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Ranchers.net

Although this is a political forum, the kind of controversy religion generates belongs in a free for all environment. I would appreciate it if we could refrain from personal attacks, if we could keep it on topic, it would be more informative and fun. If you MUST attack someone, I plan on making fun of you.





Ok, let me being by saying I have not “codified” my beliefs into a single statement of faith like the Baptist Faith and Message, where everything has been analyzed and checked for consistency and denominational correctness. As I consider faith a matter of a relationship between me and God (I am going to use the word “God” to represent a spiritual persona, without gender, without age.....so if you want to use Goddess, Ishtar, Hera, Jehovah, Thor, etc, go for it)....but I plan to use God as a generic deity, and I plan to use the names of the gods if I mean a specific god. I won’t use Ishtar if I mean Shiva.

Next, recognize that I will probably be inconsistent periodically, and if you see an inconsistency lets talk about it and see if there is a resolution. I do not want to get caught up in minutia, so make sure we do not begin arguing about how something is spelled or where a period goes.

I do not know everything about everyone else’s faith (hell, I don’t even know everything about what I believe) I might very well make a generalization that is wrong about your specific situation or belief. I apologize in advance, but lets not hijack the thread by insisting that the Eucharist is the body of Jesus rather than a wafer that is supposed to be unleavened bread representing the body.

ALL backgrounds should be respected. That means if a Christian Pastor or a Pagan or a Heathen wants to wade in, then they have as much right to express their views as anyone else. In fact, if a Pagan or a Heathen or Wiccan wants to share their perspective or their holidays it would be fine with me.

I was raised “old” Southern Baptist, which means I was taught that what was important was the relationship you had with God/Jesus. The difficulty I ran into in the beginning of my “growth” comes from the Bible itself. The obvious contradiction between Jesus as the Prince of Peace and Jehovah as an angry God who will have no others before him jumped at me from the time I was a kid. The pastors and priests simply excused this contradiction by calling it a “mystery” and brushed it aside. And yet they continued to preach that God was the same then, now, and in the future......contradiction upon contradiction. If I had responded to a trig or science problem like that I would have failed the class.

Now remember, I had accepted Jesus into my life (I really do not want to use the word “salvation”.....we can discuss Salvation later, if you want) and was very much aware of His reality and of His presence in my life.......THAT portion of my faith was incontrovertible and unshakeable. But what about the inconsistencies?

Why did Jehovah tell King Saul to eradicate an entire people? He had Saul kill the men, the women, the children, the cattle, the sheep, and burn their stores....grains, meats, homes....everything. Well Saul was human, found some of the women good looking, the cattle and sheep fat, and some of the young men strong, he kept those alive to be slaves or concubines and added the livestock to his own herds. This “disobedience” ticked Jehovah off so much that at that point He decided to dethrone Saul and appoint David as King....of course, being all knowing, He knew it was going to happen anyway. Juxtapose this God against the Prince of Peace. Sorry brothers and sisters, to me this is not two facets of the God that is unchanging......and illogical contradictions do NOT make me happy with preaching this stuff.

After analyzing the many myriad contradictions (despite how they are excused) I came to a conclusion. The foundation is flawed. In construction, if a house is out of level, off balance, or shifting, you look at the foundation. So I looked at the foundation of modern Christianity. And that foundation is the Bible. The inerrant Word of God.

Once I looked at it as a book instead of as THE Book, once I took a look at who assembled the book (why was Paul, whose only contact with Jesus was after the crucifixion, a major contributor while James and Thomas and Mary who worked with Jesus on a daily basis for most of Jesus’s ministry excluded? ) and using a knowledge of how selfish mankind is, I realized what the problem was. The problem with Christianity is the Bible.

This brings up two questions. Why is the Bible a problem? If the Bible is the problem, what is the alternative?

If you did all that was done in the Bible, and used the Bible as the defining justification, you would discover yourself in jail in short order. For example, Lot (you remember Lot, don’t you? The guy that escaped Sodom and Gomorrah with his two daughters after the wife was turned to a pillar of salt?). Seems they hid out in the mountains after that and the girls thinking they would never be able to have kids cause there were no men in the neighborhood, seduced daddy......got him drunk, did him, and had kids.......lets practice THAT in Sunday School........


I recall asking a young pastor, who was seriously considering asking a deacon to leave the congregation because of an impending divorce, if he would allow an unrepentant, guilty, never convicted because he hid out, murderer to be a leader in his church. His response was “absolutely not.” I then asked him if he would allow a divorcee who abandoned his kids and wife...sent them back to her dad to support......to be a leader in his church. Again, I got the same response. I asked him (and this was a southern pastor) that if the divorcee married a woman outside his race would it be acceptable. Once again I got the same response. I asked him if the CEO of an organization knocked up his administrative assistant or a maid, would that CEO make a good deacon. Again, NO! I informed him that he had just excluded Moses AND Abraham.....two of the few men in history to talk to God, face to face and both are essential to the establishment of his faith.

So with all these contradictions and mixed signals, we have to look at the Bible as what it is. And to do that, you have to look at how it came into being.

For 300 plus years there was NO bible in the Christian community. Jesus had told his disciples that where ever two or more joined together in His name, He would be there as well. Why have a Bible with the author is in the room with you? And how do you know if the words being spoken by the participants is of Jesus and not from the self....yes, self interest was always a problem. He told us to test the spirit by comparing what was being spoken to what you knew about him.

Why did the Bible come about? Quite simple really. It began when Constantine’s mother became Christian and persuaded her son to convert. They made it the state religion which received the religious taxes. (Remember the tax protest nursery rhyme......ba ba black sheep, have you any wool? Yes sir yes sir three bags full......one for the master (the king) one for the dame (the church) and one for the little boy (the farmer).......2 thirds of your productivity went to taxes). So once taxes went to the Christians (and money became the object of the faith.......a historic tradition carried on through men like Oral Roberts and Jim Swaggart) several things occurred.

First, you can’t send lots of tax money to a group of people meeting in houses....which house would get what? Secondly, if you DID send them money, they would just give it away to the poor (it really is what Jesus would have done). Third, if you are going to send lots of money you want to SEE the results of what you send.

So the first thing Constantine did was build a bunch of churches. That way he KNEW where the meetings were, he KNEW where the money was going, and he KNEW how it was being spent. As he was accustomed to attending temples of various types, he had the new Christian churches built along the lines of the old temples.......a place at the front for a priest or preacher, and a place for people to sit (or stand) to listen. No place for Jesus to move individuals, No place for congregational participation, just come in, shut up, and listen.

Needless to say all the priests from other beliefs were now out of jobs......they were no longer living off the taxes. All but a few “faithful” of the other faiths became Christians overnight.....and became Christians with the same allegiance they had been Sun Worshipers or Pagans or whatever.........they followed the rotes and never became wholly vested in the faith.

With all types of priests delivering all types of sermons and rituals, the Christian faith became a hodgepodge of conflicting teachings. And the small home church that had sustained the faith for 300 years disappeared. So to establish consistency in teachings among the various churches Constantine ordered a librarian named Esuebius to form a council to put together writings on faith that could become the “canon” of the faith. Esuebius led the council of Nicea (with Constantine present) in searching the many books and letters that existed. They first established the “heritage” of Jehovah through the writings of the ancient Hebrews and called it the “Old Testament.” Then they looked at all the books and letters that were around from the various apostles and disciples. The determined that the Godhood of Jesus needed to be established so they selected the first books (called the Gospels) which supported the divinity of Jesus (they even used the Gospel of Luke who HAD NEVER KNOWN JESUS, PERSONALLY). Once Jesus as God was established, they turned their attention to how a “Christian” should act and believe.......and there is one underlying theme that they had to instill.....obedience to the King/authority. So the letters they selected included stuff like “slaves should be meek and obey their masters” or “women should not be placed over men” and other things that dealt with day to day actions of a person in a society of kings and peasants. Anything that was suggestive of independence or of personal responsibility was removed or downplayed. Unfortunately for the Kings, when the gospels actually quoted Jesus or told an anecdote about Jesus, the truths of his life was glaringly contradictory to BOTH the God of the Old Testament AND the “good slave” of the latter parts of the New Testament.

But this Bible, established by an Emperor to be used to keep the people in line and determine a hard line of faith to be followed (after the creation of this Bible came the persecution of Gnostic’s, the inquisition, etc.....all non-Jesus acts). And during the reformation, the Bible as conceived by Constantine, was the basis for the argument.........there was NEVER a re-visitation of the circumstances of establishing a “canon” nor was there a serious movement, except among a very few people, to re-establish the church as it was originally......that of a home based group where two or more would get together in the name of Jesus. And many of those that DID practice that were tortured and murdered BY the church that was supposed to represent the Prince of Peace.

Not all the books (actually there were NO books put in the bible....they were all letters from one person to another or from one person to a congregation......like Pauls letters to the Corinthians or Apollos' letter to the Hebrews) were included because not all books supported the status quo of the Roman Empire.

An example: During the era when the Bible was assembled (remember, it was assembled around 300 AD, it was a collection of writings and verbal history from lots of men over two thousand years), women and children were considered property. They could be sold, given away, or killed.....whatever the man of the house decided to do with them. Can you imagine the uproar had the Gospel of Mary been included in the Bible? Where Thomas is angry at Mary for telling them things that Jesus had told her and not them. He yells at her "Why would He tell you, a woman, things He would not tell us?" And Levi (Matthew) tells Thomas "You know He walked with her many times alone and that she was favored above all women.....why WOULDN'T He tell ehr things in private?" The very attitude, in that day and age, that women had rights or had worth would have set society on it's head.

And picture the response to the devine right of kings if this quote, from the Gospel of Thomas had made it into the Bible:

Jesus said: If those who lead you say to you: See, the kingdom is in heaven, then the birds of the heaven will go before you; if they say to you: It is in the sea, then the fish will go before you. But the kingdom is within you, and it is outside of you. When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will know that you are the sons of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you are in poverty, and you are poverty.

and this one from the same book/letter:
Jesus said: Perhaps men think that I am come to cast peace upon the world; and they do not know that I am come to cast dissensions upon the earth, fire, sword, war. For there will be five who are in a house; three shall be against two and two against three, the father against the son and the son against the father, and they shall stand as solitaries.

If this had been part of the Bible, what kind of chaos would have reigned throughout the empire?????

And from the Gospel of James........did you ever wonder why Mary was blessed as the mother of Jesus? Here is a brief description of her birth:

And behold an angel of the Lord appeared, saying unto her: Anna, Anna, the Lord hath hearkened unto thy prayer, and thou shalt conceive and bear, and thy seed shall be spoken of in the whole world. And Anna said: As the Lord my God liveth, if I bring forth either male or female, I will bring it for a gift unto the Lord my God, and it shall be ministering unto him all the days of its life.

2 And behold there came two messengers saying unto her: Behold Ioacim thy husband cometh with his flocks: for an angel of the Lord came down unto him saying: Ioacim, Ioacim, the Lord God hath hearkened unto thy prayer. Get thee down hence, for behold thy wife Anna hath conceived.

3 And Ioacim sat him down and called his herdsmen saying: Bring me hither ten lambs without blemish and without spot, and they shall be for the Lord my God; and bring me twelve tender calves, and they shall be for the priests and for the assembly of the elders; and an hundred kids for the whole people.

4 And behold Ioacim came with his flocks, and Anna stood at the gate and saw Ioacim coming, and ran and hung upon his neck, saying: Now know I that the Lord God hath greatly blessed me: for behold the widow is no more a widow, and she that was childless shall conceive. And Ioacim rested the first day in his house.

V. 1 And on the morrow he offered his gifts, saying in himself: If the Lord God be reconciled unto me, the plate that is upon the forehead of the priest will make it manifest unto me. And Ioacim offered his gifts and looked earnestly upon the plate of the priest when he went up unto the altar of tile Lord, and he saw no sin in himself. And Ioacim said: Now know I that the Lord is become propitious unto me and hath forgiven all my sins. And he went down from the temple of the Lord justified, and went unto his house.

2 And her months were fulfilled, and in the ninth month Anna brought forth. And she said unto the midwife: what have I brought forth ? And she said: A female. And Anna said: My soul is magnified this day, and she laid herself down. And when the days were fulfilled, Anna purified herself and gave suck to the child and called her name Mary.

Interesting the things that were left out of the "Bible"........the "miraculous" birth and raising of Mary (guess women didn't count for much), the length James went to keep his daughter a virgin, that Jesus did not come to bring peace, but strife........

And when you see the persecution and war between the "official" church and the "unofficial" churches it is no wonder it took hundreds of years before a drunk priest named Martin Luther began the reformation.......and by that time he was arguing about the interpretation of, NOT the inerrant word of God, but a book designed to support kings and supress liberty.



I think, perhaps, a "caveat" here would be in order.

Just becasue a book is old does not make it truthful. There are literally hundreds of ancient writings that were written in the 300 years between the Council of Nicea and the Crucifixion. It was a pretty popular subject. Some are attributed to apostles when the apostles had already died. Some of it is redundent. Some of the writings are pushing an agenda. Urban legends existed then as now and they had no Snopes to verify integrity.

Eseubius was a librarian in charge of over 700,000 books. He was Bishop of Caesarea. He had access to more than what we have. He had the education and the ability and the authority to do the research necessary to assemble a Bible. The bulk of his work was excellent. I simply think he had pressure to do two things: Establish a Book that was as close as he could to being accurate. Provide church legitimacy for the Emporer. The first part I think he did a credible job. The second is where I find fault with it.

It is NOT a matter of saying the Bible is wrong and these other writings are true. There is truth and there is falsehood in all the writings.........and there is probably MORE truth in the Bible than in any other. But my point is, using ANY "Bible" or any text or any writing can NOT establish a relationship with God. Only you can establish that relationship......and a Bible is not needed.....

Ok, your turn.................
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