Look, I insist on not getting all religious on you: each of
you's got a choice to make, or not make or whatever. But I've been studying the Good Book a lot. A lot
of people hold this book as an immediate solution to all of life's problems. In
those people's homes, I would not be surprised to find a dusty, unread Bible in
some basement somewhere.
Basically this book, or rather collection of books, is in a
foreign language, from a foreign culture, from more than 1500 years ago.
So it's not like you can start reading
at the start of a train commute and get it before it stops. Because
frankly, there's a lot to get. In the spirit of this, here's the 5 most common
ways the Word of God can fly right over your head.
5)Ignoring all the jewey parts
This might be the single most common mistake. I've seen
people who up and up declare that the only parts of the Bible that concern them
start in the New Testament with the birth of the prophesized Messiah, and his
sacrificial death. They say all the other parts, the ones about not eating bats
and keeping the Shabath holy are for the Hebrews.
First of all, wise-guy: What did you think Jesus taught? He was a
Rabbi. Without the teachings of the Law, he'd have had nothing to teach. He
explicitely explains that he did not come to undo the law. What is the law?
Well, the Torah, and all it's commandments.
Basically adopting this mindset is like only watching the
last episode of a series. How can you even know why stuff is important if you
you don't even know what they're talking about?
4)Reading everything literally
This one is a big problem in America, where there's a big fuzz
about evolution vs what's on the Bible. I mean, the Bible says that the Earth
is only 6000 years old, right? Well, no, but for a lot of people it's inferred
(it's not.)
But you know what I mean: How can God be wrong about where
humans came from? The Bible says humans came from the earth, not from monkeys!
Well, basically my answer to that is that I wasn't there, so
I obviously can't vouch for millions of years of monkey-fucking or thousands of
years of miracles. What I do know is that, often time things stated in the
Bible are not strictly meant to reflect
A UNIVERSAL TRUTH ABOUT THE NATURAL WORLD.
The Bible is not a
dry history book. Parts of it is poems. Part of it is songs. A lot of it
is fables and allusions. You can see this in the way Jesus taught. He would
talk about a man who gave his son his inheritance, and he squandered. He wasn't
trying to establish that once an actual dude actually really for real did this.
And you should not assume all parts of it actually went down, lest you get
caught up in tales of Tree Monarchy.
The Bible uses a lot of phrasing. Many versions use the term
"Uncover the nakedness" of a person. Uncovering the nakedness in this
case is a phrase that means "cheat the person out a partner", in the same way today we
might say "pulling some bullshit" when there is no actual bull feces being pulled. If you take it
literally it says you can't look at Grandmas ass. It might seem funny, but what
if she's dying and needs ass-to-mouth?
3)Ignoring the context
A lot of people say that the Bible justifies and glorifies
genocide and war, because genocide and war happen in it. However clever people
who say this think they are, they
clearly are ignoring one little fact: There wasn't no Geneva convention in the year 3000 BC.
Essentially we made the law that you can't kill a bunch of
people and take their land relatively late. But in Biblical times, to call it
something, this is how it was done, not JUST
by the Hebrews, but by everyone. Or did you think guys like Alexander the Great
and King Agamemnon got there by kissing babies?
The Historical parts of the Bible are not always meant to
reflect what we'd call a "right action" or a "wrong
action". Sometimes, it's just a bunch of stuff that happened.
One time a lady got raped. The guy who did it then turned to
her brothers in an attempt to marry her. They convinced him to circumcise
himself and all his crew for her hand in marriage. During that night and
capitalizing on their dick-pains, the brothers of the raped lady killed all the guys. A biblical
patriarch bemoaned the fact that his own people got him in trouble. Who was right in this story? Yeah, didn't
think so.
2) Taking opinions as cannon
I'm learning a lot at my church, and often you can learn
just as much by what the other people don't know.We where discussing the part
where it says that a Congregation with no gifts is dead and could not stand.
He was discussing that, and came to the conclusion that perhaps that part was
not true, for he knew many congregations of sucky ass-suckers that have subsisted for a long time, for example the Mita congregation.
More than 70 years ago there was a lady who claimed the
Spirit of God resided in her more so than in other people. She was called Mita,
and soon worship truned from God to her.
She claimed that she would die and then come back to life. But she only did
half of that. Desperate to keep the faithful, they devised a new story: that
the spirit of the lady, which inside it had the spirit of God, had resurrected
indeed...inside all living member Aaron. Recently it's been found Aaron had a baby and sort of hid it for forty
years. The congregation remains.
So is the Bible wrong about that? Well, no, silly-bones.
That part of the Bible happens to be A LETTER sent from one church to another.
The author is clearly lecturing the people, and that part was not some all
encompassing canon, but a mere opinion, meant to enforce particular values.
And if you say to me all the scripture is inspired by God,
I'll tell you that Pain and Gain is "inspired by true events".
Inspired isn't meant to mean it's all 100 percent true. Just that each part has
a message to convey, in some way, at some point, to someone.
1)Assuming the message of a story is what you think it is
A lot of people have access to a pulpit and access to
biblical teachings, and only use one of
those. Understanding what the Bible actually says takes time, and you can't
waste time when you've got to warn the people about gay marriage. And that's
how a lot of wrongful interpretations of what's in the Bible are born: when
people who know nothing of the Bible base their interpretation of the Bible on
that of other people who know nothing of the bible.
Take the story of Onan. It's become so synonymous with
masturbation that it's practically it's own verb. I was told this story as a kid
as a warning never to jerk off. And you know what, the story isn't about that.
Basically God had said to this guy that he was gonna have a
son. But when he was about to shoot his sperm into the lady, he pulled out, and
then he threw it to the groooound! And God was angry. Because, again, context:
The guy was basically denying God in his face. It's not that God gets angry if
your semen can't find a home.
But the nice lady from the Church was a fuckin' prude. She
was settled into the idea and just the "popular wisdom" of that verse
was all she needed.
Another one is "The story of the adulterer woman",
which has become a shorthand for " "Don't judge anything ever".
And really, if Big J.o.N. says
"Don't Judge" then what else is there to say?
A lot. First of all, yes, the story is about Jesus showing
the hypocrisy of some religious people
who are just as sinful as those they persecute. But no, it's not a barring
on judging actions, attitudes,
situations, and character, as in, to analyze them based on their actual merit
and arrive on a conclusion. You ARE
supposed to do that. What you are NOT supposed to do is to clamp down on and persecute others if you yourself have no
moral high ground, lest you end up hurting the cause with your hypocrisy.
Like, say, being a big anti-gay proponent who also is very gay, and often with
kids. Also, Jesus totally tells that
lady to not sin anymore. NOT that she's right and that it's all cool. NOT THAT
WE'RE ALL SPECIAL AND BEAUTIFUL AND
DON'T FEEL LIKE A PLASTIC BAG.
Got it? Good.
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