The 85% wasn’t calculated; it was just a way of approximating how much evidence I thought I had found on each side of the argument.
I was brought up in a “Christian” home, so that I had at one time imagined God and Jesus and felt love for both of them. But I had felt love for the Cisco Kid and the Lone Ranger as well. Having that background must have influenced me. But I turned out to be a lover of logic and of ideas, and the things I was taught about religion in childhood just didn’t stand up to scrutiny.
My reliance on the Bible as the best way of knowing God came second. After I became convinced that God was real, I got the notion that I should talk about this with a man I knew at work, whom I had heard was involved in some way with Bible translation. I was impressed by his intelligence and his knowledge of ancient Greek. I didn’t want to talk with him, however, because it was a pretty weird subject in my view, and I didn’t know him that well.
I was tired of having the feeling I should talk to him, so I decided to do it and get it over with. I decided to do it a particular week, but put it off every day. On Friday I was in the Xerox room with him, but still said nothing. Then it occurred to me that some being in the spiritual world might want me to talk to him. So I said to anyone who might be listening in the spiritual realm that if they wanted me to talk to him, they should bring him back to the Xerox room and I would go in there too, although I wouldn’t promise to say anything. Within ten minutes this man came back down the hall and, instead of going into the Xerox room, came into my room; and I didn’t have to say anything to him; he spoke to me! I knew I had better make arrangements to talk with him, so I did. I made a lot of mistakes in my work that afternoon! When I started talking with him, I realized he was “one of those crazy born-agains” and I wanted to run. But I overcame my first reaction and we talked. He advised me to read the book of John, which I did. As I read it, it seemed to be written in vivid color. Soon I had read all the gospels. They were different, as different books will be, but they were all describing the same man.
My experience reading the gospels, then Paul’s letters, and the fact that ‘this spiritual being’ had lead me to talk with someone who was able to read the New Testament in Greek, were big indicators that the Bible was what God wanted me to learn from.
Since then I have not found much that I have difficulty with in the Bible, but I do not interpret it according to fundamentalist guidelines. I have learned a bit of Greek myself and have translated and given a lot of thought to certain passages. I am convinced that cultural attitudes both throughout the history of Christianity and now have caused people to misinterpret much of what is in the text.
That is why I so like BioLogos – it may help Christians to look more carefully at what they are reading, to be more logical, and open up the riches that are in this neglected and misunderstood book.
Hope that makes things a little clearer. Thanks for your interest.