The Harm That They Do
If you’re looking for gems of truth and beauty in the bible, it can be a lot like panning for gold in the Klondike. You pretty much have to separate out and discard vast tons of the dross, drivel, and despicable sexism, before you can even get down to working on washing away some of the muddy madness from the countless generations of your more delusional divas-and-davids that populate these pages.
So why do so many people actually espouse reading from, and want to enshrine particular words from this little black book of horrors?
It’s because, once canonized in head and heart as the actual word of god, the meaning becomes so enigmatic as to leave people trembling and at a loss to make any clear sense out of this train-wreck of compiled works from antiquity.
And as such, it becomes open season for every denomination and sect to derive from it whatever meaning they choose to read into it.
Of course, much of the success of this is due to the presumption that people won’t actually try to make sense out of it for themselves.
Indeed, at the bottom of every creed is a dictum that says ‘you’re not smart enough to handle the truth.’ Or, it’s not nice to question the word of god,’ or some such appeal to the denial of your own reason. And besides, those that do try rarely seem able to get past the presumption that they are attempting to elicit meaning from the actual, though horribly enigmatic, word(s) of god.
This, of course, proves to be Mighty Handy, if not patently self-serving, for the ruling oligarchy. And you’ll find that, as such, it is the real Rock that any sect’s authority is actually hiding under.
And, while separating out institutions of organized religion here from any discussion of the ‘spiritual nature’ and side of man that they appeal to, it is easy to see that creeds everywhere have used this particular table rock of obfuscation as an irresistible template, to cover-over with their own color and cut of cloth, in order to set themselves up in the business of selling tickets to god.
So, are there any gems of truth and beauty to be found in the bible? Of course there are. They’re usually mixed in with a pack of lies, but can be picked out by the same special warmth of color and ring of truth, that gives inherent value to words everywhere.
D R Hosie aka
Thanks for the invitation. I don’t have the eloquence you do, but I think you make some interesting points (if I understand you correctly). One thing I have really appreciated about the church I go to is that they don’t brush off questions and tell you to forget your concerns. In fact, they encourage questions, and I always find a satisfying answer. Thanks again.
I think you’re largely correct. The question centers around what those gems of truth are, and who decides that they are true? Also, can’t the same be said for any other book?
I think your bottom-line actually discredit the bible. If we choose (or find) so call gems from the bible, we have to use our guidelines (morality, ethics, whatever you call it) which we accrued outside the bible to separate “gems” from “lies”. Well, Bibles supposedly the constitution of human morality – it define the morality – morality could not exists outside that – what bible says good is good and what bible says bad is bad. So what you actually saying is, people are capable of identify good and bad without the bible or the Gods guidelines. If that is the case, then not only in the bible, but in Forest Gump or Stuart Little we can find “gems” according to our needs.
I told recently by a Christian “You doubt the Bible because you take it literally.”
Which to me is saying “You doubt God because you assume if he exists he would bother to a make a kind of sense.”
Well…yeah.
Very good point. I also find it interesting that when around Christian fellows you can’t really question the authenticity of the Bible like you would any other academic text.
And I find far more authenticity in Forrest Gump than the story of Moses, for example!
Great post
I think I’d learn rather more panning for gold on the Klondike for a whole summer, than reading that rather poor book. Nuggets of goodness indeed.