Have You Ever Been Told This?

[Tyson]

A recent convert to Islam from conservative Christianity who claimed she converted after Allah made a guest appearance in her life (in the form of a voice) told a critic who was questioning her about her new found faith that he should read the entire Koran and Hadiths to get his questions answered.

 

A similar suggestion often comes from [some] Christians, often AFTER they are cornered with questions they cannot answer or refuse to answer. While for [some] Christians they do not really believe people have enough time to read the entire Bible to make an educated decision about the faith as Jesus can return at any given moment, the advice is often thrown out there to the stubborn who refuse to give in just on their word.

 

Now, what I find very interesting is that the same ones who pass out this advice have themselves not read through the entire Koran or Bible but came into the respective faith without a full knowledge of what is on the pages of their holy writ. This tells me that they made up their minds what is the truth based on an extremely partial bit of information without knowing ALL of the information yet they are advising others to read ALL of the information to make an educated decision.

 

I realize that we probably all do or have done something like this in some area of life, joining something based on appeal rather than comprehension, however, religion is particularly interesting.

 

I mean, how does this work?

[StevoMuso]

I mean, how does this work?

"Back-in-the-day" when I was still a believer, I used to think that the words of the Bible had some kind of inner "power" of their own. I believed that if someone read the words of the Bible (any of them, regardless of book/chapter) then the mysterious Power of God would minister to the person's inner spirit - and miraculously convince them of their sinful ways and clear the path for repentance and reconciliation through Jesus. Yup - I actually believed this - that the words themselves had power.

 

I would not be surprised if this delusion persists amongst the credulous you have encountered.

[oddbird1963]

On the one hand, a new convert to any religion won't be able to answer many questions posed by critics. They are new.

 

And, unless presented by a person with a very supportive and curious attitude (they want to know about the person and about his/her new-found faith), the new convert is going to just feel pushed into a corner.

 

Plus, any teachers or spiritual advisers have probably told the new convert to just point them to the Bible/Koran/Book of Mormon , etc. if they come up against questions they can't handle.

 

So, I'm not surprised that this is the reaction of the new convert to Islam.

 

As far as how much information is enough when you are a new/prospective convert, I would say, for the Evangelical Christian religion, just enough to get you to believe, get baptized and get some offering envelopes in your hands.

 

Is that cynical of me? It just seems that evangelicals have very minimalist approach to getting new converts.

 

I think other faiths require a certain minimum of instruction before they let you join. That's my impression anyway.

[Ouroboros]

I mean, how does this work?

"Back-in-the-day" when I was still a believer, I used to think that the words of the Bible had some kind of inner "power" of their own. I believed that if someone read the words of the Bible (any of them, regardless of book/chapter) then the mysterious Power of God would minister to the person's inner spirit - and miraculously convince them of their sinful ways and clear the path for repentance and reconciliation through Jesus. Yup - I actually believed this - that the words themselves had power.

 

I would not be surprised if this delusion persists amongst the credulous you have encountered.

I recognize that. I've noticed that the further away in time from my religious period, the less I remember how it actually was. Anyway, I think I used to believe something like that too. And by uttering the words they would affect the spiritual world. Demons would be scared away, and angels would come to rescue.

 

Basically, we're talking about spells and curses. Witchcraft, in other words. The very same thing many Christians despise and persecute.

[Shyone]

I mean, how does this work?

"Back-in-the-day" when I was still a believer, I used to think that the words of the Bible had some kind of inner "power" of their own. I believed that if someone read the words of the Bible (any of them, regardless of book/chapter) then the mysterious Power of God would minister to the person's inner spirit - and miraculously convince them of their sinful ways and clear the path for repentance and reconciliation through Jesus. Yup - I actually believed this - that the words themselves had power.

 

I would not be surprised if this delusion persists amongst the credulous you have encountered.

I recognize that. I've noticed that the further away in time from my religious period, the less I remember how it actually was. Anyway, I think I used to believe something like that too. And by uttering the words they would affect the spiritual world. Demons would be scared away, and angels would come to rescue.

 

Basically, we're talking about spells and curses. Witchcraft, in other words. The very same thing many Christians despise and persecute.

Somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind, I remember believing that reciting scripture would transform the situation. "Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no Evil, for thou art with me."

 

Some passages even seem to invoke Divine Intervention (particularly in Psalms).

[Ouroboros]

That's right. Chanting prayers and invocations of the "Name" would eventually turn the tide and events would unfold to the better, for humanity and for me (of course). But did it really? Ever? Nope. Magic words aren't that magic.

[oddbird1963]

That's right. Chanting prayers and invocations of the "Name" would eventually turn the tide and events would unfold to the better, for humanity and for me (of course). But did it really? Ever? Nope. Magic words aren't that magic.

 

That was a very strong teaching, especially when the emphasis was giving to missions and personal evangelism.

 

A couple of scriptures often used to teach that reciting scripture is a powerful argumentation, proselytizing tool:

 

Isaiah 55:11

11So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.

 

Hebrews 4:12

12For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

 

That's why Christians will often recite, "The fool has said in his heart there is no god" when dealing with atheists.

 

I guess we're automatically supposed to feel " like a fool with your pants on the ground" as soon as we hear the scripture. Or, if we get mad at such condescending, unthinking drivel, they feel satisfied and smug because the holy spirit must be realllly convicting us.

[Kathlene]

Interesting thoughts here.

 

I just want to put out a general question here. How do you all feel when you read the Bible now without those christian lenses on? What do you think when you read the psalms, and no I don't mean the crushing the babies on the rocks stuff. I mean the really intimate ones, where David cries out from his grief, anguish, pain, terror?

 

I know I obviously read the bible with the christina lens on, and I do feel encouraged from it. I want to know what your thoughts are on it?

[Guest Valk0010]

Interesting thoughts here.

 

I just want to put out a general question here. How do you all feel when you read the Bible now without those christian lenses on? What do you think when you read the psalms, and no I don't mean the crushing the babies on the rocks stuff. I mean the really intimate ones, where David cries out from his grief, anguish, pain, terror?

 

I know I obviously read the bible with the christina lens on, and I do feel encouraged from it. I want to know what your thoughts are on it?

I see it contradicts, and is different in places that imo, if it was innerrant there would be no difference.

[Shyone]

Interesting thoughts here.

 

I just want to put out a general question here. How do you all feel when you read the Bible now without those christian lenses on? What do you think when you read the psalms, and no I don't mean the crushing the babies on the rocks stuff. I mean the really intimate ones, where David cries out from his grief, anguish, pain, terror?

 

I know I obviously read the bible with the christina lens on, and I do feel encouraged from it. I want to know what your thoughts are on it?

There are stories, some good, some bad. There are cries of anguish, cheers of joy, and even some of the collective wisdom of the ancients.

 

When I read, I try to think of what the person that was writing was thinking. Why was he writing? What audience? What did he hope they would get from it? Is there an "ulterior motive?"

 

I try to think of the people that are criticized. Do they deserve that criticism? What would they think of what is being written?

 

I think of where the material may have come from if not the mind of the writer. Was it Sumerian? Babylonian? Egyptian? Assyrian? Sometimes I even check references to see if the passages have equivalents in other surrounding cultures. The irony is really interesting when the Hebrews use language and phrases to criticise others when the others used the same language to criticise their enemies.

 

I read and remember what else has been written. It is consistent with what is currently being written? Does the material have any value other than to make people believe in their nonexistent gods.

 

IOW, I think of the Bible pretty much like any other sacred work, but I'm more familiar with the Bible than other sacred works.

[lunaticheathen]

The "just read it" is a convenient cop-out for the ignorant. Also, it shows the tendency for Abrahamics, who have a rule against idols, to make idols out of their books. And of course they picked up the one magical practice that is allowed to them, since they are stripped of images - the power of words. Every ancient culture's magical practices involved magical images and/or words. Just think of the Jewish law that prohibits the writing or speaking of the holy name of their god. Spirits can be called and commanded by their names. Their god MUST be above reproach or commanding to be almighty. Hence why a select few were supposed to even read the Torah or know his real name - look up the kerfuffle over the Septuagint sometime. Talk about REAWR.

Also, very common Egyptian spells involved writing the intent of the spell on papyrus, and eating it - or if you couldn't afford that, on your arms, and licking the ink off. Eating your words, making them part of your ka. They also believed, like the Jews later on (big surprise) that their writing system came from a god, and inherently had power. So, mix a learned tendency to revere words as powerful in that area, with no other recourse to "idols", of course words will end up carrying the power that once was shared with fetishes and idols.

(/anthro lecture)

As for my personal view on this, Kathlene, the Bible now is just like any other religious text to me when I read it now. It has good parts, some that are admittedly universal in the evocation of awe and love, but it's still Abrahamic. It's rather hateful in MANY places. It generally disgusts me. Other than that, it's part history, part culture, part cannon fodder for the ignorant masses.

[Tyson]

[Ouroboros]

Interesting thoughts here.

 

I just want to put out a general question here. How do you all feel when you read the Bible now without those christian lenses on? What do you think when you read the psalms, and no I don't mean the crushing the babies on the rocks stuff. I mean the really intimate ones, where David cries out from his grief, anguish, pain, terror?

Some of them are very poetic. And prose can sometimes be very pretty and touch people on a deeper level. I'm not a person who find much joy in poetry, so I can't really say if it's good or not.

[oddbird1963]

Interesting thoughts here.

 

I just want to put out a general question here. How do you all feel when you read the Bible now without those christian lenses on? What do you think when you read the psalms, and no I don't mean the crushing the babies on the rocks stuff. I mean the really intimate ones, where David cries out from his grief, anguish, pain, terror?

 

I know I obviously read the bible with the christina lens on, and I do feel encouraged from it. I want to know what your thoughts are on it?

 

 

One sign of having a Christian lens on: assuming David actually wrote the psalms.

 

The psalms and the other books of the Bible are works that reflect the spiritual mood and development of a person or people at a particular place in time. If it is translated well and I can appreciate it as a literary work, then I appreciate it. If it doesn't do much for me I move on.

 

If you are wondering if it has some quality of specialness or superiority over other works of literature, I would say , "no." It has its high points. It also has it low points. Just like any other work of literature.

[Neon Genesis]

What I always heard from my parents' church was that the bible was so powerful that just reading the bible on its own can convert you yet they never explain why some people leave the faith because they read the bible.

[Dagan]

Listening to the "holy spirit" is just hearing your own thoughts in another voice.

[StevoMuso]

Interesting thoughts here.

 

I just want to put out a general question here. How do you all feel when you read the Bible now without those christian lenses on? What do you think when you read the psalms, and no I don't mean the crushing the babies on the rocks stuff. I mean the really intimate ones, where David cries out from his grief, anguish, pain, terror?

 

I know I obviously read the bible with the christina lens on, and I do feel encouraged from it. I want to know what your thoughts are on it?

Some of the passages are really beautiful and I still find them emotionally uplifting. Good point Kathlene - there are some stunning passages in Psalms and, in fact, in other parts of the Bible. But the beauty I see is from my love for good literature, and I don't see the words as having intrinsic "power" of their own, and I don't get "encouraged" by some of the passages that say I will be comforted by God, or protected. I'm a reprobate evangelical atheist but I still see beauty in some of the Biblical passages - my appreciation is academic and emotional though, and not spiritual.

 

Good post Kathlene :-)

[Seeking]

Interesting thoughts here.

 

I just want to put out a general question here. How do you all feel when you read the Bible now without those christian lenses on? What do you think when you read the psalms, and no I don't mean the crushing the babies on the rocks stuff. I mean the really intimate ones, where David cries out from his grief, anguish, pain, terror?

 

I know I obviously read the bible with the christian lens on, and I do feel encouraged from it. I want to know what your thoughts are on it?

 

At the crisis point in my Christian life, I decided to rid myself of all preconceived notions about the Bible, all the fallible opinions of apologists, pastors, and parents, and take the Bible at its word. I'd read it all before, of course, but this was a last-ditch attempt to fan the embers of my dying faith. I prayed desperately for god to help me understand the Bible the way he intended for it to be understood. In other words, I asked him to put the Christian lenses on me.

 

How did I feel? By the time I got through Judges, I was an atheist. The Bible is barbaric. It is full of myths, lies, and superstitions, with just enough history thrown in to satisfy the gullible. I find no encouragement in reading it.

 

Once I get past the lingering anger at having been lied to and deluded for so many years, perhaps I will eventually be able to read and enjoy it the same way I read Harry Potter - as a silly bit of magical fiction.

[bdp]

If you throw out the last chapter, Ecclesiastes is the only honest book in the bible; some of the psalms have that same kind of honesty but then David go to be king, and god liked him again and all was right with the world.

[godlessgrrl]

Somewhere in the dark, cobwebby corners of my memory is a hint that I probably got the "just read the scriptchahs and god will instruct you" thing, more as an attitude than as a specific line. But I don't recall the details anymore, just the sense that yeah, I've probably heard it. (The NBTX™ probably used it on me, now that I think about it.)

 

I do recall, however, being given the "you just have to have faith" line a few times in my day, which is similar.

 

I just want to put out a general question here. How do you all feel when you read the Bible now without those christian lenses on? What do you think when you read the psalms, and no I don't mean the crushing the babies on the rocks stuff. I mean the really intimate ones, where David cries out from his grief, anguish, pain, terror?

 

When I read it now I'm reminded of what a human book it is.

 

There are no signs of divine inspiration in it, nothing truly different from the mythologies of any other culture on the planet, just stories and songs from a particular people in a particular time trying to figure out how the world worked and what their place in it was going to be. If the author of the Psalms wrote in anguish, it just means that's what he was feeling at the time - same way a songwriter today might write a song about her pain.

 

It's just what people do.

[Vixentrox]

I recently had a Muslim in Second Life say that I don't know anything about Islam and shouldn't judge it. I told her I owned and read the Koran and much of the Hadith and how I still thought it was bullshit little different than the evil of Christianity. That shut her up pretty quick.

[Guest Babylonian Dream]

How do you all feel when you read the Bible now without those christian lenses on?

Do you really want to know?

 

Don't take offense to this, but it seems like a book written by a theocracy to have totalitarian control over a populace in a way in which they can't revolt. Though it's worse than China, Stalinist Russia, Iraq under Saddam and possibly worse than Iran and North Korea.

 

They decide what you can eat (clean vs. unclean foods). They decide what day you have off (don't work on the sabbath). They give you an ultimatum to either follow and believe in things you have no reason to believe, or burn forever in hell (or is the modern interpretation I was brought up on). God seems more obsessed with making sure we behave goodly (Sodom and Gomorrah, Adam and Eve, the laws of the OT, etc...) according to his standards, and doesn't really care how he behaves instead (the flood, sodom and gomorrah, genocide against the canaanites, etc...). He seems like a tyrant, which leads me to believe that he's the projection of a tyrant's ego and what a dictator might aspire to be. Not some loving, all merciful god.

 

What do you think when you read the psalms, and no I don't mean the crushing the babies on the rocks stuff. I mean the really intimate ones, where David cries out from his grief, anguish, pain, terror?

Why doesn't an almighty God help him so he doesn't have to humble himself down in grief, anguish, pain and terror I'd ask? It seems God is either looking like the pagan gods in that book, or David is praying to his God as if he were Ishtar or Marduk. And other times, wanting gods mercilessness to end.

 

Then there's those where he looks alot like Baal (Hadad) and other deities.

 

I know I obviously read the bible with the christina lens on, and I do feel encouraged from it. I want to know what your thoughts are on it?

Chances are that you turn a blind eye to the bad verses or havent read the whole thing, that's those christian lenses not wanting to accept they arent there. Or I don't know. I just can't see how someone can look at alot of these verses and find encouragement, I can't, and couldn't even as a christian. It was one of the things that started making me look into other religions.

[Neon Genesis]

If all you needed was the Holy Spirit to guide you when reading the bible, why is there so many crappy Christian apologetic books trying to defend the supposed inerrenacy of the bible?

[Guest Babylonian Dream]

If all you needed was the Holy Spirit to guide you when reading the bible, why is there so many crappy Christian apologetic books trying to defend the supposed inerrenacy of the bible?

The holy spirit always tends to leave them to fend for themselves when they leave their flock (no pun intended, that's what they call their congregations) or stop having to use their imagination and try to stick to reality as it does (not) relate to the real world.

[mwc]

I grew up in the church and so everyone I knew and trusted told me the story was super true and could be trusted...so I bought into it without question. These people never seemed to lie to me otherwise so why make me go to church, vacation bible school and that Wednesday crap (they did it too) if they were just fucking with me? This must be something real and important, right? Then in a xian school we studied the bible and I went through the whole confirmation process. These things were pretty serious. No one ever "let on" that it was a load of shit or some great joke that had been building my whole life (or the life of my older siblings who also did these things). This was all on the up and up and, as a baby, there was no way to read a bible. I did know many of the stories though. As time passed I just accepted it as absolute fact and didn't see the need to read the text so I knew those stories verbatim. Eventually, in class, we did this but it was "supervised" like most xian readings of the bible so you skip about while reading and the context is controlled and things are spoon-fed so it makes "sense" (read: apologetics are used to diminish the impact of the shitty parts).

 

Anyhow, when I read it now it's a lot like others have said. I just read it critically like I do any other old text. I don't think Moses wrote the first 5 books and I don't think David wrote any of the Psalms (or Solomon wrote anything either). I think David was likely a name for a "house" (like "Jacob" was before it grew synonymous with "Israel") and so many hands wrote the Psalms using that name (like a literary tradition). If an individual "David" ever lived to form this house originally he was probably not literate but more thuggish but I'm not holding my breath for a native "David" (I do hold out for an Egyptian one though).

 

mwc