August 22, 2020
I finished reading Psalms yesterday and it has sparked some profound thoughts that I’d like to expand on here. Firstly, I went to a Bible study on Sunday and had a good discussion where I talked with some folks about what I had been studying and the conclusions I had made. I was gifted the Encyclopedia of Biblical Difficulties by Gleason Archer and Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Theology by Wayne Grudem. After reading the introductions, I began to understand this idea of Biblical inerrancy. The essential idea is that the original manuscripts were the divinely inspired and inerrant and any potential errancy can be explained by copying or translation discrepancies. This is an interesting argument and one that I hadn’t heard before, but I felt that it drops the ball a bit (one thing I was thinking about was the idea that later books could potentially refer to errant copies of the earlier books, how does that get resolved?). I will be exploring it at a later date, but as it stands right now, I don’t think the Bible is divinely inspired or the Word of God. However, this discovery has made me rethink taking contradictions in the Bible at face value. It would be worth exploring if only to make better arguments about what I believe. Speaking of what I believe, I think at this point I don’t believe in the supernatural elements of the Bible. We’ll see how that plays out when I get to the New Testament especially with regards to the prophecies. I’m skeptical of the prophetic nature of the Bible and feel that most prophecies can be boiled down to the error of interpreting them so that they fit a person’s conclusion. This is another area that would be worth exploring. Another thing I was thinking about was as my beliefs become more concrete, how well would I fit into specific communities. A video that I watched last night was very informative in explaining the origin of the current religious state of America: The Sermon that Derailed American Christianity. While I don’t agree with the conclusion that we should all be baptists, this video has helped me start to figure out what exactly I am. I think I tend to fall in the modernist and liberal protestant crowd. The video does seem to touch on a feeling that I’ve had about the state of religious institutions in that the evangelicals have in a sense brought a lot of the different Christian denominations together and have come to dominate a lot of the doctrine and theology of which I think I take issue with. Through reading psalms, I think I understand certain attitudes that some people have, specifically with regard to their thoughts about atheists, but then there seems to be a double-edged sword with it if you take the Bible literally:
1 Only fools say in their hearts, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, and their actions are evil; not one of them does good!
2 The Lord looks down from heaven on the entire human race; he looks to see if anyone is truly wise, if anyone seeks God.
3 But no, all have turned away; all have become corrupt. No one does good, not a single one!
Psalms 14:1-3, 53:1-3, NLT
I can see how someone who is a devout Christian that takes the Bible to be literally true can say that people who say “There is no God” are corrupt and their actions are evil, but then how do they reconcile that with the later passages that basically say that everyone has become corrupt which would imply that the devout Christian reading this is corrupt and doesn’t seek God. I’m sure that theologians would be able to reconcile this, but I can see how it might trip a regular person looking to the Bible for guidance. They may come to the conclusion that people who don’t believe in God are evil and will corrupt them so they best not listen to them. If an atheist wants to convince a Christian that God is not real they are going to have a difficult time if confronted with this attitude. This extends to the evolution vs. creationism debate. “The evolutionary scientists are godless, corrupt, and evil,” they say, and “every effort must be taken to keep their corruption from poisoning the minds of our children”. I prefer a more informed view of what the Bible is: A collection of literature for specific people in a specific time who believed a certain set of beliefs. I think there is some wisdom in the Bible and it should be taught, but I don’t think that the Bible and Christianity are the end-all. Another video that I watched was called Fallacies in Proving God Exists which makes some good points about bad arguments being not helping the Christian prove that god exists. The presenter said something at the end that I thought would be a useful stance to take: “If God exists and if God wants me to believe in God it’s up to God to figure out how”. I rather like this as it washes away all of the arguments that would try to convince me that He is real and take a deeper look at my personal experiences and explorations. Based on some of my personal experiences I get a feeling that there is something unexplainable that happens when I feel a sense of divine justice or a sense of awe around with regard to the complexity of life and the vastness of the universe. In conclusion, the Wisdom literature that I’ve found myself in has sparked a lot of deeper questions that I’m will be worth exploring further.