The Bible is without a doubt the most incredible collection of literature ever assembled in the history of mankind. It is not a great mystery that it has become the best selling book of all times. It has everything from history to drama, love and hate, politics, science and fiction all rolled into one.
It describes human nature with incredible accuracy. There are those who say that there is no such thing as human nature. There isn’t a single thing that is unique for humans and does not apply to any other species, they say. That may be so, but there are an awful lot of things only humans can do that no animal is capable of doing.
Somehow, even the earliest Bible writers knew that there was something special about humans. They knew that the world was bigger than just their own little region, that there was a cosmos no one had ever seen. They knew that there had to be something that caused humans to clump together in communities. They knew about the dual nature of humans, one for survival and one for nurturing and compassion. They knew that everything had to have come from somewhere, so they placed God somewhere outside the universe.
Dogma is the idea that something is true no matter what, even if science proves it to be wrong. Originally, dogma meant something that “seems to be true.” Today, it means something is far more solid and firm. It cannot be proven untrue, not even questioned. It is eternal. Dogma is a great way to control your audience if you are in a position of power and there has always been a powerful priesthood claiming to have a direct line to God. Even today, dogma is used to separate us into groups of believers and unbelievers. It took over a hundred years for the church to admit that Copernicus was right, that the earth did indeed revolve around the sun. Science has made numerous other great advances since then.
The point is that the Bible is an incredible way for us to understand who we are, where we came from, the people around us, indeed, how we understand the world we live in today. We just have to quit using it as a weapon to beat people into submitting to our own worldviews, to create division between us.
Do we need to be offensive? No. Do we need to tell the truth? Yes. The challenge is that the truth about the Bible is immensely offensive to some people.
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