I was taught the Bible must be read literally or else it is wrong. And there is no indication that the text should be read otherwise, in fact, many key Bible doctrines require a literal reading, such as the origin of sin, the flood must be real even though it is not, there must not be evolution, and so on.
What do you think is the truth? I have a very conservative pastor, of Brethren background, who says that “antecedence is not precedence.”. In other words, just because it happened that way in the Bible does not mean that God says we have to do it that way. Does that make sense? Thanks.
Is there any evidence from the text and only from the text that he gives? If not than this is just a desperate attempt. What if he is wrong and all the Christians are wrong and that there is no life after death?
Good question. To start ,we can think of things in the Bible that changed from the Old Testament and New Testament; but God dealt differently with different people, I think. Thanks.
Honestly, if we are wrong, there are many people in the world that have been wrong, and we can only search for the truth. A God that is just would reward us for that. I think he is also the God of those who have not understood. He is like a father, and is glad to have us ask questions. Thanks. Blessings!
Is there any evidence from the text, and only from the text, that the person who taught you this was right?
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You were taught wrong. The Bible contradicts itself in a bunch of places. How do you take it literally in that case?
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Yes. The Bible says that all of scripture is God breathed. This means even the contradictions and anti science content. The Bible says these verses are to be used to correct, for reproof, for teaching, and training. This includes the verses that the mythical flood happened and that evolution is false. And I also went to an extremist Christian fundamentalist school, that taught creation biology, rejected evolution, and taught lies such as that climate change is not real. The Bible also says to walk by faith and not by sight. Walking by sight means by reason and science, and finding out that the Bible is wrong about the nature of our world. Walking in faith means to believe all of this without questioning, believe that you will be healed by your faith, even though you could die and not have life after death, this is walking by faith. How I got into this religion was the charismatic, fundamentalist, extreme version of this religion. I used to believe in this literally, I rejected evolution, I thought the world was young, I thought that witches and demons were actually real, and believed in exorcism and faith healing. I went to an exorcist who was rude, didn’t help me, and said if he has to come to my house for an “emergency encounter” then I have to pay him thousands of dollars, I finally found out he is another trickster like Benny Hinn. This means that god is not all knowing and or all good.
According to you, if the Bible can be shown to be in error, then it can no longer be trusted, right?
So you’ve also seen that the school that taught you all this was wrong with all its biology, and flood geology. How is it that you still consider them to be a trustworthy source for how the Bible should be read? Why are you so easily able to see their error with their science, but yet you cling to their erroneous Bible understandings as if those can’t even be questioned. Can you explain that?
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That does not tell you how to understand it. Many people accept that it’s God-breathed - and not all of those then automatically agree about everything that we are supposed to understand from it.
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Yes, since all scripture is god breathed, the verse must be true, that you have to trust in the lord and lean not in your own understanding. BioLogos leans on their own understanding and you lean on your own understanding by realizing that the Bible is anti-scientific and has many contradictions and errors and is wrong about things. Now, the Bible condemns people who do this. Therefore you need to lean on God’s understanding. Since this book is believe is of God, then that means you need to believe in the Bible’s understanding, that evolution is a lie, that the earth is young, that contradictory events in history happened and are all true, that faith healing and exorcism is real. You need to lean on God’s understanding by takin the Bible literally, by rejecting science and believing that you can be healed by your faith. So why do you still believe in this religion? I am trying to find the answer why I can still, and also why not any other religion. It is evident that if god is real than he is either not all knowing, not understand ping the nature of reality, or he is a liar or he lies in his book and making people do the wrong things.
Logic is so inept at understanding the truth within a story. True or not true leaves out so much else. Why not other religions? Or none at all. Maybe it doesn’t matter so long as you will hear the truth within those stories or at least one of them. Why not Christianity? If it can connect you to what is beyond the petty and arbitrary truth of expediency and logic it will suffice. Literalism and certainty are the real enemy.
Rafal,
There is an expression my Momma thought me that says “You can’t see the forest for the trees.”
I suspect that you have fragmented the stories, parables, mysteries, and sayings of the Bible so much that none of it makes sense anymore to you. We agree that the Bible is not a science book, and the records are sometimes hard to follow. Perhaps this will help:
- God made everything from the beginning. John 1:1-3 My view is that the Universe and spacetime began when God conceived it with his creation of the Initial Singularity. Look it up in the encyclopedia.
- Evolution is a study that attempts to explain the process of change across the ages. My view is that God manages that process at the molecular level to serve His purposes.
- God made mankind in his image for a relationship with Him, and Lucifer (a rebellious angel from a previous heavenly creation) interfered by introducing sinful disobedience to spoil the relationship.
- The good news of the Bible is that God still loves His human creation so much that He set into action a plan to redeem humanity back to a sinless condition and restore the desired relationship.
- John 3:16 explains His plan of justice, mercy, love, and saving grace. The Bible explains how Jesus came to earth as a baby in Luke 2, and the New Testament tells how he ministered to people to show that his Father is God and He is from the Godhead.
- Jesus was on a “rescue mission” for all mankind. He paid the Ransome for sin by allowing the Roman soldiers to crucify him as payment to forgive the sins of humanity. God validated the blood sacrifice of his Son by resurrecting him from the dead.
- Jesus explained to Nicodemus in the book of John that spiritual birth is necessary to be in a relationship with God and his family. He explained that His blood sacrifice is the only cure for sin, and He freely offers redemption and cleansing to anyone who spiritually comes with a true heart of repentance and asks to be adopted into the family of God. The scripture is clear that the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross is the only way to God.
- The Holy Spirit of God is the spiritual advocate for humanity to communicate with the Triune Godhead. (The Father, Son & Holy Spirit…three in one.) Thus, you must be “born again” spiritually
- The invitation is for “all sinners” to come to Jesus for forgiveness, cleansing, and adoption.
- In His justice, He will deal with all of the issues you have carefully noted and cataloged. “It is appointed for man, once to die, and then the judgment.” We are not the Judge. He is, and He will!
Oh yes of course! Since the Bible is wrong about many things that occur in our world, than it is not trustworthy. This is a contradiction of “God is all knowing.” With this fact, then this means that God cannot be real. And why would he not be direct and transparent with the people and authors. If he revealed scientific truths that were not known by anyone in the world until verified hundreds of years later than this would mean that he is real. Why would he have to conform to the people’s understanding of the time, which was wrong and even dangerous at times? It is plausible that it was the people’s understandings not God’s but without a direct mention and indication in the text you cannot assume because that means trying to create meaning in something when there is none. That school is authoritarian, totalitarian, they do not accept any changes to their doctrines. They refuse to believe the correct science. Even the pastor and his friends were against the mask mandate and the stay at home order from last year despite the warnings. And he recommend me John MacArthur who rejects science, said there was no pandemic, had his church not wear masks, and so on.
When you are told that up is down and down is up and the only lessons you heed are those that don’t match up with reality, then … something is being contradicted anyway! And that something probably needs to be shaken down so that actual truth can take its place. It sounds like you have really been taken in by man’s word of the last couple centuries that declares itself in charge of all things, including how the pages of scripture must be understood. Don’t be surprised when that leads to false places. But my prayer instead is that you can turn away from all that and turn instead toward the living Word, Jesus Christ. It is He, and He alone whose Spirit can open up scriptures to you, and indeed lift up your gaze toward God. Let Him be your only focus. That is my prayer for myself, and for you too.
-Merv
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What? It is logical and literal. And you say it is man’s word? Even though you are interpreting the Bible in your own way? There are Christians that believe that evolution is satanic and the theory is man’s word of denying God. And prayer does not work by the way, there have been scientific studies that prove that prayer is only placebo/psychological. My original post has a link that shows when Christians prayed and the worst happened not the best. I bet you didn’t even read that. So you say I am going to hell if I don’t follow BioLogos’s narrative, even though that narrative has many theological problems. Your reasoning is against logic. According to logic, if there are two contradictory statements, than at least one of them is false, or both of them are false, but both of them cannot be true. This means the Bible is not 100% true and is at least partially false. And you used “man’s doctrine” by attempting to interpret the Bible in your own way. Why are you so angry, because you know there is no indication that the literal view is wrong as written down in the scripture, than this is just your word as man’s word? What happens if your beliefs are all a delusion, that there is no life after death and that it is just sleep, like the British woman with a heart defect who died 36 times in one year saw no afterlife instead it was just “like falling asleep”. Canoeist with heart condition pronounced clinically DEAD 36 times in one year | Daily Mail Online
What happens if your death is like this? There are controlled studies that show that NDEs are just hallucinations caused by the brain and that the reason is evolutionary. What happens when all the actions of the Christians ultimately leads to nothing, and that there is only one life on earth and that’s it? Look at the Galileo affair where the literal view was the orthodox view and the church punished Galileo for contradicting their scripture.
Nobody seems to be angry here, Rafal. You just seem exceedingly stressed and confused. Nearly everything you wrote in the last post is either just wrong (putting words in my mouth that are nothing like I would ever say), or else just repeating misunderstandings that you can’t free yourself from. I’m not even going to begin to engage all that until you can chill for a bit and hopefully get some focus on maybe just one specific area and maybe start to extract yourself from the large morass that has your mind tethered down. It’s pretty apparent you won’t get free of that all at once. It’ll take a bit at a time. Meanwhile the “Gish gallop” (where you just hurl all your objections out wholesale) just doesn’t fly around here. We’ve seen it before and recognize it for what it is.
Well, yes you are correct in that I am stressed because I want there to be life after death but I don’t want to wait to die to know, the story where my mom saw the smoke go out of the woman is absolutely true, I know she’s not lying. I am stressed because I am thinking about this issue all the time and the fact that you still believe in this book. It is literally a miracle. And the reason I assume is I have bad experiences with Christians (closed minded). And also the Bible says all people are bad, so I had to assume. Remember that the “Gish Gallop” man was a Christian. He was a Christian and believed lies and propagated lies. So what do you call misunderstandings? My worries are categorized into three main topics. First is scientific evidence of the afterlife, the second is Bible contradictions and errors, and the third is the fact that God is NOT love.
Which is a real problem … for people exactly like you. Because when somebody like that, taken to be a Christian leader, has opinions about what faith should look like, they are presented as more than “just opinions”. Everybody has opinions - strong ones even - even good and true things many times. But as soon as our opinions get wrapped in a “cloak of infallibity” as being - not our own - but a direct line from God, then the mischief starts. God does speak to us - don’t get me wrong. But what I think I hear from God, and how I understand and apply it should always be subject to the correction of the wider church community - others who also listen to the Spirit as they too discern what the prophets and testimonies from scripture mean. Especially if my ostensible ‘application’ of what I think I’ve heard from God is to teach others. It is one thing (and probably more often the right thing) to apply what we hear from God first and foremost [perhaps even only] to ourselves. To presume to teach others is a sometimes necessary, but still dangerous presumption indeed - which I must concede we try to do here (like right now). Such as do that will be held accountable to a yet higher standard - as it should be. But still held accountable nonetheless. If somebody persists in teaching things that are not true - especially after they have been shown this, then take note. If God is not the God of truth - all truth - then everything we or any Christians gas on about would be pointless.
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It’s good that you’ve at least got your worries so sorted. Just be aware that some categories (like your first and last ones) are not things that our current science (or likely any sort of science as we currently recognize it) will be able to address. They simply are not amenable to experiment or what is recognized as empirical observation (NDEs notwithstanding). NDEs simply cannot cover the possibility of resurrection that happens later - which many will point out is what the bible actually teaches regarding continued life.
And the whole matter of God being a loving God or not - that is 100% faith conviction coming entirely from experience and testimony; and 0% science. I have yet to see anybody put forward any “scientific” evidence either way on such a question. It’s in the realm of philosophy, religion, humanity, etc. Not science. Science just isn’t the universal judge of everything that you and so many have been told it is. As good as it is, it just isn’t that comprehensive about everything that concerns us. That is one thing we do labor to undo around here that too many creationists and modern believers bought into.
Regrettably, those claiming to provide a “literal” reading of the Bible often do not read it carefully. Healings and exorcism have been popular claims for frauds for thousands of years, so caution is definitely needed (especially if someone is making a profit out of their claims). Perhaps the most important theological principle to note is that the Bible credits God with sovereignty over all that happens. If someone is healed by a doctor, or by their own immune system, etc., that is also considered to be God’s work. There are various cults that claim that you should reject medicine, but that is not the biblical position. The Bible does describe a number of healings and exorcisms, but also a number of non-healings - there is certainly no guarantee that any believer can automatically heal everything (Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” is often thought to have been a physical ailment, and faithful believers did die during the New Testament period). Many healings are portrayed as being a purely physical ailment, not due to demonic forces. But what of the specific examples of exorcism?
For one thing, actually taking the Bible literally doesn’t get you very far. Details are quite sparse, not what would be needed for a thorough medical assessment of the situation. The point of the passages is to show that Jesus (and through Him, his followers) have power over evil spirits, not to give a detailed case history. The exact nature of the demonic influence is not detailed. Often it is shown in some sort of anomaly, but at least one instance merely states that the patient was possessed without mention of symptoms. [Note that there is even debate as to whether “possession” is a good term for what the Bible portrays. I will use the term as a familiar usage with regard to demonic influence, without intending to imply any thing specific about the nature or mechanism of this influence.] What little is mentioned often suggests a mental disorder, but there is not enough to say more than that what little information is given often resembles known psychological conditions. This certainly does not justify the assumption that all maladies can be cured by exorcism.
If, as the Bible affirms, evil spirits do exist, then it would not be surprising if they try to cause harm by targeting specific people. Why might this generate symptoms similar to those of certain psychological problems? For one thing, messing with human minds is likely to produce a particular range of symptoms, whatever the exact cause. Demons may be less than fully competent in trying to control a human. This does not mean that most psychological ailments are demonic, but merely that similarity in symptoms is plausible. Years ago, I attended a talk by a psychologist who had encountered what he initially thought to be a somewhat abnormal case of schizophrenia, but eventually judged to be demonic; exorcism did help the patient.