Original Sin

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 The early Bible writers must have had extraordinary imaginary powers. You could say they were the theoretical scientists of their day. Theoretical scientists are the scientists who make up the stories practical, also called empirical, scientists will either prove or disprove.

Somehow the Bible writers knew that humans have a dual nature. On the one hand, we have an urge for self-preservation. That is the one that enables us to instantly respond to attacks either by fleeing from the scene or by fighting back. Fear is the driver behind this behavior. On the other hand, we have this other urge to care for one another. Compassion is the driver here. This “discovery” of the fear motive explains why the world is so chaotic and messed up. Compassion does the opposite. It calms things down and leads to peace and tranquility. 

Along came a powerful priesthood. They discovered that people living in fear are easy targets for exploitation so they came up with the concept of original sin, the idea that Adam’s sin and resulting fear is somehow passed on to the next generation automatically. If they could convince people that they had the solution to their problems, they could control them and most importantly, control their purse strings.

That worked well until the Anabaptists came onto the scene. Infant baptism does not save you, they said. Baptism is when you as an adult make the conscious decision to follow the Way of Christ, to surrender to God. Given the financial implication, it is no mystery that long and bloody wars have been fought over this question.

The Christian answer to the messed up world is, of course, love and compassion. The God Jesus knew is nothing but love and compassion. We now know that we humans have the extraordinary capacity to override our natural instincts and respond with compassion instead of fear. We must love one another. 

That means, among other things, that we must quit hoarding power and wealth. If everyone were to do that, there would no longer be any room left for fear. Jesus' instruction not to worry, would be entirely achievable. The world has enough resources to provide for everyone’s physical needs. We have within us the capacity to care for everyone. Doing that becomes even easier as fear and suffering is eliminated, but we must take those first baby steps ourselves.

It isn’t easy because it involves becoming aware of how what we do and say impacts the world around us and to deliberately adjust our behavior, to override our natural instincts. When Jesus says to love one another, he means for us to do our best to enhance the lives of the people around us, the opposite of what people motivated by fear do.

The Truth About the Bible is Offensive to Some People

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 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.

The Kingdom of God

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Just like every culture on Earth has a version of religion, they also often include a vision for an ideal or perfect world. It is simply part of human nature to do that. Ours is called the Kingdom of God, Kingdom of Heaven or the Garden of Eden.

“The Kingdom of God is within you,” writes Tolstoy, the title of one of his philosophical non-fiction books. The NIV puts it this way in Luke 17:20-21:

Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst.”

The Kingdom of God cannot be seen. It must be experienced. In fact, it is already here. It is just that it remains hidden due to our misunderstanding or deliberate rebellion against God. 

To make the Kingdom a reality, all we have to do is allow it to manifest itself in the day-to-day decisions and choices we make both individually as well as collectively. We have this tendency to always want to do things our way or to serve our own interests. That is part of human nature. However, together, we can accomplish so much more than simply the sum of what we can do individually. We know it, but often don’t do it. Working together, that is the Spirit of God. 

That is the hope we have in Jesus, the promise that when we seek first the Kingdom, then it will become our true, forever home.

Some believe the Kingdom of God will appear as a result of some sort of divine intervention or cataclysmic event. That is not the case. The way it will gradually become reality is when we walk in the footsteps of Jesus - sacrificing, forgiving. When we begin to care more for others than for ourselves, no one will be in need or suffer. That is how you will know that the Kingdom has arrived. All suffering will come to an end.

Jesus and the Law

 

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Can Christians eat pork? Well, there is a commandment in Leviticus 11 that says not to eat pork and it starts with “The Lord said to Moses and Aaron …” Since the Lord said it, it must be obeyed, right? 

According to the writer of Acts 10:13, God commands Peter to eat unclean meat. Did God change his mind?

Well, Jesus said that he had not come to abolish the law of Moses. He came to fulfill it (Matthew 5:17). 

A modern interpretation does not consider the Bible to literally be the word of God. Leviticus is probably written by someone from the priestly class, a position of power, for the purpose of controlling the Jews and not for the worship of God.

Jesus’ new interpretation of the ancient Scriptures does not involve a God who issues commandments for the sake of controlling people, but because he loves his people. God’s heart is to free the Jews and to keep them safe, not to enslave them. That is why the Exodus story is so important. It is about freedom from oppression. God gave the law to Moses to protect his people, but some misused it to oppress others.

The word commandment is problematic for Christians because it implies a master ruling over subjects and that is not the kind of God Jesus said he knew. The Jews interpreted the Torah literally. Jesus simply used the language they had been taught so they would understand. The God Jesus knew was a God who is a loving father, not a ruler. Peter’s rooftop vision was simply a reminder that all people, even gentiles, who are free to eat all kinds of meat, are also God’s people.

Jesus - a Rebel With a Non-Violent Cause

 

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The world has always been soaked in violence and lust for power. Wars have always been followed by other wars. Times of peace have been very few and far between. 

Power grabs have always resulted in resistance. Oppression has always spawned rebels. And so it was during the time of Jesus. It is likely that there were many who rebelled against the Romans and their surrogates. What set Jesus apart from the other rebels is his insistence on non-resistance. Meeting violence with more violence will only feed a vicious cycle of escalating violence. Jesus was different.

Apparently, Jesus did not stand out as unique in his own time and nobody found a reason to write anything down about him. It wasn’t until decades later that the gospel writers realized that something extraordinary had happened; what a revolutionary concept Jesus had been teaching. Luke may have honestly tried to write an accurate account of his life, but he most certainly elaborated on it. Matthew, himself a Jew, contributed to this narrative of a larger than life personality who had garnered such a following.

What may have contributed to the masses finally turning on him was that it wasn’t just the rich and powerful who needed to change. We, like the Jews in his time, have to change as well. Looking the other way, refraining from harming others, would no longer be a sufficient standard for doing the right thing. Jesus wanted us to actively be a blessing to everyone around us, people at the lowest levels in society, even our enemies and that was too much of a sacrifice for the Jews as it is for us today. Many claim to be following Jesus, but only few are willing to be all in. Exploitation and violence continue to be at the center of our society to this very day.

The Role of the Bible

 

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Most churches teach that the Bible is the word of God. Some believe this to such an extent that they literally believe the world was created in seven days. The Bible is so holy that you cannot change one tiny bit. Some insist that you have to translate it word for word. Anyone who has tried to learn a foreign language will know that that is just not how translation works. A word for word translation will be largely incomprehensible. Every translation involves some level of interpretation.

When Jesus said that he was not going to change anything in the ancient scriptures, he meant that the Jews were misunderstanding what they said and he was going to help them reinterpret them. 

The Jews were reading the scriptures literally. You had to strictly follow each and every direction to the letter. In their eagerness to follow God’s direction, they had created an angry and tyrannical God instead of the loving and compassionate God he really is. Jesus tried to show them that their interpretation enslaved them. His liberal interpretation would set them free. 

The Bible is not history or factual reporting. The Bible is fiction, liturgy, worship all rolled up into one. It is numerous writers’ attempt to uncover the heart of God as our collective goodness and to give us directions for maintaining the relationships we have with one another as individuals, but also in and as the groups we belong to. God lives in each and every one of us. We are His temple. He is not even a He. He is the emotional, invisible force of love that connects us with each other.

Who Is God?

 

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Is there a god? Who is he and where did he come from? People have been asking that kind of questions for thousands of years. Do we have answers?

Things were happening, earthquakes, storms, rain, drought, illness, death. People began to wonder why and more importantly: What can we do about it? 

Some charlatans began to claim that they knew how to control these things and a new powerful priesthood was born. 

Sometimes they went too far and people resisted them. Jesus challenged the powerful priesthood in his time and paid the price.

In the 16th century, William Tyndale translated the Bible to English. Making the Bible accessible to the common people would reduce the monopoly the priests had on interpreting it for their own purposes, so they had him killed.

Admitting Copernicus’ claim that the earth revolved around the sun, not the other way around, would be a blow to their credibility and therefore their position of power. It took more than a hundred years for his theory to be commonly accepted.

By the 19th century, Thomas Jefferson realized that the gospel writers had seriously embellished the story about Jesus, so he wrote his own version without the miracles.

Leo Tolstoy followed in his footsteps and was excommunicated for it.

Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species really upset the fundamentalists’ and their creation theory. We have all heard about the Scopes trial, aka the monkey trial in 1925.

John Shelby Spong, an Episcopal bishop, began to talk about a God created by humans and Jesus as a revolutionary in his time. 

Even today, pastors around the globe continue to claim God created the universe, Jesus was his son and rose from the dead. Most of them know better, but they need the paycheck every month, so they preach what people want to hear. Christmas will never be the same without angels, shepherds or wise men. For decades, people, especially young people, have become disillusioned with the pretend God and joined the rank of the Nones. 

Jefferson, Tolstoy and Spong may have been the voices in the wilderness and today some brave pastors are beginning to tell the truth about God. God is within us (2 Corinthians 6:16-18), says Tolstory. God is the love and compassion that keeps us from destroying ourselves, each other and the planet we depend on so much.