giving meaning to a passage that wasn’t intended (which is what pastor’s all over the place do every week). Study the background of things, know your history, know why you believe what you believe because these people that you’re bashing over the head with your faith are going to be wondering these things, and if you can’t answer or if you give some sort of bumper sticker response you’ll automatically lose all credibility with them; not only for yourself but for anyone who may come along after you. The sad fact is most Christians trying to spread the message are doing more harm than good out of zealous ignorance, and quite frankly I’m really tired of having to pay for other ignorant people’s mistakes and go behind to clean up the mess they’ve made.
God Gave You a Brain, Dust it Off and Use It
You believe that the Bible is the infallible Word of God? You believe everything that happened in the Bible happened in real life? You believe God wrote it word for word by “inspiring” the writer? Okay, if so, why?
“Well….because that’s what I’ve always been taught!” isn’t a good answer.
Do you know how the books of the Bible got to be canonized? Do you think the Apostles and Jesus got together over some nachos and came up with a decision? Nope. It was a bunch of old white men who were considered the most “ important Roman Catholic councils” originally got together by the command of the Pope and held the Council of Trent, where they decided in their infinite holy wisdom which books were canonical scripture, which books were just mostly canonical, and which were just straight out like something out of a Monty Python sketch. (“Help! Help! I’m being repressed!”) Of course there were other little sessions like this that took place before, but apparently the list decided by those groups needed to be reaffirmed even though a Pope at the time had confirmed the previous versions.
Of course, after the protestant reformation they did it again, and decided that there were a lot of books included in the original canonical Old Testament that wasn’t really canonical, so they threw them out. Hence the reason why the Catholic Bible has a few extra Old Testament books in it than a protestant one. So who’s right? Who’s more “holy and wise” when it comes to deciding which are really the Word of God?
Do you know why they were chosen when other books, written by the same people at the same time, were not? There’s a LOT of them and I’ll give you a hint- a lot of the time it was more for political reasons than spiritual. God forbid if something in a piece of scripture makes a specific group look bad. Don’t believe me? Do some research. Take some classes. You’ll find out real quick how things were done.
I’ve been lucky in that I’ve had some really great teachers over the years. One of my Old Testament professors at Lee University actually worked on the translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls and he’s the one that really turned me onto the truth about a lot of this stuff. I enjoyed his classes so much that I volunteered to take a test run of one of his graduate level classes when I was a sophomore where he taught about all those apocryphal (non-canon books) and I could read them for myself. The class was so difficult I almost didn’t pass, but it was worth it. I still have my copies of all the notes and books.
If the word of God is infallible then how can you explain the inconsistencies in the Bible and contradictions of events and facts- of which there are quite a few? Just do a search on Google and you’ll find tons of websites that will point them out complete with links to the biblical texts so you can read for yourself. Most churches, if not saying it outright they certainly imply that asking these types of questions are not good. Most of the time, when you ask a question like this, they stammer and throw out some line like “because we have faith!” which generally translates to: “We don’t know for sure but if we question it we’re afraid that things might not be the way we’ve always believed.” The more educated will answer you but when coming against one of those inconstancies will still spin some sort of faith-based answer to explain it away without actually having to admit that in this case infallible doesn’t really mean what they want to think it means. Now let me be clear- not all do this. Some will admit that, yes, there are some issues, and yes, the Bible isn’t infallible in scientific matters or little details, but the spiritual lessons contained within are. I can respect that point of view, but it’s something that everyone, individually, has to decide for his or herself.
Guys, it’s not faith to blindly believe these things without educating yourself about them. It takes less faith to just say “because it’s the Word of God and that automatically makes it true” than to actually do some digging and answer these questions for yourself. Honestly, once you find out the answers- once you find out the history behind things and realize that they aren’t exactly the way you’ve been lead to believe, it takes a heck of a lot more faith to deal with that.
It takes faith to continue to look at the Bible and hear God speak to you through it when you know that the books were put there by a group of people that voted- and many times books made it in or were discarded for political reasons. It takes faith to continue to pay attention to a sermon where the pastor is misquoting scripture, and you know this because you actually know the background and context of the passage. It takes faith to believe that God will still speak to those people and reveal some truth to them through the speaker’s fallibility.
It takes faith to look at inconsistencies within the Bible itself, with one passage in one book saying one thing and another book, speaking of the same event, says something different. It takes faith to understand and finally accept that this holy book was written by men, and while it may have been inspired by God, that doesn’t mean that those men didn’t make mistakes. It takes faith to realize that your personal relationship with God is more important than any of the other stuff, because it’s real and it’s also something that you can’t see. It takes faith to trust that God is still there and even gives a crap about any of this. It takes faith to ask the questions in the first place and to seek the truth rather than just going with the flow.
But hey, don’t take my word for any of this on faith, find out for yourself.
Awesome post!