I'm not sure just where to start... but this has been increasingly bothering me for quite a while and, if nothing else, trying to put it into words here - and any comments from you folks - may help better than thrashing around in my own mind.
I am a lifelong Christian. I've studied much of religion, both Christian and other, and have given much thought to it all. I've gone through a number of churches, having been a Catholic for nearly 25 years until recently, and so made a good faith effort to be part of that community in a number of ways.
I met and worked with a lot of good people. Most are sincere and there is a lot of love and integrity in most of them. That there are every other kind of people involved is no surprise, and the fact has little or nothing to do with my dilemma here.
The basic premise for the church seems very simple: those of like mind who come together to be a community. But I never found one that would work for me because every church I've ever come in contact with makes that essentially impossible because of Bible worship.
The Bible has replaced the creator, for all intents and purposes. And, totally ignoring endless inconsistencies and contradictions, they insist that IT is the infallible, unchangeable, literal, absolutely accurate history and final "word of God" as if He wrote it with his own ten fingers. Having read the entire thing at least once a year for nearly 40 years, I have to call that insane nonsense.
I've read much other Jewish and Semantic literature. They make extensive use of stories, metaphors, analogies, comparisons, parables, and so forth... so why would anyone think the Bible stories are accounts of absolute history of actual happenings I don't know. Based on the rest of Jewish history and literature it seems clear that the scriptures (what few we have) were never intended to be science books or strict history accounts, though there are elements of the latter present, of course.
It's a wonderful book, and a valuable guide, but it's not magic.
But nobody will talk about it in those terms, not even a little. Some only cover their ears and scream, NO at the top of their lungs. Others have no use for the Bible at all and only offer scorn or hate of it and what it stands for.
Wish I could find someone who wanted to talk about it as relevant literature - inconsistencies, contradictions and all.
The Internet
This is almost exactly the type of problem that the Internet is great for. Finding a community of like minded individuals that are a small minority and likely to be geographically dispersed. Try searching on something like "non-religious bible discussion", or "bible as literature".
Good luck, I hope you find others that share this interest.
Not "non-religious," really
Thanks, I'm slowly reaching out to some on the internet, but it is a physical community that I can interact with that is the greatest need. The internet may or may not be available as time goes by, and neighbors close to home will be even more important in many ways.
But it is not a "non-religious" discussion I am looking for. (Depending on the definition of "religion," of course.)
I am a Christian, and my life is centered in God. I simply reject the idea that the Bible is the perfect and ONLY "word of God" and refuse to worship it instead of the creator of the universe. I guess what I'm seeking is a community of those who know and love God/Jesus... who can get past (or hopefully never indulged in) this bible worship and discuss the real things of life without that book as the only reference.
Christians lived that way for many hundreds of years before books were generally available, and the Bible as we know it is a relatively recent conglomerate of translations of various human writings of many ages. I especially reject the ridiculous idea that it (the parts that survived) suddenly became perfect and all important because a certain king of England caused a translation to be done and allowed a book to be printed with his kind "authorization!" ARGGGGGGG!
Sure
The search terms are suggestions. Results from "non-religious" may give you ideas to refine/change your search. Searching is not perfect and in your case will probably require several attempts.
When you find an online community, you can ask if there is any one in your area.
While I am sure that there are others who share your POV I strongly suspect they are few and far between. Possibly Christian Unitarians are closest, but even that is a stretch.
The main problem I see is that most (all?) modern Christian sects are based on the Bible, or more accurately, on A Bible, since many variants exist. The Catholic Bible is different from the Lutheran Bible which is different from the [pick a denomination]. Your position challenges the fundamental authority of the sect to dictate the truth. Anyone who has their identity tied to a given sect is going to view you with great suspicion.
Once again, good luck!
The tail, not the kite
As somebody who returned to Jesus after 25 years as a Wiccan, I too am uncertain as to how fundamentalist I want to be. In my youth, I was briefly a member of The Way International, which taught that the Bible was inerrant and without contradiction, but that any apparent errors or contradictions were a result of mistranslation or misunderstanding -- and they'd supply the proper understanding. which meant that, once I no longer accepted their explanations, I was left with the contradictions.
Now, if I'm "anything" denominationally, I'm a self-confirmed solitary Tridentine Catholic. (Yes, I know there ain't no such thing.) Tradition and the Holy Spirit are as important to doctrine as the actual words. (Oddly, though, in one respect are they more literalist, being the only church that doesn't take a Clintonian view of the "is" in "This is My Body"). I'm not convinced that the window of revelation is closed. But the Bible is the tail that keeps the kite of revelation upright and flying. This was true even in the time of the Apostles. But the tail is not the kite; the Bible will not save you.
There is nothing to preserve the Bible from the effects of fallenness. People misinterpret Scripture all the time to support whatever damnfool thing they want to do, because their minds are not renewed, and that's true whether you see it as metaphor or the Inerrant Inspired Wurrrrd of Gawd. Only the Holy Spirit can spare us from fallenness.
The Bible is a lot like the Constitution. We really don't want a Living Bible, being reinterpreted for every generation. We've seen where that's taken us in government. Yet, who among us would say that the COTUS is the be-all and end-all of human liberty? There is so much more possible, and so many new snares. If the Apostles or the Founding Fathers came back, what would they write? What would be contained in "The Epistle of St. Paul to the San Franciscans?"
Ultimately, spiritually, you are only accountable to God and to yourself. The Church is blessing and support, but you live your life for Christ, not for His Church. If it IS His Church, chances are those will be the same thing.
One possibility ...
The only time I’ve had explorations of this sort was way back in my undergrad days, in a religion course focusing on Paul. I think you and I touched on that in my interview of you. The professor was an ordained minister of some sort, yet said he was also an atheist.
Anyway, one church where you might get such interactions with others is Universalist Unitarian. I know little about the denomination—I may even have used the wrong first term—but that seems like one good possibility. As Jorge suggests, maybe an internet search will help you find them, both online and near you physically. I hope you do find someone.
Comment does not exist?
The tail, not the kite
[snip]
Ultimately, spiritually, you are only accountable to God and to yourself. The Church is blessing and support, but you live your life for Christ, not for His Church. If it IS His Church, chances are those will be the same thing.
By Jeffrey Quick (not verified) at Wed, 2008-08-06 10:49 '
I tried to respond to this, but got a message that the comment does not exist... which is very funny since I read the whole thing. Gee, even the internet won't let me talk about this!!!
Anyway, agree much to the above. I've not found such a church in my 62 years, and don't hold out much hope for it now. Everyone I know has built a secure box for God, made up of what they will and will not believe, and they have no interest in letting him out of it or even discussing the possibility.
Glitch.
That error message is a transient glitch; in my experience it can be safely ignored.
The glitch
I figured as much, but the reply form wouldn't load after I had refreshed the page a few times, so I didn't know how long it would take to resolve. :)
Don’t refresh.
Just enter your comment, and when you preview it, the errant error message should disappear. If not then, I suggest trying “preview” again. That works for me.
A request
A visitor posed a question for you that you might wish to answer in a separate post (I deleted the comment because of its negative tone). The person wanted to know how you might reconcile being a Christian with being pro-freedom—the insinuation was made that in accepting any religion, one becomes subservient to its god(s), and thereby sets up a contradiction with being truly free.
Freedom and God
Thanks, Sunni! I didn't get to visit here yesterday - lots of company - so I didn't see the post you mention, but I've heard that theme many times.
It would seem to me that freedom is about choices. None of us can live in a vacuum, and few of us will make the same choices given very similar situations. Even those among us who are most dedicated to personal liberty, self reliance and individual sovereignty do not have the luxury of being completely independent from all interactions with others - chosen or otherwise.
Therefore, we must all trust others sometimes, even strangers. (Hang in there with me -- I'm actually going to take this back to the original topic. [grin]
If we drive on the roads, for instance, we must trust - to some extent at least or we'll go crazy - that the others on that road have the same self interest to arrive safely and, therefore, are probably not going to do anything to prevent that from happening. Obviously, that's not always true and even pure accidents happen, but if we obsess over it and can't bring ourselves to even this marginal trust, we would soon have to give up driving.
Perhaps a better example would be some sort of "gulch" community. Those around you are not going to be lifelong friends or close family always, and there will have to be a certainly amount of trust involved in living with even those closest to you.
So, the people who automatically and totally equate any trust in God with anti-freedom are being naive at best and dishonest at worst. Anyone or anything that you trust can and must exert a certain amount of influence or even power over your life. The trust is that they won't abuse that power.
Those who are free are free to choose in whom they will trust. They are also free to attempt to live without any trust at all, but I do not envy them that life.
As for a Unitarian Church, there is no such thing in this small Wyoming town, so I can't even look into it. I've just finished a very unfruitful "conversation" in email with someone who at first seemed to understand what I was talking about... but it quickly devolved because she kept demanding "proof," but simply could see none of the examples as being contradictions at all!
I guess I'm stuck with talking to myself about this... and to God. He always listens. :)
It’s just as well ...
you didn’t see them. Anyway, I really like how you framed your answer.
Regarding Universalist Unitarian churches, I found a site that has a list of them in the USSA ... hasn’t been updated since last year, but there’s contact information for some congregations listed in Wyoming and South Dakota. Some have web sites, too, so you can look them over first online. I do think you can find others whose approach is similar to yours, but it isn’t necessarily going to be easy.
Three possibilities...
1. May seem odd, but look at the Pagan community - some groups do look at the Bible quite seriously, but more from the sort of "collected wisdom" standpoint that I think you are after... Every small group tends to be different in the way they approach things, so you'd have to look around your own area to see who is out there.
2. A second to some of the others that have suggested the UU church. Again, there seems to be a lot of variation in UU congregations, you might want to try several different churches to see which one fits you best.
3. The "Eastern" Christian churches - Greek / Russian / Eastern Orthodox... I don't know a huge amount about these, but some of the more rational and strongly Christian folks I've known have come from that set of churches... One guy I knew on that path said that his feeling was that much of what passed for Western Christianity today should really be called "Paulianity" as it placed more emphasis on the words of Paul of Tarsus (I think that's right, the tax collector guy that did the Damascus conversion...) than it did those of Jesus... At least that fellow seemed to be saying that the Eastern churches viewed the Bible more the way I think you are looking at it...
Good luck on your search, wherever it may take you...
ART
Paul as the "authority"
Art, I think you've hit on a big point of contention here. Paul was not even a contemporary of Jesus. He was working from second or third hand information. He wrote a number of things that can't be reconciled with the words of Jesus as recorded, and certainly not with the Spirit of God as I know Him personally.
The "every word literally true" thing wouldn't make sense even if there were NO contradictions or inconsistencies, simply because these things were recorded by fallible men a very long time ago, in a language nobody speaks that way today - in a culture so different that we can't really understand it now.
I guess the question actually turns on the difference between the "fallible men" who wrote about their experiences and inspirations, and the usual Christian contention that all the scripture came from God himself and was not written by men at all. I just don't buy it.
Society of Friends
If there are any chapters of the Society of Friends (aka Quakers) near where you are, they tend towards similar attitudes towards the bible and it's role.
The Religions of Man
Tom Paine was a [sorta] Quaker wasn't he? I remember reading a little about them and thought they were quite liberal for the time (some anyway) and pro freedom in that sense.
One of the most striking things about various religious groups are the communities they form and the mutual benefit they garner from each other. Of course, there can be negative examples of this, but on the whole it is more community than I currently share with anyone on a face-to-face level. Sounds like it is time for a reread of Cat's Cradle.
Thanks, but...
Pereldan, I've looked into the 'Friends' and admire a great deal of their history and thinking.
But I could never be at home with people who are pacifists. And I highly doubt they'd be comfortable with me in their meetings since I wear a .45 pistol on my belt at all times and teach armed self defense. [grin]
I'd love to sit down and talk with some of them, regardless. Since there are none nearby (that I know of anyway), I guess that's not going to happen either.
No human being has the right -- under any circumstances -- to initiate force against another human being, nor to threaten or delegate its initiation. The Zero Aggression Principle