A beginner's quasi-Christian response to the Bible

"All living souls welcome whatever they are ready to cope with; all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible."

 - George Santayana 

"You've gotta take this thing with a grain of salt, buddy, come on." 

- Reverend Lovejoy on the bible, The Simpsons

I’ve never considered myself religious. I’ve managed to avoid actually reading the Bible for all of my 23 years, perhaps because I’ve been intimidated by the reputation that precedes it. It toted a sort of Pandora’s box-like quality that I simply sidestepped until a few weeks ago, when out of sheer curiosity an organic interest was born in me. In some way, religious or secular, personally or academically, I knew I would be a disadvantaged bibliophile if I continued to judge this revered book by its bland, monochromatic cover. So, like planet Earth, I started with Genesis.

While a 2011 Gallup survey reports that a whopping 30 per cent of U.S. adults interpret the Bible literally, I am siding with the majority. After all, subjugation of women, religious intolerance, incest, slavery, and capital punishment are all societal woes that are justified in the Bible. Just how seriously can we treat questionable biblical guidance while retaining practicality and sanity? 

Certainly, God would not want us to kill two turtledoves every time we sinned. Are there even enough turtledoves alive to accommodate that? And surely God would not literally want us to cut off the hand that we’ve used to sin—we’d be a legion of amputees. We widely ignore specific counsel regarding premarital sex (1 Thessalonians 4:3-5), ejaculation (Genesis 38:9), divorce (Matthew 19:6), and finances (1 Corinthians 16:2). If some things in the Bible can be so casually and commonly overlooked, how can other things be so fiercely guarded and debated?

God said that it was an abomination for a man to lie with another man (Leviticus 20:13)—and this has spiraled into a culture of institutionalized homophobia. God told us to give 10 per cent of our income to the church (Leviticus 27:30)—and now we have churches with billboards and commercials, the pastor wearing a mic like Britney Spears’, and toting a salary that rivals hers. God told us to be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 9:7), and now we have blanketed the Earth with our presence, much to its detriment. Would it not be wise to treat all people as equals, tithe directly to charities and those we wish to help, and assign more focus towards cherishing and preserving the earth we have been multiplying upon?

Throughout my reading, one question plagued my mind worse than frogs or locusts: Why is it that we are so afraid to admit that we do not know something? We would rather create answers with gaping inconsistencies than to conclude we do not and cannot know, because to admit that is to introduce the possibility that nothing is real. Nothing exists the way we believe it does, so why should the truth, whatever that may be, mirror our hypotheses? Why should the reality of what will become of us be within the spectrum of our abilities to understand and comprehend life and death?

I don’t know if I became a journalist because I am skeptical, or if I am skeptical because I am a journalist. I constantly find myself questioning articles that I read from even the most “reputable” sources. My general skepticism has certainly prevented the progression of any personal relationship I might have with religion, or more specifically, Christianity. A compilation of tales written by ancient strangers, who certainly were much different than I in language, lifestyle, and frame of intelligence, won’t win my trust with just the shake of a shekel.

I do not believe circumcision is a prerequisite for holiness. I do not believe God “hates fags,” as religious picketers tend to boast. I do not believe the Israelites are the favored people of Earth. I find that unjust and unlike a God that is purported to love everyone equally. In fact, in 1999, Tel Aviv University archaeologist Ze’ev Herzog said in an article in the Ha’aretz newspaper that “the Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel.” Furthermore, Herzog asserts that “the united monarchy of David and Solomon, which is described by the Bible as a regional power, was at most a small tribal kingdom.”

Though Herzog’s statements remain controversial, they are a quintessential representation of the intent of biblical archaeology: to sift the true apart from the false. The basis for so much conflict that bleeds into the history we are today writing is mythical. As we forge battles on archaic beliefs, we curtail the opportunities for internal progression and ultimately, peace. Though we pick and choose biblical logic to support our moral standpoints, there will almost always be other biblical content to the contrary. Therefore, perhaps the situation is akin to lawyers arguing a complicated legal case. No one is wrong, no one is right, but the implications are widespread enough to affect us all. The challenge is utilizing the contents of the Bible as a tool and not a weapon.

No one can deny that there is more to life than we know. There is more to everything that we see, that we feel, that we shallowly surmise based on this book or that experience or this friend or that teacher. Our existence is entirely our own, and it only makes sense that many would feel motivated to invite in a higher power, a source of hope, a way to justify our existence as something more than a blip in the universe. I look out into the galaxy and feel compounded by the weight of all of which I do not know, which no one knows, and no one may ever know. You cannot convince someone to relinquish their faith, because to their faith they are indeed faithful. I just only hope for this faith to culminate in positive and progressive ways, and not revert to archaic ideologies of intolerance and hateful violence.

Everyone who believes anything that cannot be proven is doing so for their own reasons, all of which may differ from one another. Some believe to be protected, some believe because they have been bred into believers. Some believe because they genuinely believe, and others believe because they’ve never given a second thought to what it is they actually believe and why. The strongest argument I have heard for being a “person of faith” is that believing gives you nothing to lose and everything to gain, while disbelieving gives you everything to lose and nothing to gain.

However, I am more impressed with the contemplative than the assured, whether that’s assurance in theism or its opposite. Life is a journey with no finite answers, no technical guidebook to steer you—though I’m sure the Bible was the biggest and most successful attempt. The ability to have an open mind and genuinely consider the possibility of different truths and realities is paramount to progression as a person. It might not secure your admission into those pearly gates, if you believe a Heaven exists, but at least on Earth your aura will shine bright in a secular light.