How do you decide what is True in the Bible?

Ifen, I am surprised at you! You must regard any sort of spirituality that you have as a sort of personal sort of meditation and philosophy. As long as you are in control of your choices, you happily embrace pantheistic and Eastern philosophies. When it comes to any sort of link to Western Spirituality with surrender of ego and internal control to God, you then always attack the concept as a manipulative tool of humans. You say that nobody respects your intelligence, yet you too have a preconceived belief in empirical scientific method---never considering that humans may be predisposed to reject the very theology that they need. Rabbis by and large deserve respect. These men have studied as much as any secular profession.It is too early to determine the truth and validity of monotheistic based faiths. Absence of evidence does not equal evidence of no God.

I believe that is true of all of us only some choose to follow ancient traditions that have not be adequately updated. Even if you claim someone's revelation is true it is you that is evaluating it as true and that evaluation is a human evaluation. I dispute the assertion that the Bible is literally true and the accurate protrayal of the Source of the universe. The issue of surrender of ego and internal control to God is more complex and I've no time this morning to really go into it. I'm not sure I would say surrender is the manipulative tool of humans except when it's used to accept authority of other humans. Well I respect the amount of study they do. I don't respect the kinds of argument that was in the excerpt you posted. It grieves me to see intelligence so distorted by emotional needs. That kind of thinking can be emotionally and organisationally useful in maintaining an ancient orthodoxy but it doesn't enlighten us at all.lfen

The most important way that I decide if a part of the Bible is true or not is that, if a passage does not fit with a good and loving God, then I don’t believe it to be true (more specifically, not directly caused by God). Examples would be:Genesis 19:24 Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heavenExodus 32:27 And he said unto them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour. 32:28 And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.And so on. I don’t believe a God represented by Christ to be loving and merciful and good would cause the deaths of thousands. How does Love thy neighbor reconcile with killing 3000 of your neighbors?!I believe in the message of the Bible: Be good to each other. I believe this to be true because it’s a philosophy everyone can agree on. Atheists, Hindus, Buddhists, everyone can agree that Love thy neighbor as you love yourself is an excellent rule to live by. It transcends all belief and is a basic point of basic human morality. I believe that the truthful parts of the Bible are those that teach us to live up to this ideal. Whether Genesis accurately and truthfully depicts the Creation of the Universe is irrelevant to that message, and was simply a way to explain our origins before we had the ability to discover them for ourselves.I believe that the Bible is just a collection of books. They contain some good truth to them (and for me, pointed the way to my beliefs), but they are just books written by men who were just as susceptible to misinterpretation and ignorance as we are. When it comes down to it, believing in the Bible’s literal truth simply because it’s the Bible is as ludicrous as believing in a 3000-year old story about a giant flying spaghetti monster. Obviously the fact that it’s really, really old has nothing to do with whether it’s true. Remember also that the current Bible has been copied and translated many times from it’s original (and the Old Testament is worse, because the first few chapters were likely carried down by word of mouth), not to mention the fact that Church Fathers decided what went in and what didn’t. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I prefer to think for myself, rather than letting some Roman Emperor and the Church Fathers from 1500 years ago decide what is or isn’t Divinely Inspired. Not to mention King James.Other Christians will probably not like those past few paragraphs, but this is what I believe. The message is what’s important. The rest are simple God did it explanations that don’t really explain anything at all. The Bible’s literal scripture is used to justify fire and brimstone preaching that tells people to believe in a loving God out of fear of Hell. It is used to persecute those viewed by some Christians to be immoral and thereby not love our neighbors, not treat others as we would be treated (remember that there was a time when Christians were the minority and were ridiculed, fed to lions, stoned, or worse). The Bible says that Jesus told his disciples to look to the fruits of teachings, and that if they were genuine, they would bear good fruit. Literalist Bible interpretation, just as a literalist interpretation of Islam or any other religion with a we’re right, everybody else is wrong philosophy, often leads to bigotry, hatred, fear, and death. Those are not good fruits.I choose to believe in God and Jesus, not because of the Bible or religious indoctrination, but because of personal experiences. God’s existence is not provable with the tools of the physical world. I believe that if more Christians would look inward to find God living in their own hearts instead of a dusty old tome that simply points the way, the world would be a better, more tolerant place.the kingdom of God is within you." - Luke 17:21 (NIV)
The kingdom of God is inside you and all around you. Not in mansions made from wood and stone. — The Gospel of St. Thomas

Much of the controversy in belief centers around the idea of
God being "in" everyone in which case our own effort finds Him
vs God being "with" everyone in Spirit and the need for us to allow His Spirit to call the shots. Being good will not get one to Heaven. Being submissive and allowing God to change us from within seems the more logical choice. Good point, but I must remind you that the killing was done by humans. Perhaps the misinterpretation of what God said was the cause of the carnage. Or...perhaps these "neighbors" were not neighbors at all but were reprobate humans who had already forever rejected the Spirit of God and who were beyond help...by their own choice.This gets into a lot of deep philosophical topics, but the bottem line is that it is our responsibility to allow the Spirit to guide us.It is not Gods "fault" as long as we can over rule anything that is possible.

Submissive to whom, or what? Doesn't "Islam" or perhaps it's "muslim" mean submission, as in submit to the will of God? But whose interpretation of the will of God? The Popes? Pat Robertson's? Joseph Smith's? and on and on. Western religions are authority based and human authorities seek to enhance their impact by claiming they are the sole agents of the source of the universe.The nature of the ego, the sense of I is incomplete. Submission of the ego to that which is it's source makes sense to me though I'm not sure at all we can call this solution logical. The Torah, the New Testament, the Koran, The Book of Mormon are human attempts to cloth the naked circumstance of the I in a story that relates it to its source. These are human stories and the appeal is to the emotional prelogical brain circuits. These brain functions are very tied to fundamental human survival behaviours hence the saying there are no atheists in a fox hole. Faced with death the ego clings to the survival as survival is a fundamental organism functioning. As was the story telling. In WWI the Germans and French both believed or were told by their leaders that God was on their side. As Dylan wrote: "And you never ask questions when God's on your side". This is the chilling pit of the stomach feeling I get when I hear the Western religions call to submission. And isn't this one theme of this forum: that in the 16th century people began asking questions and developed science. There are religious authorities and believers who are threatened by this. They want unthinking obediance and acceptance. The bible is literally true, or the Koran, Book or Mormon, etc. do as you are told, submit. Your knowledge is not as deep as ours. We know the spirit. God has told us to tell you that your home, lands, oil, whatever is ours because we are true believers and you are heathen. What is possible what is not possible, impossible? If it's not God's fault is it his credit? What is our responsiblity? What is God's responsiblity?lfen

Ifen, you and I agree on a lot of points and yet are miles apart on other, similar ones.Perhaps we both believe that Gods Spirit is real...independent of human description. I believe that I trust the Bible as inspired, whereas you do not. Perhaps you question your belief so much that you have yet to come to a comfortable conclusion. I have been convinced that God is real, alive, and has influence over me. (If I allow Him to.) To some, my way of thinking becomes dangerous as it is rigid. Your continuel questioning is perhaps much more logical and open minded, but I ask you whether you ever could settle for an inner voice that overrode your logic, questioning, and skepticism. see, at some point, belief MUST supercede skepticism or you never have a conclusion. Which is OK if human wisdom remains your final yardstick. That is not a belief in God, however. Unless you are a pantheist! You perhaps do not understand how I could be so ignorant as to stop asking questions. I do ask many questions...to Him...(Not the Priest or the theology professor) It is not possible to explain to you why He is real....or is it? I have tried, but it is not a logical situation. God is not logical to human wisdom and logic. That is why this issue never gets settled. Listen to Raul Ries program and let me know what you think.http://www.calvarygs.org/...e/archived_programs/2005/06.htmlLook at the June 23 show....listen if you want.

Phat,As I have dial up and dont' have Real Player due to it's spyware issues and preferring the speed and convenience of reading over listening I don't know what Ries said. Perhaps you would summarize in your understanding? I think that is a valid part of the path. I agree but probably disagree with you as to where that illogic is manifest. The Bible contains what clearly appears to me as human illogic specifically in the forms of explanatory myths and attributing human emotions like jealosy to the the source of the universe.Humans, particularly prescientific humans like integers. But looking at the universe we find that irrational and transcendental numbers like pi, and e are far more important. Not 3 but some number a little more than 3 and a little less than 3 figures in the way the universe functions. Had the Bible represented the mind of God rather than the mind of man I think pi, and e would have been mentioned instead of thoroughly simple integers like 3,4,7, or 40.I think the Bible contains some wisdom and a lot of primitive confusion. It is useful as a cultural context I suppose, as is the Koran, or Book of Mormon. Human culture lags behind our knowledge and technology.Your experience of a personal relationship with Christ is found also in Hinduism with personal relationships to Krishna, the Divine Mother, etc. or in Tibetan Buddhism with various deities. The human mind creates these experiences and it's a good process except when it goes off the rails like David Koresh, etc. But it's only a stage.The West, particularly the literal rigorists when they won't go beyond semantics to fundamental experience inhibit the spiritual developement, not entirely successfully as people like St. John, Meister Eckert, or Bernadette Roberts demonstrate but still it generally keeps the level at a dualist semantic hence human logical level.The East at least acknowledges the awakened sages like Ramana, Nisargadatta, Buddha whose teachings point beyond verbal formulations and literal models to that truth which is every where, every moment present. The hardest thing to get westerns to question is the questioner himself, and yet that is where the mystery can be unraveled. Ramana always kept referring the devotee back to that. Find out who is questioning, find out who is loving God, or who is doubting. This is what the Buddha did. He sat and examined the instrument that we all call self. What is this, or who is it that suffers. You might in a Christian context be asking who is it that sins, or feels guilty, or longs for redemption.This to me is the main and crucial difference. The west takes the ego for granted and directs attention outward to a book, a church, even scientific studies, theories and models. The east is saying who is it that knows. Find that out and you go beyond it to discover the source. The answer is not capable of a semantic formulation at all. It is to great, too living, too immense, too subtle for the gross human tool of language.lfen

Phat,This is the clearest succinct statement I've come upon. This is the best statement of my interests and how it differs from language based, book based religion. lfen

But that's exactly my point - the Bible says:

quote:

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Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side...

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As it is written, God Himself told the men to kill their friends, neighbors, and family. I cannot believe that God would ever do such a thing. It is certainly possible, however, that the PEOPLE decided that killing the idol-worshippers would please God, and then attributed the deed to God (exactly the same as some evangelicals who take a stand on an issue and claim it to be "God's Will," when it is, in fact, their own decision).This is an example of one of the many reasons I cannot take the Bible literally. Anyone can make some declaration and claim it to be the Will of God to give the position false authority. I could say that "God has made it known to me that eating candy is a mortal sin against God. It is God's Will that candy should not be eaten!" That doesn't mean that God has actually given me an 11th Commandment against eating candy - it just means that I interpreted tooth decay as a sign from God that candy is of the Devil. This practice of deciding a course to be the Will of God has happened all throughout history, and I believe that it happened thousands of years ago, too.Also, when you say: The commandment is "love thy neighbor as you love yourself." It is NOT "Love thy neighbor as you love yourself, unless thy neighbor is a filthy heathen who obviously hates me even though he simply does not believe in my existance. Hate that neighbor, and kill him with your sword. Even if that neighbor is your best friend, brother, spouse, or child."Not to mention that disbelief in God is NOT a moral reason to kill 3000 people. There are a few people who believe that they should kill all of the disbelievers - they flew a pair of planes into the WTC. I hate to bring up the specter of 9/11, but to say that the Israelites were morally justified in killing the idol worshippers is to say that the hijackers were justified in bringing down the Towers: they both did it "for God (Allah)." And they both killed about 3000 people.The Bible is filled to the brim with atrocities and various forms of hate speech. I don't believe any of that to be inspired by God. Those who take such stories to be literally true and God's Will actually drive people away from Christianity and its message of love and forgiveness.

Excellent post Faith.

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"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed." Albert Einstein

Just saw this post from you, Eltonian. Thank you.

You are most welcome. I find it heartening to be able to read posts in which I find so much with which I agree. I am afraid I may have gotten started on the wrong foot in here as I seem to have made some quick enemies. Perhaps enemies is not the correct term to use but it is very late and my mind is not so willing to search for the correct one.At any rate, I am glad I came across you and I look forward to joining you in any discussion in which I find myself qualified to comment. (qualified seems to be a 4-letter word to some people in here, lol)
I just need to remind myself of one of my dads' favorite sayings, "Go with God and He will go with you."Blessings to you always.Eltonian

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"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed." Albert Einstein

"passionate debate opponents."don't think i hate you, james, or that i really judge you. i was trying to make a point effectively. sorry if we got off on the wrong foot.

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אָרַח

They really need to have a very strong word of warning or orientation for traditional Christians at the entrance to this site. By the time you learn the ropes here it's too late. But don't worry about the enemies. I made a slew of them myself right off the bat, but I just keep posting and it more or less smoothes out eventually. And prayer makes a big difference -- when I remember to pray. By the way I don't have much in the way of qualifications for any of this, except that I do know the Bible pretty well and a lot of theology. Otherwise I'm simply a nervy very opinionated person. I have a public email address posted on my profile if you have any questions I can possibly answer.--FaithThis message has been edited by Faith, 07-26-2005 08:19 AMThis message has been edited by Faith, 07-26-2005 08:50 AM

Brian, a couple of months ago you wrote me here that you could send me your paper on the Conquest of Canaan. I don't think the subject ever came up again. If it isn't too large, I'd still like to see it. Thanks. Faith. This message has been edited by Faith, 07-26-2005 08:36 AM