With apologies to my Christian believing friends, I have to say I don't put much trust in the Bible. Oh, I do believe in a divine creator, our God....I just have a really hard time believing in a book written by a bunch of Middle Eastern people thousands of years ago....then translated in and out of several dozen languages since, watered down, and translated according to a writer's own beliefs.
That doesn't mean I don't read the Bible. I find parts of it some of the most beautiful and comforting literature we have, and some of it highly poetic. My favorite part of the Bible comes in the red lettering of my old family Bible.......the red highlighting the words of a fine fellow named Jesus Christ. I have no doubt that a man named Jesus lived. Whether he was the son of God, to me, is another question. But that too has never mattered to me....the teachings of Jesus Christ is something we can all learn from. We would all live better lives were we to heed his words of guidance. The old religion was nearly as harsh and hard to live by as Islam before Christ came along and said that it was okay to fail, that forgiveness is possible, that our creator is a kind and forgiving God, and not the vengeful god of Abraham.
And forgive me again here, but I believe the Garden of Eden story is just a crock of shit. I don't believe God for one moment intended man to be perfect and without sin. I believe we are made fallible, that we are allowed to make mistakes for the specific purpose of refining our immortal soul.
If you believe in a God supreme you almost have to believe that God would not have programmed us to be little breathing automatons. Consider the computer code that drives the operations of the desktop computer you are even now using to read this. That code is nothing more than a series of "0"s and "1"'s listed in billions of variations in order to accomplish a programming task.
God could have easily just filled our brains with bunches of 0's and 1's and made us incapable of sin and failure. But how boring would we be....how limited in our capacity to fail and achieve redemption. How incapable would we be in being heroic, in stumbling and falling, then reveling when we succeed in pulling ourselves upright again, and carrying on with the challenges of life.
Atheists love to argue that, if there were really a God, he wouldn't allow innocent children to get cancer, or starve to death on an African plain, or drown in a catastrophic flood. To that, I can only say "who am I to question God?" Maybe we are reincarnated souls, sent back to earth to endure what we must in order to achieve a greater degree of perfection of our soul...and if that comes with enduring the hardships as an infant, so be it, as we might have well chosen that path while sitting up there awaiting reincarnation. Whether that is true or not, it is as good an explanation as any.
As little as I do know about God's grand design, I do believe, just as Des Cartes and Plato believed, that we have within ourselves an innate knowledge of what is moral, and what is right and wrong. If something feels bad it probably is....and those things that leave us feel good after, probable are good.
But, with all my doubts about the veracity of the Bible, I have never had a doubt about the existence of our Creator. I just don't believe that so much beauty around us was created by happenstance. I believe our world was all part of a grand design and that God's power is limitless.
And I'm even glad that the wise man upstairs didn't program us with those 0's and 01's...what dreadful, soulless beings would we be had He done so. Sin and failure are part of our nature...but redemption is a fine thing indeed, and makes us better people because we stumbled and then pulled ourselves up and kept going.
3 comments:
I'm glad I stopped by here today. I've been wrestling with my beliefs of late. It happens every time I read the news or hear obama speak. Now it's the wisdom of a man bringing all these muslim "rufugees" here and the EU. The EU just confounds me. I cannot believe they are as stupid as it appears. These "refugees" look alot like a military expedition into Europe. Not long ago we had to come to the aid of Europe for the second time and this was a huge loss to the USA on top of us rebuilding so much of what we blew up defending them. They are putting themselves in the same situation. Well not the same but in harms way for sure by bringing all these muslims who have told the entire world of the koran's instructions on how to unseat the infidel and take over the world. They are doing it in rapid fashion. Now I hear the social experiment is planning on importing 100,000 "refugees" to our country instead of the original ten thousand. Hence, what has happened to God and why is He bringing this about. It is obvious, the outcome. Will we be expected to defend Europe. I don't think we should. It's there own fault they are being over run.I'm told God always has His reasons and I need to trust in Him. I mean really! A very painful something is coming...
I try to spend some time praying every morning and some time in quiet meditation. It is anything but quiet anymore and prayer sounds mostly like a list of resentments and the winner of that list is God, Himself. It was Him after all who created this problem. I have never spent much time in the Bible, I should, recently I bought one but there it rests right next to me as I write. Funny enough, the garden of eden is a story that made perfect sense to me. It was a you play you pay kind of story and boy did they pay and so did we all the way down the line. Original sin I always thought dumb, but maybe it's only Catholic, don't know for sure. Here I am kind of lost again to I guess I'll quit on it here. Thanks for listening again!!
BTW a movie is on right now that you recommended to me some years back, "The Best Years of Our Lives", It is one of the best movies on the subject I think I ever saw. Thanks for the introduction TCM right now!
Bringing in 100,00 Muslims just means we'll need another 100,000 bullets to kill them one day soon. They are accomplishing exactly what they say they will do. Overrun us with numbers and Oblama, Kerry et al are helping them. Another 100,000 people on America's dime, another 100,000 people needing jobs that aren't there. Revolution is right around the corner and we're armed and ready for it. So bring them on. Killing another 100,000 or so won't be that big a deal.Oblama underestimates the American resolve. I guess history has taught him nothing. He never was a good Student. Just check his grades. Oh yeh. We can't.
Looks like you're locked and loaded Frank K. :)
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