TruePathFinder
Member
I know God is real. I know the Bible is not perfect. Why does He use it to talk to us?
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Why does the God of Christianity use an imperfect Bible to talk to his spiritual children?
- Thread starter TruePathFinder
- Start date
I'm under the impression that the Christian god uses many methods to communicate with its devotees. Why not include literature amongst those methods?
From a historical context, it's worth remembering that Pagan religions were for the most part oral traditions. Putting things down in a text enabled things to be codified in ways that were somewhat foreign to humanity's religious modus operandi previously. It's my understanding that one of the big deals of Judaism was the creation and enforcement of law - codes laid down and intended to be unchanging. Christianity developed out of that ideal to some extent. But there are others who are more well-versed in the development of Abrahamic religions than I, so I defer to their expertise in full.
From a historical context, it's worth remembering that Pagan religions were for the most part oral traditions. Putting things down in a text enabled things to be codified in ways that were somewhat foreign to humanity's religious modus operandi previously. It's my understanding that one of the big deals of Judaism was the creation and enforcement of law - codes laid down and intended to be unchanging. Christianity developed out of that ideal to some extent. But there are others who are more well-versed in the development of Abrahamic religions than I, so I defer to their expertise in full.
Orbit
I'm a planet
Don't forget that the Bible was written by men, not by God. To the believer, I think that explains it. To the non-believer that makes the Bible suspect as a source of knowledge about God.
WalterTrull
Godfella
How is it we get to decide what's perfect?
Rational Agnostic
Well-Known Member
Why do you think the bible is the word of a god? It's clearly the words of men. It contains a few nuggets of common-sense wisdom interspersed in a pile of excrement.
I'm under the impression that the Christian god uses many methods to communicate with its devotees. Why not include literature amongst those methods?
From a historical context, it's worth remembering that Pagan religions were for the most part oral traditions. Putting things down in a text enabled things to be codified in ways that were somewhat foreign to humanity's religious modus operandi previously. It's my understanding that one of the big deals of Judaism was the creation and enforcement of law - codes laid down and intended to be unchanging. Christianity developed out of that ideal to some extent. But there are others who are more well-versed in the development of Abrahamic religions than I, so I defer to their expertise in full.
You are correct so far as Judaism, Islam and Dominionist Christianity are concerned.
But mainstream, orthodox Christianity actually emerged as a reaction against religious legalism and from the earliest days the church regarded itself as the guardian of a developing oral tradition supposedly passed down from the apostles that was considered to be an equal source of divine revelation alongside the Bible.
The canon of the Bible and the choice of which books to include in it came from this oral tradition, as did many other doctrines like the Trinity and even moral precepts.
Protestantism ruptured this 'tradition' and elevated the Word of God as the sole rule of faith but placed an even greater emphasis than Catholicism on grace as something that surpassed and indeed annulled the works of the Jewish law in the Old Covenant.
So, when you factor all that in, Christianity emerges as a anti-legalist religion and for the 1 billion Catholic Christians, along with the millions of Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Christians, we also reject sola scriptura (Bible Alone) literalism and retain our oral "sacred tradition" in tandem with it, as an equal authority derived from revelation.
One must remember, however, that even Jews and Muslims have oral tradition (Talmud and Hadith) in addition to their sacred scriptures.
The fundamentalist Protestants and the Qur'anist Muslims are alone in completely spurning oral tradition, yet as I said above the Protestant denominations balance this out by being the most anti-legal creed imaginable (everything is about faith and the grace of God, not works of the law).
The "why" in your thread title makes it a very loaded question.
IMO, it would be better to start with the more fundamental "does the God of Christianity use an imperfect Bible to talk to his spiritual children?" and only once that's been established, move onto "why?"
Why do you believe he does?
TruePathFinder
Member
He talks to me through scripture. The protestant churches I attended are led via scripture. Only recently I started to discover evolution, contradictions, inconsistencies and errors. How could a perfect God make use of tainted material?
Phantasman
Well-Known Member
He doesn't. He uses the Holy Spirit given by Christ.
John 15:26
But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me:
John 16:13
Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.
Since Jesus sent it, the OT Jews never had it. It's the orthodox (early catholic ideology) that created the Bible. Not the Spirit. It teaches the Gospel. The Jews were ignorant of (spiritual) truth.
John:
For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
I follow what made Jesus a Christ. The Spirit and her teachings, not the Bible.
Skwim
Veteran Member
Yes. It has contradictions and misstatements of fact.
Why indeed. Ostensibly god created the Bible to tell the reader a lot of important stuff. Why else go to the bother of having it written down? And being a wise chap he wouldn't bother with stuff that wasn't important. So everything in the Bible is there for a very good reason. However, as we know, all kinds of stuff has been garbled and misrepresented, which, of course, has lead to a lot of misunderstanding. The question then is, if god meant for the people of 2018 to read and understand his message, why has he let it become so bastardized? Why hasn't he insured that his word be passed along exactly as he meant it to be? For instance, why has he let Isaiah 45:7 be distributed to Christians with at least 9 different renderings of the Hebrew ra` (רַע) including
evil
disaster
calamity
doom
woe
sorrow
trouble(s)
bad
discord(s)
disaster
calamity
doom
woe
sorrow
trouble(s)
bad
discord(s)
"I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil; I, the Lord, do all these things."
"I form light and create darkness, I make success and create disaster; I am the Lord, who does all these things.
"I create light and darkness, happiness and sorrow. I, the Lord, do all of this."
"I form light and create darkness, I make success and create disaster; I am the Lord, who does all these things.
"I create light and darkness, happiness and sorrow. I, the Lord, do all of this."
Evil, disaster, and sorrow are hardly the same things.
My conclusion is that, be there a god of Abraham, he doesn't care what the Bible says or means to contemporary Jews, Christians or Muslims. Read what you like into his words, and do what you want with them. It obviously doesn't matter. So why did he bother with it at all? My guess is that It was meant for people way back when (pick your own date) and NOT those who followed, such as ourselves. OR, he never did have a part in constructing the Bible. It's all a fabrication of the fertile imaginations of the religious powers that were.
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Audie
Veteran Member
Can God speak through others? Are they perfect and without flaw? I find the only thing threatened by facts is our uncomfortableness with having our ideas challenged about God. Notions the Bible is without error and accurate in matters of science and history, is one such idea that we should happily let go into the pages of the childlike naivety of our past. Faith does not run from fear. A lack of faith seeks security in our beliefs.
Of course. Why shouldn't it? In what way has the Bible been established as a reliable source?
stvdv
Veteran Member
Hypothetical: God exist. God is all these omni's. Bible is word of God
I spend 10 years with Sai Baba. A poorna avatar. And visited some other Masters.
I can assure you that spiritual masters use every trick in the book, but even more "not in the book" to teach you the lessons. Goal is enlightenment. So all bets are off.
Uncertainty is the way to go. Kill the Buddha, to mention a few.
1) You won't get enlightenment by a tap on your head
2) Why using quotes or "talk to us" or give the Bible?
3) Reading won't grant enlightenment, so obvious there should be some errors in a "good scripture". Need to exercise brains/discrimination/commonsense a bit
If a Scripture claims to be perfect, no errors. Then I would be very much alert. High red alert.
See "goal of life" getting "enlightenment" as an "exam". You need to create the answers yourself. No spoon-feeding obviously.
So to me it is obvious that a Scripture is not perfect. And especially a scripture given by a medium centuries ago. Just Common Sense
Orbit
I'm a planet
You're preaching to the (de)converted.
The Christian Bible is rejected as a reliable source of knowledge because of the huge number of moral and factual errors it contains. Whereas believers overlook this, unbelievers consider it evidence that scripture is just human beings speaking through the device of an invented and imagined deity..
I think this is a very important point. What did Jesus say about the oral traditions of the Pharisees? Did he subscribe to them as a devout Jew?
In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus sharply contrasted two classes in his day: the scribes and Pharisees and the common people they oppressed. He spoke of two kinds of righteousness, the hypocritical righteousness of the Pharisees and the true righteousness of God. (Matthew 5:20)
Pharisaic self-righteousness was rooted in their oral traditions. These had been initiated in the second century B.C.E. as “a fence around the Law” to protect it from the inroads of Hellenism (Greek culture). They had come to be viewed as a part of the Law. In fact, the scribes even rated the oral traditions above the written Law. The Mishnah says: “Greater stringency applies to the observance of the words of the Scribes than to the observance of the words of the written Law.” So, instead of being “a fence around the Law” to protect it, their traditions actually weakened the Law and made it void, just as Jesus said: "You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.’
9 Then he said to them, ‘You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition!" (Mark 7:8-9; Matthew 15:8-9 NRSVACE)
If you recall, Jesus, when confronted with scriptural questions or challenges, never referred to the traditions, but only to scripture. ("It is written") His reference to the oral traditions was always negative.
When referring to the oral tradition he said "You heard it was said"....not "It is written". (e.g. Matthew 5:43)
The common people who flocked to hear Jesus were spiritually impoverished, having been “skinned and thrown about like sheep without a shepherd.” (Matthew 9:36) With arrogant haughtiness the scribes and Pharisees scorned them, called them ʽam ha·ʼaʹrets (people of the land), and despised them as ignorant, accursed sinners unworthy of a resurrection because they did not keep the oral traditions. By Jesus’ time those traditions had become so voluminous and such an oppressive morass of legalistic nit-picking.....so laden with time-consuming ceremonial rituals.....that no workingman could possibly keep them. No wonder Jesus denounced the traditions as ‘heavy loads on the shoulders of men.’ (Matthew 23:4; John 7:45-49)
The oral traditions taught that if a man’s deeds were mostly good, he would be saved. Judgment “is according to the excess of works that be good or evil.” (Mishnah) To stand favorably in judgment, their concern was “to achieve merits which would outweigh sins.” If a man’s good works exceeded his bad works by one, he would be saved—as though God judged by keeping count of their petty activities! (Matthew 23:23-24) Presenting a correct view, Paul wrote: “By works of law no flesh will be declared righteous before [God].” (Romans 3:20) No wonder Jesus said that Christian righteousness must abound more than that of the scribes and Pharisees!
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
I think it's actually the other way around.
A real book talking about a conceptualized deity.
Jim
Nets of Wonder
My heart aches for you. I wish I could know more about what is happening to you, to know if anything I want to say could mean anything to you. I'll just put it out here anyway. I think that everything that matters, that you can find in reading the scriptures, is in the stories themselves. The more you worry about how historical or literal any of it is, the less you will learn from God, or about God. You don't need to believe that any of it is historical or literal, for God to use it to guide and assist you in His path. Anything that anyone says about contradictions, inconsistencies and errors might be true. Or not. People don't always know as much as they think they do. It doesn't matter, for God's purposes. What matters is why and how you are reading it, and even more, what you do with it. For example, trying to learn from it how to improve your personality, your character, and the way you live your life, in ways that will benefit others, because of your love for God and trust in Him. Someone here or in another thread said something about the Holy Spirit. If you know anything about getting help from the Holy Spirit, through prayer for example, then call on that help in reading the scriptures.