How Do Progressive Christians Rationalize The Bible, Including The Gos

[teotym]

I feel so free and opened to God when I stopped rationalize, defence and worship Bible! Bible was my stumbling block to God. During my "orthodox" christianity days [about 16-18 years] I had two idols, changing from time to time: Bible as word of God [protestant delusion] and Catholic Church as the one, true church founded personally by Jesus Christ [catholic delusion]. I wasted years defending alternately Bible and Catholic Church. Now I don't care, because I'm opened to God experienced directly, in meditation, silence, calm, not in doctrines and religious wars. It is real, spiritual freedom, independent from religions, clergy and institutions with simple ethics based on compassion and loving God, very intimate and beyond human understanding at the same time.

[soma]

teotym, Many people are removing the obstacles and enjoying the present moment. Salutations to the Divinity within you.

[teotym]

teotym, Many people are removing the obstacles and enjoying the present moment. Salutations to the Divinity within you.

 

Thank you. I don't feel unique or better then others. I feel normally, just as every child of God can feel. It is simple, natural way to God, available for everyone, not for "saints" or "chosen". Earlier I had glimmers of this way, but all of them were judged by Bible or catholic teaching. Now I threw this ballast and eventually my spiritual life became stable

[BillM]

I appreciate your thoughts on this, Teotym. I like your avatar, BTW. I have a, metaphorical, love/hate relationship with the Bible.

 

I love that it tells me about a deity who wanted to live in covenant with humanity, even if I don't believe in God that way anymore.

I love that it tells me about how people used to see God and what they believed that life with God entailed.

I love that it tells me about Jesus, a character who still to this day memorizes me with things that, according to the scriptures (which just means 'writings'), he did.

I love that it tells me about the early communities that formed after Jesus left, and how they struggled to remember him and what he taught.

I love that it tells me about how these early communities had to learn new things in order to embrace their culture and to foster compassion within their context.

 

I hate that the deity described in the Bible, who many claim to be love, can also be vengeful, jealous, dictatorial, unjust, self-centered, unforgiving, beyond understanding, and unmerciful.

I hate that people elevated their own personal understandings of God to divine status, to where they believed that their understandings of God were God's revelation of God's self.

I hate that what we know about Jesus is all hearsay, that there is no extra biblical support for him or his teachings and that, for most of Christianity, he is little more than a human sacrifice to an angry god.

I hate that the early communities that Paul established still had so many hang-ups about who was in and who was out, and that many Christians today see these hang-ups as having divine status.

And I hate that most of Christianity, rather than seeing a person filled with the Spirit as the Word of God, has declared the Bible to be the Word of God and believes that it and it alone is the way that God communicates with us today.

 

To me, one of the strongest messages of Jesus is that we don't need a mediator to find or experience God. Yet the Church has declared him and these 66 books to be the mediator to find and experience God. How ironic.

Edited October 30, 2016 by BillM

[teotym]

BillM, I agree with most of you thoughts presented on this forum and above post is not exception