It’s In the Bible

One of the most frustrating things I get in response to certain issues that are, shall we say, contrary to age-old held beliefs of most Christians is that you cannot use logic to argue the believers out of their stand.

These beliefs, however they were established or derived, is supported by the believer’s religious organization and by scripture to support the belief.  Thus, when you throw a logical argument against this belief they reply that it cannot be true regardless of the logic you have brought to the table.  Why?  Because their belief is supported by Biblical Scripture.  Thus, their argument is that “It is in the Bible!” Then they shut down and no longer engage in any further discussion on the issue.

Now here is the issue I have with this:

The people cherry-pick the issues they wish to use in this way.  Even to someone like me who is not a Biblical scholar in any way, I know that no one pays attention to many, if not most, of the guidelines, teachings, and admonitions in the Bible.  They choose which ones to follow.  They choose which ones to ignore.  Often the only reason for that choice goes back to the early days of their particular religious organization’s choice of direction.

If that is not enough, we have other issues with the Bible. 

• It has been mistranslated over the eons; sometimes on purpose, sometimes by accident, but nonetheless it has been mistranslated.
• The various Churches have misinterpreted it.  Often to promote their own ideology, but still people believe these misinterpretations.
• The Bible may be incomplete, or not.  Who really knows?  I am not just talking about the Apocrypha (most often seen in Catholic Bibles) but also other works that were deemed Gnostic. I bet people would be surprised that for centuries and centuries, there were discussions as which Books to include or exclude.  As the years went by, some scriptures were excluded simply because no copy was available.
• There are Biblical stories that are told in detail that have little or no foundation in the writings of the Bible.  Where do they come from?
• Talk about taking things out of context.  Think about it.  Have you ever had a sermon where they picked several different scriptures to build the sermon?  Has the context of the various scriptures supported the sermon?  Are you sure?

Having said all of this, I am not going to argue that the Bible is not divinely inspired.  I am just saying that it might not always be divinely written and divinely interpreted.  After all, humans are involved and they mess up accidentally or on purpose.  We know there are errors in the Bible (the most blatant being conflicting stories in the Gospels) so, once again, it must be human error if we accept that God is infallible. 

Thus just because it is in the Bible does not make it so.  We know that.  That is exactly why we Christians ignore many things already.  Maybe we should reexamine some of our other beliefs that are being enforced because of Biblical Scripture, especially when it is inherently hurtful.

I guess my biggest, most overwhelming, problem is that religious organizations choose what to ignore, what to emphasize, what to deemphasize, how to translate, what to mistranslate, and what to flat out lie about.  All in order to stress and perpetuate their specific doctrine and belief, willfully sacrificing what is in the Bible in order to further their agenda.  Little wonder that, while I consider myself a Christian, I find it hard to accept the teachings of any organized religious organization.  Not that I think that I am better than them.  Far from it.  I just will not put up with their lies and hypocrisy.

So let us see what the Bible really says or does not say.