Question Everything

One of the things I want to do with this blog is to question everything.

Everything.

I've been told by many people, pastors and laymen alike, that we're to accept God's word, to accept without question, because the Bible is His infallible Word.

I did, for a while.  Unfortunately, I fell into a snare that I would not have believed possible by doing so:  I elevated a Book into the Godhead along with Jesus.

It's the Holy Trinity, not the Holy Quadrangle, right?  Besides...after finding out that some of the 10 Commandments aren't translated right in the first place from the KJV (3rd and 6th), and still not right in later versions (3rd), you tend to question the rest.  Just like I covered in the first post, masturbation isn't a Biblical sin; it's not even considered "wrong" in scripture, in spite of many pastors pounding it from the pulpit (so to speak...)

So, I question.  A lot.  One of the aspects of the Christian faith mentioned by a very intelligent and educated man recently (Hi George!) is to accept some things on faith, to accede to the MYSTERY of certain aspects of the Christian structure, as simple faith is integral as a foundation.  Ok, no problem.  But I'm still questioning a good chunk.

Well, a lot.

Ok, this is going to hack off some people and likely get me called a heretic...but I don't believe the Bible is the ineffable or inerrant Word of God.

I just can't.  You can't expect me to believe the book that is expected to form the structure, the frame to our lives, the spiritual meat (and milk, for some) we need to live on spiritually, the RULES for successful Christian living, the book that is compiled from oral tradition going back to the BEGINNING OF TIME, ancient scrolls and histories written by hundreds of authors spanning millennia, encompassing even personal letters, the book that has taken more forms in Catholic and Protestant bodies, the book that was translated by the orders of King James while he was burning Jews at the stake for being heretics, thereby losing all possible chance for accurate cultural bias or even basic accuracy...you expect me to implicitly and blindly trust that?

Um...no.

Granted, many incorrect spots have been fixed.  Awesome.

So now the original is mostly correct.  Even more awesome.

But it's still not enough.  Cultural and societal bias is almost completely absent, except from some versions like David Stern's Complete Jewish Bible that meticulously includes the relevant cultural bias, as much as it can.

Scriptures that we now understand accurately relate to situations that are no longer relevant in today's world...the books of Ephesians, Colossians, Colossians again, Timothy, Titus, and 1 Peter all give advice the church fathers felt extremely important...about the care and treatment of SLAVES.  Nor does it ever say that slavery is wrong, or that slaves shouldn't be had.  Some translate this to "servants"...but no, even the "servants" then were usually slaves: Debtors, indentured, or outright just BOUGHT.  Not always...but typically.

So, what ELSE applies to then and not now? Murder?  No, that's always been wrong, and still is, although killing in God's name is still in vogue in some countries.  Stealing?  No, always has been wrong, still is...what could...ah.

Wives and concubines.

Men had wives and concubines.  Abraham did.  Isaac did.  Jacob did.  David did.  Solomon did.  *FILL IN THE BLANK* did.  Very common practice; legal, acceptable, normal.

Not today.  Today, having more than one wife or a wife and a girlfriend can get you arrested and accused of all kinds of sinful charges if your church gets wind of it.  All those guys were the Old Testament equivalent of swingers!  Today?  Not so much.

So riddle me this:  What then is sin?  Whose word do you take?  Man? God? The Bible?

Sin hurts.  Sin is something that is a fundamental break in the order of the natural order.  Murder; it ends a life prematurely.  The Jews believe that when you murder, you kill not only that person's life, but the lives of all that person's future family...in essence, a murder kills not a person, but a WORLD.  So, yeah...unnatural.  Wrong.  Sin.

Now, don't be quick to jump on the "No Execution" bandwagon; even God allowed for executing criminals, so just don't go there.  Moving on.


Some things are just obvious, like murder.  Some, like love and sex, aren't so much.  In Acts, James said, 19 "It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. 20 Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood."

What is "Sexual Immorality"?  Who defines it?  Topless and nude beaches are the norm in some sections of Europe and South America...try that in Louisiana or Mississippi and see what happens to you.

You can go round and round.  For every hard and fast rule in scripture there are just as many questions and questionable passages.

So what do I do?

I walk out my salvation in fear and trembling, understanding that I have to walk according to my conscience and the Spirit's leading and peace.  I understand that my choices could lead to lack of reward at best, punishment at worst, that I might be "saved as though through fire", saved, but with no reward.  I study for myself; I don't accept to be spoon or bottle fed milk.  I chew into the tougher, harder, meatier things, looking for the deeper truths....for TRUTH.

And also importantly, ROMANS 14!  I will believe or accept some things that a new Christian absolutely can't.  And shouldn't!!  You don't give a baby a steak; they can't chew it or digest it...it would kill them!  The same here...some things, while perhaps not entirely beneficial, aren't necessarily wrong, either...and what's ok for me, might not be ok for you.

That's ok.

I've gone fairly far afield I think from where I started, but that's all right.  I'm just questioning.  Some of my answers won't work for you.  Just remember Romans 14; it's between me and God...

Not me and you.

Dogma Sucks

I have a dogmatic question I don’t understand.  Let’s say you have two people involved in some kind of church ministry; both are actively participating in things the Church at large considers sinful.  One person is remorseful and tries without success to change their behavior and is allowed to still take part; the other sees nothing wrong with what they’re doing, and is asked to step down until they see the error of their ways.

The way I’m seeing this, both people are engaged in wrong behavior without stopping…the only difference is in their thought processes, or as the Church calls it, their heart:  So if I’m understanding this right, it’s not sinning that gets you in trouble, it’s the way you think about it?

Please understand...this isn't a facetious question.

There are some things that I STILL don't "get" after being married for 20 years, and my poor wife just shakes her head and tells me, "It's an Aspy (Asperger's) thing; don't worry about, let it go..."

This might could be one of those things.

For example, this one is perfect.  Since I've been a teenager, I've had no moral issues with polyamory or polyfidelity.  While not socially acceptable almost anywhere, there are subgroups in this country and others that not only practice it, but it works for.

However, from a Christian perspective, this encompasses fornication and adultery AT LEAST.   From this Christian perspective, I can understand from reading that it is considered sin.  Jesus corrected the Samaritan woman at the well about her marital screw-ups (gently, of course), and there is the famous story in John 8:3-11 with the woman caught in the act.

Now, toss in my Aspy brain...in every instance where Jesus deals with adultery, it's the WOMAN that is at fault.  It's not until Paul that the issue is brought up in 1 Corinthians and a male is actually specified as the offender.  In every other case, it's generic with no mention of who is at fault, or it's the woman.

So to my Aspy mind, the definition of adultery hinged upon some definition that only affected women, not men.  Plus, it's never said WHY it's wrong...it just is.  Well, why is it wrong?  If a man lives with two women, and they're all in harmony, taking equal burdens emotionally and physically and even financially in the relationship, what's the big deal?  Or a woman with two men?  Or (scandalous thinking approaching!) two bisexual women and a man? Or two bisexual men with a woman?

Aspy's don't do well with "do it because", because when something happens that doesn't fit the precise circumstance, BOOM, confusion and disarray, questions and chaos.  We need to know why, so we can learn to do things when the norm doesn't fit.

I have to say...Christianity SUCKS for Aspy's.  Everyone is always saying, "The Bible says this, that, and the other thing"...ok, fine, that's great until a little digging shows that it either A: Doesn't say that, B: Is taken out of context so it APPEARS to say that, C: Actually means something else because of translation errors, or D: remembered incorrectly so as to say something else.

So then what?  You dig for the truth, and WHOA, it actually means something else!  Great example: Onanism.  What's that, you ask?  Spanking the monkey, jerking off, choking the chicken...masturbation.  The prohibition comes from Genesis, but the early translations were off, and the church leaders, largely uneducated in many cases in those early years of using that newfangled King James Bible, took the passage (heh) to refer to masturbation, focusing on that "spilling his seed" bit.

Let's see it in a more modern translation:  Genesis 38:8-10 "8 Y'hudah said to Onan, "Go and sleep with your brother's wife - perform the duty of a husband's brother to her, and preserve your brother's line of descent." 9 However, Onan knew that the child would not count as his; so whenever he had intercourse with his brother's wife, he spilled the semen on the ground, so as not to give his brother offspring. 10 What he did was evil from ADONAI's perspective, so he killed him too."

It wasn't the "seed spillin'" that he was struck down for...rather, it was the disobedience of not doing his directed duty that he was killed for.  At that time, if a man's brother died childless, it was his brother's duty to impregnate that man's wife so as to carry on the family.

Do you have ANY IDEA how much less stressful my childhood and early life would've been if I'd known THAT?  That learning the WHY of it, and not the "Don't do it, and just accept it" aspect?

So, yeah...dogma sucks.