This is going to be short because .... ok, so I don't have a good reason for it being short, but it will be. lol
Anywho, I've been thinking a lot about Christ's death and resurrection. Just trying to comprehend it, I guess. Like, I'm not sure I believe in Original Sin. It does not make sense to me that God would punish all mankind for the sins of Adam and Eve, who are mythological figures anyways. What really was so bad about the tree in the center of the garden? Why would God create an arbitrary rule about not eating its fruit and then command us to obey Him blindly, trusting that He has a good reason? Sounds more like ancient people trying to make sense of why evil exists.
And why would God demand blood in exchange for the supposed "sins" of mankind? Isn't that a bit primitive and heartlessly demanding? It hearkens back to the way biblical people saw sacrifices as necessary to atone for their conscious and unconscious offenses against the tribal God who provided for them. If the death of Christ truly is a physical and spiritual atonement for the evils of mankind, why would God create a world in which death was a punishment for falling short of perfection?
If the death of Christ is more of a symbol of God's infinite love for people, it makes more sense. Then the acts of Christ culminate logically in this ultimate show of how we should love and live for others. His resurrection, then, is less of a divine miracle and more of a symbol for the idea that life does not end after death - God is the God of the living, not the dead. That should ease our minds about eternity.
I know this is going to sound heretical, but I'm not even sure I believe in hell. When Jesus spoke about Hell, he spoke about it with reference to self-righteous pharisees and leaders who mislead others. It seems more of a lesson that actions have consequences and that such behavior is not tolerable, than a lesson on the literal existence of a hell. No loving God wants His people to be eternally punished just because they did not believe a certain doctrine in their short life. Yes, people have free will, but everyone is making the best decisions they can with the information they have in that moment. No one deserves eternal death. If you believe in original sin, you believe that everyone deserves death, but if you believe that man is made in God's image, then you see man as striving nobly to live as best as he can, deserving of mercy and grace.
I guess my "problem", if you call it that, is that I don't necessarily believe in the inerrancy of the Bible. I think the Bible tells us about how ancient peoples understood and related to their God. We can learn from such stories and lessons, as the Bible says all scripture is useful for teaching. That doesn't mean it is all completely true. It is how fallible humans perceive the world. A God that we can understand and box within a certain doctrine is not God.
Please don't misunderstand me, I believe Jesus is divine and brought to humans a revolutionary understanding of how to live in love, a concept that transcended the tribal boundaries of the world existing then. We should follow His model of how to act and think, but we are in danger of becoming like the doctrinally-focused pharisees and saduccees of that age. They believed that humans had to act in a certain way and believe a certain thing about God to be saved. Modern Christians walk that line in requiring people to be "born again" and accept unconditionally the fundamentals of the faith. Jesus never preached a doctrine, he preached a way of life, a way of bringing the kingdom of heaven, of God, to earth. He encouraged thinking through the use of parables, he encouraged questions by asking them.
Anywho, so much for a short post! I know I've been sort of thinking out loud and that I've certainly disturbed a few of you with the directions of my thoughts, but this is where I am. I don't want to lie about what I am thinking or project the image of a blindly following Christian. That's not who I am. I will continue to think and question because God gave me a brain and expects me to use it. I'll probably come back next Saturday with completely different ideas, but that is the beauty of the evolution of thought! We can change and move forward, a natural process!
So, about me...I start my job at Borders soon. I'm thinking about trying to find a room to rent on campus or trying to join a co-op just so I don't have to commute all year. My parents aren't happy about the idea though, so I'm not sure if it will go anywhere. We got back from Tennessee on Wednesday, so I've mostly been reading since then. I'm currently reading "A New Christianity for a New World" by Bishop John Shelby Spong. It has some faulty thought processes and questionable "facts" but the foundational ideas of the book are intriguing nonetheless. Anywho, I also got accepted into UROP for next year, so I've been rearranging my schedule. Fun stuff. lol I hope you all are doing well! I miss you all and hope to visit Ann Arbor soon!
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thanks for your honesty savannah :) i really really appreciate it hahah.
ReplyDeletei remember having the exact same questions about the garden of eden and why on earth God had to create a tree that nobody could eat - if it's to serve no purpose but to sit there and tempt the world, then why create it? in his book Perelandra, c.s. lewis kind of answers the question. perelandra is the second book in a trilogy. i didn't read the trilogy, i only read that one book, hahah. it has a really interesting premise. basically, this man from earth arrives in a planet where God has decided to create life again, and witnesses the re-enactment of the story of the garden of eden. the guy meets a woman who is basically eve, and she must decide whether or not to follow this rule God had set on their planet, very much like the rule he set about not eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. i don't remember much of the story, but i vividly remember one passage where the man from earth is arguing with another man who has been possessed by satan. the man said that God didn't want blind obedience - he basically tells adam and eve to eat all the fruit they want, and multiply and cover the earth. these are rules that we as human beings would be following anyway, because they're actions within our nature to do, and they're good for us. it's like telling a baby to breathe or your heart to beat. the fact that the baby obeys you doesn't really mean all that much because it's something the baby will do naturally anyway. but God wanted us to intentionally obey him. that was obedience that mattered to him. so he created a tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and told adam and eve not to eat it. since you've been reading a lot this summer, maybe you should check out this trilogy! the one book from it that i read was really good, hahah, and c.s. lewis in general is a really good author, so i would recommend it :)
i don't want you to think that i'm trying to argue with you or anything, and i'm sorry if i come across that way online. i guess i'm just presenting what i've learned about these issues, and you can always agree or disagree as you feel you should, and take from it what you can :) i hope that you continue to grow in your knowledge of God! reading books other people have written about God is great, but it is no substitution for the actual word of God, and when i'm really strapped for answers about something, i always try to find out first what the Bible has to say about it before i turn to other people, because it's what God has to say about himself that is the most important, after all :)
good luck with your job a borders!
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ReplyDeleteSav! :) I really loved our phone conversation the other day. Girl, I so totally understand your thought process here. It is like the almost the exact way I was thinking about everything when we had that "fateful" lcg meeting.
ReplyDeleteBelieving for sure, with everything we know about everything, that Jesus was God and that he performed miracles and that he rose physically from the dead all that time ago, is hard. The way I thought about it at one point was that if I could convince myself that it happened, if I could completely believe it in my heart and in my mind, then some amazing transformation would take place in me and I would become a true Christian just like all the other serious believers I admire.
BUT, that never happened, and I'm totally good with that. What did happen was that the harder I tried to convince myself that it was true, the more certain I became that I would and could never know that it was true for sure. What also happened was that I fell in love with Christianity. hahah
For me, believing that events in the Bible physically took place is much much less important than understanding the stories, the guide to living, and the Hope that I find there and at Church and through Christian writers and friends :) If we see the Garden of Eden story as a myth, like you say, that doesn't mean that it isn't full of meaning and lessons. That is the beauty of it, these stories are given so that we can derive our own meaning from them. We are bound to disagree on some points, but we are also bound to help each other come to new understandings. That is why traditional religions like Christianity are so great, it's like wisdom compounded over and over and over, communicated through story.
Even though I may doubt various parts of the doctrine of the church, I love Christianity. I love it because it helps me to experience gratitude and reverence, it gives me hope and faith that good will win, and in the church it gives a community of people who are set on loving and on doing what is good, following Christ's example.
I think that all religions are all about these things: Gratitude, reverence, hope, and love. Forgiveness, and all the other virtues are contained in love. Of course, these are all just words though. Real life experience, story, mythology, religion, all these things are what bring those concepts to life so that I can understand them better. That's what I plan on doing for ever and ever- trying to understand and live in that understanding better- and I plan on calling myself a Christian while I'm at it, gosh darn it!
Oh Martha! You're so good at explaining what I'm trying to say! I really think you'd like that book we mentioned "Jesus for the Non-Religious" by John Shelby Spong. His sometimes arrogant style aside, we all share a lot of the same questions. He addresses the question of Jesus' resurrection, the miracles, even the fulfillment of prophecies. I'm learning so much about Jewish culture that I did not know. So much of what we take as literally true, was originally written in more liturgical, mythological terms in order to help people explain the mysteries of God in inadequate human words. Like, Paul's letters are the oldest New Testament books, and they never mention Jesus performing miracles, nor do they specifically talk about a physical resurrection. The gospels themselves slowly became more supernatural and full of resurrection details as time went on. Even the virgin birth of Jesus is symbolic! The beautiful thing is that this doesn't discount the Bible by any means. It actually makes me appreciate the Bible more because I'm no longer concerned with defending its "truths" from my doubts. I can accept the God-experiences of other people and learn from them on my own journey. I look forward to talking to you again soon!
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