According to Evangelicals, the Bible is God’s supernatural Word. Written by men divinely inspired by God, the Bible is a perfect book, free of mistakes, errors, and contradictions. Of course, this is nonsense. A cursory reading of the Bible reveals all sorts of errors. Sure, Evangelicals cook up plenty of explanations for these errors, but some of their explanations leave a lot to be desired, bordering on farcical.
God could have imparted his Word to humankind by writing it himself. A perfect God would write a perfect book, yes? So why in the Hell did God choose to impart his Word in such a way that has resulted in thousands of years of argument, debate, and fighting? Why choose fallible, frail, contradictory men to write the Bible instead of doing it yourself? There are thousands of Christian sects, each believing that their interpretation of the Bible is true and all other interpretations are false.
Imagine how much better it would be if God wrote the Bible himself. Not that he inspired the writers, but that he wrote every word, including punctuation and versification. If God had done this, any misunderstanding would be ours. As things now stand, Christians can’t even agree on basic beliefs such as salvation, baptism, and communion. The Bible says, “one Lord, one faith, one baptism,” but history reveals many lords, many faiths, many baptisms.
God could publish an updated version of the Bible, one that does away with the passages that make him look bad. No incest, no genocide, no slavery, no rape. Rewrite the Bible, put it on Amazon, and sell millions of copies. This sure would clear up a lot of problems. Instead, we are left with an ancient religious text that has little relevance today.
Come on, God, get your act together. It’s time for you to update the greatest book never read.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Bruce: “…Rewrite the Bible, put it on Amazon, and sell millions of copies.”
Me: Now Bruce, let’s not provide DJT with any new money-making schemes. 😉
If Bruce wrote such a book, would you call him “Bruce Almighty”. 😉
I have a feeling that, if an all knowing, wise deity wrote a religious book, it would be:
A million volume set of huge books that would be incomprehensible to most humans
A pocket size pamphlet with four rules: Don’t murder, don’t rape, don’t steal, and no war.
Nothing. Because why would a wise, omnipotent being screw with our natural development by evolution?
I always enjoy the quote from Aron Ra regarding god. Perfectly sums it up.
“If there really was one true god, it should be a singular composite of every religion’s gods, an uber-galactic super-genius, and the ultimate entity of the entire cosmos. If a being of that magnitude ever wrote a book, then there would only be one such document; one book of God. It would be dominant everywhere in the world with no predecessors or parallels or alternatives in any language, because mere human authors couldn’t possibly compete with it. And you wouldn’t need faith to believe it, because it would be consistent with all evidence and demonstrably true, revealing profound morality and wisdom far beyond contemporary human capacity. It would invariably inspire a unity of common belief for every reader. If God wrote it, we could expect no less. But what we see instead is the very opposite of that.”
~Aron Ra
Thanks again for your wonderful insights.
We were very involved with a large Bible Translation Mission for decades. I hid my dissonances, and privately tried not to think about the theological knots that translators had to untangle when translating into some cultures and ethnic groups. They wrestled over words like desert, snow, sheep, etc etc, as well as concepts like sin or monogamy to people who would never see or understand such objects or concepts. My favourite was needing to translate ‘sheep’ to a tribe that would never see one, but who kept pigs. Should jesus, be translated as ‘ the piglet of god?’ But pigs had at least one major characteristic that pigs don’t, they stray, need to be traced and rescued from danger by a good shepherd, which mud-wallowing pigs never do, As you say, you really would have thought an omnipotent god would have made a better job of getting his instruction manual clear to all his created human beings whom it’s claimed he loves so much.
Oops, one sentence should read, ‘ sheep havve one major characteristic that pigs don’t, they stray…..’ (Early morning need to go and caffienste myself.)
……and spell check too!!!!! My bad!
Great thread Bruce! I am enjoying the comments as well.
My own: According to Brian Cox, and several Astro Physicists / Scientists / Astronomers, using the various telescopes and instruments being used by humanity, the current projected size of the UNIVERSE, is that it contains 2 TRILLION Galaxies, with, on average, each galaxy roughly containing 100 – 200 BILLION stars EACH. That includes A LOT of planets. Brian Cox also uses a figure that the “observable” universe has a diameter of oh……..42 BILLION light years.
In addition, Astronomers are now suggesting the Universe may be INFINITE.
I really really, really have a hard time understanding how “THE GOD”, that created all of THAT, can’t provide the human race a clear, concise, unambiguous, BIBLE, written and available to ALL human cultures and languages?
The same document and set of rules for “ALL” with ZERO variation? Why are piss-ant humans even involved? I mean why doesn’t “The God” just burn it into every human beings brain if he does not want to put it into writing?
Doesn’t that seem a little “Peculiar” considering the information disconnect among various languages and cultures?
To use Matthews (above) reference to Aron Ra (I follow him to) could it be that such a being (GOD) does not exist, has never existed and never will exist? Could it be GOD, is a figment of the human imagination, drummed up to explain those things humans did not understand?
I find the geologic and fossil record referenced by Scientists OVERWHELMING evidence that this planet, all life, including human beings, is the result of an elegant set of astronomical, chemical and environmental combinations and circumstances that began (Aro) 4.567 billion years ago, (or earlier) when this solar systems gas clouds spun up.
I believe everything on this planet that is alive, is the result of a gigantic chemistry experiment, that is still (EVOLVING) and ongoing.
But hey, that’s me.
And why doesn’t he get an email address? Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just write to him and ask him to clarify his position on predestination or alcohol, for instance?
One would think an Almighty God would have a social media presence. A simple facebook account would be a better tool than the communications-via-spirit that many Christians claim, but with each hearing it a little differently.
Obviously, god is illiterate. That’s why he had humans write the bile and that’s why he doesn’t see the errors – HE CAN’T READ OR WRITE.
Well hey Bruce, it’s like you wrote. “If God had done this, any misunderstanding would be ours”. And so it is. It is OUR failure to understand. We just don’t get it because we don’t deserve to get it yet, Man won’t agree what the Bible means until man is fit to enter Heaven. See, its like the tower of Babel flopped because men failed to communicate (or vice versa) Those who deserve, will speak in one tongue and will understand and agree what the Bible says. For them, there is no confusion and there are no contradictions to resolve. (how’s that for a sermon?)
Hmm…Was God practicing plausible deniability? No matter how anyone interprets “his” words, he could claim he never said it, that Mark, Matthew, Luke and John just couldn’t get their stories straight.
Oh…and if God has always known what would happen, all through history, why did he allow the Bible to be written in languages almost no one (at least comparatively) speaks today? The Qu’ran, at least, is in an idiom that, while changed, is used by hundreds of millions today.
On a somewhat related question: Why did Moses need an interpreter, if you will? Why didn’t he allow Moses to be born without his speech impediment—or give Aaron other qualities along with his silver tongue that would have made him an effective leader?
It’s a shame. If we really did have an omnimax deity, we should have an incredibly comprehensive encyclopedia that would teach us everything that we need to know about the universe. Instead we have MAGAts/MAHA that think Billy Bob doing his own “research” and wearing his continuous glucose monitor is equivalent to someone who completed an MD and residency.
If I were a god, there are so many things I’d have done differently.