Problems with the Bible, irreconcilable scripture, and rigid teachings
Biblical scholars - those who deal with interpretation of scripture, native languages, and similar tasks - often lose their faith... temporarily. Most gain their faith back with a new perspective. God does not lead us down a path of illumination just to take us to a dark place. But often we have to walk through a dark valley where beliefs are dealt serious blows before we reach the hill top and see the sun rise. It's a purification process.
We are taught, and expect the Bible to be certain things. We want the surety of something concrete to believe in. But the Bible is part of the path, not the end goal. It is not a book of science, although many beliefs that were formed in very ancient times miraculously do stand up to science. It is not a book of history - that is, doesn't stand up to the rigorous principles of historical writing in use today. It is not even a book of complete spiritual understanding. As the Apostle Paul said, we see through a glass darkly, and we think as children. Yet we often try to use the Bible as all of these things, and it typically fails in those respects.
We have to place our belief in God, not in a book. The Bible tells us about God from many people's perspectives. Kings, prophets, teachers, judges, priests, apostles, disciples, chroniclers, bishops, scribes - all have created literature that tells us about God from their point of view. Their points of view conflict sometimes. Even the apostles of Christ had disagreements. Kings, prophets, and priests all had disagreements. Their points of view were recorded for posterity so that we could study them and learn from them. But they don't agree.
Emphasis on various things cycles throughout history. The Congregationalist Church began an era of "the personal God." God was no longer that entity who was far away and not involved in people's lives. We went from a God who's mercy was unknown, who was represented by leaders, and who only occasionally performed miracles, to a God who asked for a personal relationship through Christ, was personally involved in the crises in people's lives, and who worked everyday miracles.
Somewhere in that personal God emphasis, people started believing again, as did some of the Jews in the Old Testament, that if you did certain things for God, then He would do certain things for you. And theologies grew that even emphasized giving until it hurts and then God would reward you with more money. The pendulum has swung to the personal God extreme.
The reset button
God does not promise everyone that they will be wealthy because they follow Him... he does say that you won't starve to death and will have shelter... and we know that sometimes the result is just a homeless shelter. It's mostly wishful thinking that God works everyday miracles. And while accepting Christ, or God, in our life is the beginning of our salvation, it isn't the be all and end all of God's work in our lives, or of our responsibility to keep growing in the faith.
It is God who works through us to perform everyday miracles in people's lives - we fund the homeless shelters, and we provide assistance in many ways to others. We find collective ways to do big things, often through our government.
Giving in the Old Testament was a plan called tithing - giving ten percent of one's resources to God. Tithing was used to fund the Temple, build the storehouse, and give to the poor. The need for that mechanism came to an end. The New Testament calls for people to give as they prosper. We pay taxes which do many of the same things through our collective payments. And most people give an average of around 5% to the Church to support its functions. That's an average. Some give less, some more. And giving buys us nothing personally. We have to be careful that our real goal is not the prosperity gospel of gaining wealth through giving. That's is just another form of materialism.
We are asked to sacrifice our time and treasure for others. We're not asked to give so that we will get a big "blessing." The word blessing has taken on a meaning that it never had. We've come to think of blessing as financial reward. Blessing basically means to "feel" happy or fortunate because we have God's appreciation.
Hebrew/Chaldee (Jewish Bible): Bless, blessed, blessing. To kneel. An act of adoration. Benefit, praise, salute, thank.
Greek (Christian New Testament): Bless, blessed, blessing. In some uses: To speak well of, thank, prosper. In other uses: fortunate, well off, happy, benefit, largess.
The primary root of the word bless has to do with conferring thanks, honor, and praise on another. The phrase "Blessed are the poor," or "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" most likely refers to happiness. For most of the 2000 years following the birth of Christ, most people were very poor, underfed or starving, afflicted by multiple diseases, cold, afflicted by harsh environmental elements, lost many children and themselves in childbirth, worked themselves to death at manual labor, were crushed by invaders, and on average died by age 30. Yet most of them would likely have said that their lives were happy. The feelings of satisfaction, accomplishment, helping others, love, and especially inner peace, transcend the miseries of life. The idea that being faithful to God has to mean prosperity is simply an invention of modern preachers and flies in the face of reality and history.
God asks us to treat others as we would want to be treated. With respect. With a caring type of love that has enough concern to help others when they are in need. To not do bad things to others. To reconcile with others and seek their forgiveness when we have hurt our relationship with them through our selfish or thoughtless and insensitive actions. To even wish good on our enemies. This is the main thrust of religion: how we treat others.
With the rebuilding of the Temple, in the Old Testament, God asked each of us to become individually responsible. There was no such thing as a nation of elite people who could live however they wanted and expect God to favor them. Christ helped every person from this time forward to understand what that responsibility meant. God asks us to be responsible people. Too often we look to God to totally control every aspect of our lives, and give all responsibility or caring for others to Him. He gave it to us.
It's convenient and comforting to think that God controls the entire universe for us at all times. God created the natural world. He created the laws that govern it. The natural world does what it does, including earthquakes, fires, tornadoes, hurricanes, mudslides, accidents, and a lot of other unpleasant and destructive things, and does them frequently and with no respect to people who are in the way. Those who live in earthquake zones, know it, and live there anyway despite the threat. A lot of cruel, selfish, and bad people also do what they do, like invade others for theier own gain. God is not the author of our problems and disasters. Bad things happen to good people. He created a natural order that does what it does.
God does help us. He guides us toward better lives and more opportunity. He brings us into better relationships with others so that we don't live with a load of guilt that stops us in our tracks, or live in poison relationships that prevent us from working with others. He helps us cope with life through the things that He does promise. He guides us to help each other. The history left by religion and Christianity are that of a much better, fairer world with much greater treatment and opportunity for everyone.
The thing is, life brings a lot of difficulties. Even if you take the notion of Satan's temptations out of the equation, take the notion of God's "testing" out of the equation, you still have a lot of difficulties that life brings you... and brings every one of us. But by helping each other, and depending on God's real promises, we have realistic expectations and get through life. In this way, God does work everyday miracles.
We have built up a lot of mythology and expectations about God that are not supported in the Bible. You can find hints of these things, such as blessing can be interpreted to mean gain of some kind, but when taken in the total context of the Bible, they are not expectations that are supported. It is when these false expectations come tumbling down that our belief structure begins to crack and bring us into doubt.
It's when we stop defining God ourselves and telling God what to do that we can begin to understand what God actually does for us.
Read the Bible using a different filter. When the Bible says "blessing," do we see money and material gain? When it says, "abundance," do we simply see money and material gain? Is this our definition of God?
Next: Page 3 - Philosophical and reasoning difficulties
