WHY I DON’T WORSHIP THE GOD OF THE BIBLE
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Some people think I am seriously misguided when they hear me say something of this kind. Some say they will pray for me. I doubt they really did or do. Most people don’t care what I think and that is okay too. Being born into a conservative Baptist preacher’s family I believed everything in the Bible literally as I was told as a child by my parents. To illustrate, I was told that a volcano was just Hell getting larger for all those who were going there but we were saved. Over time and with a broad general education, I came to see that was not true. I discovered that the more education most of us had we had a more open interpretation of the scriptures. Still today, many believe the creation story which says everything that exists was created by God in seven days and the whole of everything is just four thousand years old while others believe the big bang and evolutionary development of life over millions of years. Others hold onto the story of Adam and Eve and the fall from the garden of Eden as a literal event while other Christians say it is allegorical and it is just saying God created mankind. It seems with more advanced broad education most take that story as an allegory. They also take the book of Revelation as allegorical while others believe end time events happen as described in the book of Revelation. Further, there are those that believe the Bible to be simply a place where you can find truths about living well as you could find in the sayings of Confucius. This leaves me with a question: what does one need to believe or take at face value in the Bible to be considered a “Christian” and have the promise of “Heaven.” Every organized group of Christians seems to have similar points of view some varying differences.
The first known version of the Bible was in the second century (200 A.D.) by Syrian writer Tatian who created a Canon by weaving the writings of the Four Gospels (which were written 60-80 years after the historical Jesus walked the earth) together and is believed to be the earliest canonical texts of the New Testaments. The next big events were during the reign of Constantine. There was so much unrest in the Roman Empire, created mainly by the many different Christ followers being aggressive with their points of view. Constantine decided to get the bishops of the sects together with the task of choosing from the many writings which ones all could accept and the “Bible” was created. In 1331 Constantine had Eusebius of Caesarea create 50 copies of the writings in the original Greek. These 50 copies were made for the Bishop of Constantinople to use in the growing number of churches in the city. This is the original surviving source from which we know of the existence of Bibles. The most popular version of the Bible is the King James Version which King James had ordered translated. He and his group translated and edited the scriptures a couple of times to his liking.
So again the question, from Biblical writings what does one need to believe is necessary to take from the Bible to be a Christian and have the promise of Heaven after this life is over. It seems to me that the first criteria that you believe there is a supreme being who got everything started in seven days or with the Big Bang or some other way. The second thing that seems necessary is the belief that Jesus was/is the son of God who came to earth to teach us how to live and to die for our sins and that we must accept this truth and take him as our Savior and that will get us into heaven and avoid hell.
The Bible says we were created in God’s image. I am not certain what that means exactly. Was that physical, emotional or mental perhaps? What is God like? The Bible tells us many things about God. The truths change somewhat between the Old and New Testament. In the Old Testament, God was what we call evil in today’s understanding of the world. The descriptions of God in the Old Testament show him as a war criminal, misogynist, slave trader, murderer, racist and just plain barbaric, telling the Israelites to kill their enemies including women and children and their livestock. By contrast the New Testament says he loves us unconditionally. The Nature of God as presented in the Bible from cover to cover is replete with incompatible ways of being. Taken in total, the God of the Bible is a misogynistic, Machiavellian, narcissist or worse and to be on his good side, you must pledge your life to him, and if you do this your life will be rewarded even though he may send you pestilence to make you grow or test your faith.
So if you take the Bible and condense all the things presented about the nature of God, the crypt note version is he created the world and people in his image. He didn’t like what people were doing so he killed them all with a big flood and started over. He still didn’t like what we were doing so he sends himself to impregnate a teenage Jewish girl with himself so he could be born, pray to himself in order to sacrifice himself to himself so he can forgive sins he created himself in order to save us from hell created by himself so as to save us from himself. Sounds to me like even a God himself wouldn’t believe this story. To me worshipping a god who sacrificed his grown son to fix a problem he created is absurd; then we pretend to eat and drink the dead savior in a ceremony, and then your faithfulness is only rewarded after you die. These practices are somewhat barbaric even with grape juice and wafers. This is the kind of thing you would find in some kind of death cult.
Some say we are not supposed to question God because He works in mysterious ways. This is just a deflection so that we don’t have to wrestle with any hard questions or deal with the many conflicts we find in the Bible. So people just take the parts with which they agree. I do believe there is value in the Bible. From one perspective it describes the human story as it develops over time. All the gods of history and mythology were created in a time when humans had no explanation of what was happening around them. So, there must be someone up in the sky who is making that thunder, etc. It is interesting to note that the descriptions of God look just like the humans living in the period they are describing. Have you noticed this? Every age of time in the Bible, God is just like the people of that time. God had the same actions as humans but with superpowers in mythology. Even in the Old Testament, God was barbaric during the time humans were barbaric. God was warlike when the humans were warlike, etc. He told us how to treat our slaves and when it was okay to kill them, he told us that wives were the chattel of the husband, etc. There are so many historical shenanigans where humans have played God and credited his guidance with being the source of their decisions to act by saying God said to do this or that. Even the most devout have done pure evil in God’s name. Around the year 800 King Charlemagne presented as a gift to Pope Leo III the foreskin of Jesus as a holy relic saying it had been given to him by an angel. Soon rival churches began to claim they had the Holy Foreskin. The God people worship is one of their own desires manifested as a Deity. I know followers of Christ who believe that because they are a follower of Christ and have been “saved” that all their thoughts are from God. This thinking puts their actions on a plane that is not to be questioned. There are many Christians today who believe God sends sickness and trouble our way to test our faith and teach us some things we need to know. If so, the doctor who removes the tumor God placed in us to teach us a lesson is doing the devil’s work. I can accept that there may be some Supreme Consciousness somewhere in the cosmos. This consciousness would beyond our ability fully comprehend. But this Supreme Consciousness would not be the Machiavellian, Narcissist God of the Bible.
Suppose some of us humans decided to add to the New Testament the newer understanding of what it means to be human just as the New Testament did when it expanded views from the Old Testament. What do you think would be added in a New Testament 2.0? Probably things like the ending of slavery, the emancipation of women, our responsibility to all living things (as opposed to dominating them and destroying the planet with our greed). What else humans have learned since we started creating God to be in our image. Maybe that love is the only real God.
So I have come to believe that most humans see the best in themselves or what they wish was best in themselves and attribute that desire to the God they have created for themselves by taking parts of the Bible to give a meaning to life with something to strive for and hope for in the future. This creation of God in our image is the total saga of the Bible from beginning to end. So the saga continues today as humans come to understand more about our place in the universe. You can find groupings of Christians who believe parts of what the nature of God is like as described in the Bible. Some say God supports capital punishment and others say we should forgive all based on the nature of God they have adapted. If you want to see the God of your world, look in the mirror...the answer is right in front of you. You make all the choices in your life.
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