I had no plan to revisit this issue until I read in today’s paper, an article regarding the revision of Christianity due to the many discrepancies in the bible.I regard the Old Testament as a cultural history of a line of kings, their followers and the means of keeping the status quo of the time. This required using God as a weapon. Of course their understanding of a Supreme Being was vastly different than if the concept were first verbalized now.
Three to four thousand years ago, a flash of lightning was frightening. When a child was snatched off a riverbank by a Nile crocodile, it was deemed an act of God. Disease decimated populations repeatedly. Without an understanding of the cause, the effect needed to be explained to keep communities from fragmenting.
Certain foods poisoned people if not prepared safely, or cooked thoroughly, so laws of God were written to keep people alive. Circumcision prevented disease; therefore it was mandated by God. The list goes on, and people lived longer and healthier.
One might think that God got bad press due to all of this, but I believe the opposite is true. Who is not awed by the sight of a star filled sky at night? Who is not awed by the idea that two single cells can join and create a human or any other living thing? The entire process is magnificent!
Yet it is troubling too. The creation of sentient life creates a vacuum. A void where questions dominate and demand answers. Why life? Why am I here? What should I do? Why is anything alive? Does life serve some purpose for us or not? If not does it serve a purpose for the Creator of the universe? If that’s the answer, why should I care, or do I have no other option but to care?
Here’s where the founders of religion saved us all. They recognized that all humans had faith. Faith that there was purpose, hope, dream fulfillment. Okay, some of them used others for personal gain. Some committed crimes in the name of religion, distorted faith into a tool for evil. Others created Hell to explain and balance such behavior against its opposite.
The words written down to explain all of this and more were penned by men. Some were faithful to the original ideals, some were not. We cannot separate the two from the documents we now possess. We can recognize this simple truth and use faith to interpret what we read and believe to fit our personal needs on a daily basis.
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