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.

I suspect that beliefs in a "supernatural realm" came about because our ancient forbearers couldn't see a direct connection between cause and effect in the natural world. Our 5 senses work fairly well in gauging and giving us feedback on the natural, physical world. But in primitive cultures, we couldn't explain how water could fall from the sky when we never saw it go up. Therefore, God (supernatural theism) did it. We couldn't explain a hurricane. Therefore, God did it, probably to punish the wicked or disobedient. We had no knowledge of germs. Therefore, God punished people with sickness and death. We didn't know anything about epilepsy. Therefore, it was demonic possession. We strongly felt that we had received a message from "another world" or "another realm". Therefore, angels delivered the message. Angels are only necessary when God isn't here.

As our knowledge increases, God (supernatural theism) becomes more and more unemployed. This is, IMO, what spawned the "Death of God" movement during the last century. As a "God out there", there is little left for God to do, except for those Christians who still insists that he rules and controls the cosmos.

That's what I used to believe also, Romansh. We said that Jesus was both fully human and fully God. Some forms of this are Docetism i.e. believing that Jesus only appeared to be human, but was really God. Often, this is what the incarnation points to, that while Jesus had a human body (or flesh), he had a divine spirit or soul. This is pretty much "God in a man suit" or perhaps like Superman who looked human on the outside, but was an alien on the inside.

Obviously, when Christology is interpreted this way, Jesus loses his humanity. He then becomes an object of worship (a god) rather than someone to consider as a teacher or brother or guide or sage or leader.

Romansh, perhaps like many Christians, my wife believes that when Jesus declared his oneness with the Father, he was declaring his divinity, he was asserting that he is the second Person of the Trinity. So she would say that though we become God's children when we get saved, we don't share in divinity to the same degree that Jesus did and does. He is, according to this Christology, unique in kind. He was, and is, God in the flesh. We may be God's children, but we are not God. According to this theology.

I saw a UFO when I was a child. I was about 10 or so. I was at a neighbor's house. My neighbor pointed up to the sky and said, "Well, will you take a look at that!" Up in the cloudless sky, over a nearby hill, a disc-shaped black silhouette moved slowly across the sky. It was too far away to make out any details. I couldn't tell if it was spinning like in the old scifi movies. But it was steady as a rock, no wobbling. And no sound. It just moved slowly across the sky until it passed behind the hill.

It was a true UFO. It was Unidentified, at least by me and my neighbor-lady. We didn't know what it was. It seemed to be Flying, though it had no wings and no obvious source of propulsion. And it was an Object. It wasn't a vision (unless we were both hallucinating). So I believe in UFOs. Been there. Seen one. Wish I had a T-shirt.

Doesn't mean that I believe that aliens from outer space were piloting that UFO or that they were on their way to do their next anal probe.

My experience of that UFO was real, as real as anything I know. But the explanation for it is...well...I don't know what it was. On one hand, though it was weird, it didn't seem to violate the laws of nature. No right angle turns at Warp 5 without slowing down or anything of that nature. On the other hand, there is a lot I don't know about it. Probably never will.

There is a BIG difference between what is unknown and what is contradictory.

Thanks for sharing some of your background with us, Thormas. I'm looking forward to getting to know you better through our discussions! Welcome!

Burl, FWIW I very much agree with you that, where the scriptures are concerned, often a great deal of study is involved or necessary. As a PC, I don't believe the scriptures were directly written for or to us. They were written for the ancient Israelites and for the early Church. This being the case, it very much behooves us to become familiar with ancient Hebrew culture, religion, and history, as well as the culture and times of first Palestine and the Roman Empire if we desire (though not all do) to keep the scriptures central to us. When/if we do this, we can come to see that though their experiences of the Divine (God) were real, their explanations of those experiences were time-bound, limited to their understandings (and often misunderstandings) of how the world and the cosmos work. We should not fault them for this. They were most likely doing the best they could with the tools and light available to them.

However, when Christians today take the approach to the scriptures that suggest that, rather than being the limited views of the ancients, they are the very words of God, this view invokes and attempts to place an authority upon the scriptures that they, IMO, simply cannot bear. We cannot expect the Bible to be a science book, or a medical reference library, or a book on cosmology, psychology, physiology, astronomy, physics, or quantum theory. IMO, neither can we expect the scriptures to be our sole source on what we call spiritual matters. God is not confined to the Bible. Many PC people recognize this and find, appreciate, and integrate into their own faith/journey the wisdom of other traditions, other religions, other worldviews. You seem to value the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. If so, you know that it holds that the scriptures are not the only way in which God speaks to us. In the denomination that I find the most resonance with, the UCC, they even believe that God is still speaking new truth to us today through the sciences, arts, various cultures, and our world struggles.

A Christian New Thought leader, Ralph Waldo Emerson, once said, “The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.”

And also:

"The god of the cannibals will be a cannibal, of the crusaders a crusader, and of the merchants a merchant."

This is, IMO, what we find in the scriptures. The God of the OT is, to a large extent, a deified Hebrew with powers that the Hebrews could not claim for themselves. I suspect that Jesus tried to challenge and modify this view, though it was an uphill battle for him. But as I've grown older, though I yet have many, many flaws, I've come to value love, justice, and life as all we truly have at any given moment. This is why, for me, God is love, justice, and life. Yes, the Bible also speaks of this in many passages. But it is not a unilateral, monochromatic portrait. It is, or has been for me, sometimes like searching for a needle in a haystack.

I do realize, of course, that not everyone was raised in the kind of Christianity I was raised and indoctrinate in. There are probably many members here who have been in liberal or progressive Christianity for most of their lives and for whom these things have never been a problem.

But I was taught that what God most desired from me was faith, and I was taught that what faith was, was believing what the Bible had to say on any subject to be real, factual, and historical truth. To doubt any of it was to sin, which, according to that Christian paradigm, separated me from God.

Perhaps, as been suggested, I have been too ignorant or lazy to be able to resolve these problems of immorality and non-sensibility (IMO) on my own. But even that raises the question of why, if God authored the Bible (or oversaw its formation), he didn't do it in such a way that it didn't violate our human consciences and sensibilities? If he is willing that none should perish, why make the Bible a text that requires an MDiv to truly understand. And even with all of the tools for understanding scripture available to us, why are there over 40,000 different denominations now. God sure does seem to be the author of a lot of confusion.

Putting the subject of Yahweh's morality aside, we might want to consider how sensible the world of the Bible is, the things that it claims to be real or true.

We could start with the Genesis claim that Yahweh created everything in 6 days.

We could then quickly move to the notion of a talking snake. I don't generally go looking for snakes, but I've never met one that talked. Of course, what is my experience compared to the authority of God's Word, right?

We could consider that the Bible says that donkeys can also talk.

Or that the earth is immovable (does not rotate or orbit).

Or that the sun rises and sets (a term that still persists because the Bible has such a stronghold on our culture and language).

Or that sin is transmitted through the blood.

Or that virgins can give birth.

Or that people can walk on water or change water into wine.

Or that God can somehow keep people alive forevermore in order to torture them.

Or that praying will heal the sick or raise the dead.

Or that those that believe in Jesus will never die.

Or...well...that's enough for now. None of this makes much sense to me. These things make me wonder why God whose logos (reason) created all things would want me to believe in things which make no sense?

John Dominic Crossan. Got 'em. Read 'em. Recommend 'em. Still free to form my own opinions.

Burl, I insist on nothing.

All I'm saying is that if the Old Testament is read at face value, Yahweh does not come across as a just, I-love-the-whole-world kinda guy. The reason "entire books" have to be written is because there needs to be "apologetics" to try to defend him and his actions. If he did nothing that needed apologizing for (justifying), apologetics wouldn't exist.

At the same time, I also realize that there are many passages, even in the OT, that speak of Yahweh's faithfulness, of his enduring love, of his patience, of his loving-kindness, even of his desire to bless all nations. These passages are right there, at face value, with the other more negative images.

So, at best, what we have is a schizophrenic portrait of God - a God who could forgive your sin or a God who could strike you dead for trying to steady the Ark of the Covenant. Therefore, I would never tell a seeker, "Want to know what God is like? Just read the Bible!" Many Christians claim that the Bible is God's self-revelation to the world, God's very words. I just think God is better than the Bible portrays God to be.

Thormas, I, likewise, am not a pantheist in that my wife assures me that I am not God.

I tend to agree with you that theism tends to view God as a person (or, in the case of popular Christianity, three persons). This view does lend itself to us projecting humans into the heavens and all the problems associated therewith. We far too often create God in our image.

The best theologians of our time, IMO, recognize that God can only be described in metaphorical terms of our experiences i.e. God is love, God is life, God is being. Doing so works for many of us who have not allowed a literal understanding of the scriptures to dictate to us what God is like. But it chafes those who think that the images in the Bible give us the most accurate information of God that we have, images which are authoritative and never to be challenged. Someone on this forum (I don't recall who) once said to me as I was struggling in leaving theism, (my paraphrase), "Your own understanding of God may be the truest one you ever have." I have found that to be true. None of us, with any authority, can tell another who or what God is. IMO, God, at God's best, is an experience for us. This, as you say, makes God deeply personal, for all of our experiences are deeply personal. Yet, experiences can be and often are shared. This is where metaphorical language can be helpful because most of us are familiar with metaphors. The error comes about when we interpret the metaphors as actual reality and then try to enshrine our personal experiences as doctrines and dogmas that can be forced onto others.

As a theist, I tried for years to relate to God as a being. I worshipped, I prayed, I studied, I confessed, I asked for forgiveness, I sought blessing, I sought protection. God was Someone outside of me who I tried to relate to through religion but, at least in my case, never really worked the way the Bible or the Church or Christianity claimed that he worked.

Then circumstances coerced me to consider what I believed was true about Reality, about Nature, about Life. My considerations are far from infallible. That's why I am still here (on this forum) asking friends, "What do YOU think?" But these considerations have lead to a relationship that, as you've mentioned, is deeply personal to others and the Universe, though I'm skeptical that God is a person.

Next topic: Genocide

There are a number of instances in the Hebrew scriptures where Yahweh commands that the Israelites, when taking a city in battle, are to leave nothing alive. Yahweh commands the Israelites to kill everything that lives including women, children, and animals. These commands would in no way line up with our modern notions of "just war theory." Yet Yahweh commands genocide.

Furthermore, in the story of the Exodus, God himself is said to have killed ALL Eqyptian first born sons under the age of two because of Pharoah's hard-heartedness in not letting the Israelites go. God kills babies? Yep, according to the book of Exodus.

And then there is the killing of almost all of humanity in the account of the flood.

And then there is wiping out the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah due to their sins of inhospitality except for "righteous Lot" (according to the book of Hebrews) who offered his daughters as sex-toys.

Now, I in no way believe that these accounts of "God" are really true accounts of God. I think they are the wishes of the Israelites writ large upon their notions of deity in order to justify whatever actions they wanted to take. Nevertheless, many people who have not been raised with the "might makes right" indoctrination of the church read the Bible and say, "If this is what God is like, I want nothing to do with God."

God, IMO, doesn't need me to defend him. But I refuse to call any book "holy" that portrays its deity with such violent and sadistic concepts.

Something I find of interest, Burl, is that my UMC pastor believes that creation in Genesis is a historical fact. This makes me wonder how well-trained my pastors has been by her theological college.

 

First what exactly are these non material things? (in opposition to nature or otherwise).

Well, we can start with emotions. They are not material. But they are real. Thoughts and consciousness are not material, but they are real. Dreams are not material, but they are real. None of these things violate the laws of nature (as we understand them).

But what about claims of telekinesis? What about claims of clairvoyance? What about claims of the pseudo-sciences (astrology, tarot card reading, mediums). None of these claims are material. But is there any evidence to support the notion that they are real? Are they in accord with the laws of nature (as we understand them)?

So, Burl, if I understand you correctly, you seem to think that might makes right. If God had hypothetically told the Israelites that in order for them to be in covenant with him, they had to sacrifice (kill) their first newborns, this would have been "nothing peculiar". God, because he is God, can command anything he wants and our part is to obey, not to question.

BTW, I'm holding the Bible's claims of God up to 21c standards. They fail. Pitifully. Try killing a homosexual today, claim that God told you to do so (as scriptures say), and see how innocent our courts find you to be.

Burl, I understand what circumcision is supposed to mean. But, honestly, I think you miss my point. Why, as a sign of a covenant, would God choose for the Israelites to mutilate their penises? One would think that a "sign" is something that everyone can see. So did all of the Israelite men walk around with their penises hanging out so that they could show that they were in covenant with God?

I made a covenant with my wife when I married her 27 years ago. As a "sign" of that covenant, we exchanged rings. I didn't require her to harm herself or to mutilate anything. And this "sign" of our mutual covenant is on both of our hands so that all can see. My covenant of love with her in no way required her to harm herself or cut anything. I'd never ask her to harm any part of her body in order to demonstrate that she is in loving covenant with me. True love does not harm the other.

But in the Bible account, Yahweh wants the males (females had no value) to show that they are in covenant with him by cutting on their penises. That is love? If God truly loved them, why not simply ask them to wear a certain ring as a sign of the covenant? Or have a certain hairdo? Or wear certain shoes? Why would Yahweh want them to mutilate the most sensitive part of their bodies? And it wasn't even a sign that you could see outwardly. I certainly wouldn't have wanted to be a door-greeter at the local synagogue to make sure only Hebrews are entering. Yuck!

Makes no sense to me. And it seems immoral. Love does no needless harm.

PS - As I'm sure you know, Thormas, theism generally holds that God is a supernatural being outside of nature. According to this view, God created nature separate from himself and can only control or influence it through intervention from without. Because we are part of nature and live in it, God only shows up from time to time in divine interventions such as prophets or miracles. Most of the time, God is not here. It is usually thought that he is in heaven which, again, is a supernatural, not natural, realm.

The appealing thing about panentheism, at least my understanding of it, is that it posits that while God *might* be a supernatural being, nature is within God. God created nature within God's self. It is almost a feminine image of pregnancy. In this model, God works through nature, perhaps influencing nature. God's work does not break natural laws, rather God works through them. And, in this model, because we are part of nature which is in God, we are also in God, part of God. Therefore, God can work through us should we choose to work with him (anthropomorphic language, of course). I'm more comfortable saying that we should bring compassion and justice to bear upon the world in real, tangible ways (in order to get around the theistic language). IMO, the gifts of nature (not the claims of the supernatural) help us to do that.

Thanks Bill and can you give me an example of Nature so I'm on the same page?

Hmm. Just an off-the-top-of-my-head stab at it. Nature: the Universe as it really exists, much (but not all) of which can be verified by the senses and science.

For instance, horses are a part of nature. Everything in our senses and sciences tell us that they exist and are at least part of this small dot in the Universe. Fairies are not part of nature. They do exist in legends, myths, and stories. But their existence cannot be verified by our senses or sciences. Rocks are part of nature. Magic crystals, as far as we know (important clause), are not part of nature. Saint Nicholas used to be part of nature. I suppose his ashes, if they exist, still are. But Santa Claus is not a part of nature. He is a supernatural legend. The claims made about Santa Claus not only cannot be verified by science, but violate space/time to the best of our understanding.

Ghosts may or may not be a part of nature. There are many anecdotal claims that they exist, but, IMO, no hard evidence to claim with absolute certainty that ghosts are part of nature. However, is it possible that consciousness can somehow/sometimes survive death? Does science currently have the tools to make this determination? "Ghost Hunters" on TV says 'yes'. I remain skeptical. Ghosts, at this point, generally fall into the realm of the "supernatural" which means that they are not subject to nature's laws. Currently, they are not part of nature, but people claim that they exist in a "supernatural realm" which cannot be proven, only asserted.

I suspect that Jesus of Nazareth used to be part of nature. But I find no convincing evidence, using our senses and our sciences, that his ghost indwells each Christian in a supernatural way, though this is the claim of many a Christian. For Christians, Jesus is the Second Person of the Trinity. I make no claim that there are two persons living inside me. And I doubt the claims of Christians that two people live inside them. That is, IMO, a supernatural claim with little to no evidence. Therefore, "Christ" to me, is a nature phenomenon where we feel connected to the Universe and to each other, especially when compassion is the means of connection.

Good question, Thormas. I hope this helps. How do you see it? Do you believe in the supernatural? Or the supranatural?

Note: This is sort of a moved subject from Burl's Lectionary thread in Progressive Christianity.

Burl mentioned 2 Tim 3:16 and how, to him, it means, as it says, that all scripture is useful in training in righteous, even scriptures that we might consider to be negative.

I would certainly agree that we would do well to consider the text, context, culture, original languages, and different interpretations of scriptures that might be, to our modern morality and sensibilities, either immoral or nonsensical. But I would also hasten to add that some scriptures, no matter how much you try to consider them in their original context and culture, are going to be offensive to some Progressive Christians. For instance, I don't think it is moral in any culture to kill homosexuals, or to stone children, or to kill women and children of one's enemies. For me, no scripture gets a "free pass" just because Christianity has claimed it to be the Word of God.

Burl mentioned that it would be better to deal with these scriptures individually instead of in sweeping generalizations. I don't intend to go over EVERY scripture that I think is immoral or nonsensical (too much time involved and probably wouldn't be of benefit to many people), but it might be interesting to touch on a few of them.

So my first one is the subject of circumcision. Let's say that God really is the all-powerful source of life and love that many (most?) Christians say that he is. If so, why would he command people to mutilate their sexual organs? Since when is self-mutilation a good thing, except in superstitious worldviews? Do we admire modern societies that encourage or enforce genital mutilation? If it seems wrong to us now, how could it have been right 4000 years ago, especially if, as evangelicals claim, God is the same yesterday, today, and forever? If God was so adamant about circumcision in the OT, why is it of so little importance in the NT? Did God change his mind? Did he have another plan? If so, why would he be so dualistic? (All of these questions assume there is a Deity above the earth who issues commands to humans so that they will be obedient to him and, thereby, gain his favor, escaping his wrath.)

PS - To put this in a modern context, what if I claimed that God spoke to me and told me that all women who desired to be God's women and who wanted to be in covenant with him needed to have their nipples cut off. Should my claim be given any merit or given heed? Why or why not?

Good thoughts, Thormas. Thanks for sharing. And, BTW, welcome to the Message Board for Progressive Christianity! Glad you're here!

FWIW, by Nature, I don't mean just the material realm. As we know, things do exist which are not material, but they are nonetheless real. What I mean by Nature is just that they are not what we would call supernatural i.e. things which are generally in opposition to Nature, things which, at their core, violate the laws of Nature.

But, as I mentioned, I by no means think we have all of Nature or all the laws of Nature explored or understood yet.

Burl, you are well-read and educated, no doubt more so than I am. So I probably don't need to cite a particular verse. But take the subject of circumcision. Let's say that God really is the all-powerful source of life and love that many (most?) Christians say that he is. If so, why would he command people to mutilate their sexual organs? Since when is self-mutilation a good thing, except in superstitious worldviews?

PS - To put this in a modern context, what if I claimed that God spoke to me and told me that all women who desired to be God's women and who wanted to be in covenant with him needed to have their nipples cut off. Should my claim be given any merit or given heed? Why or why not?

2 Timothy says everything in Scripture is useful for instruction in righteousness. Useful does not mean exemplary, and there are many examples of unrighteous behavior which provide useful negative examples.

I would agree with this, Burl, except that the "negative examples" are often commanded by God himself i.e. killing homosexuals, stoning children, mutilating sexual organs, committing genocide, etc. So it is not like the scriptures list these things and say, "This is where people misunderstood God and what God wanted. It is useful to learn from these things." Rather, the scriptures far more often take a "thus saith the Lord" approach. This "unrighteous behavior" often came about because people sincerely believed that what they were doing were the very commands of Yahweh. They didn't dare question because the commands carried, for them, divine authority. Might makes right. You don't question if God tells you to kill women and children, you simply do it because God commanded it, and if God commanded it, it must be "righteous." As a PC, this paradigm now nauseates me.