by DAVID BROWN | CLEARNFO.com | Mar 28, 2016
David Brown
In full disclosure, I was born and raised a Christian and am a Christian today. I do however have a brain and have a background based on personal experience in many different denominations, religions and philosophies.
Depending on whose numbers you use, there are between 20,000 and 40,000 different Christian denominations. It is remarkable that all claim to base their religion on the reading of the same book. Though born and raised a Baptist, I have spent most of my life in many diverse denominations and found it curious that one would condemn the drinking of alcohol while another would use alcohol as part of Holy Communion (Eucharist). Some would baptize via sprinkling while others full-immersion. Some believe in the elect and predetermination while others believe in free agency. Some would allow singing but no musical instruments, others would not permit coed swimming or dancing and so it goes. All this from one book?
I use to enjoy torturing some of these people by turning their own words against them using exegesis and then watching them flop around with the logic bomb I just released. This was not done as a cruel joke, but rather an opportunity for them to think and grow out of their self-imposed rut. I have also censored many of my comments like there were two major edits of the KJV of the Bible and over 600 books entirely left out of the version they are reading.
But based on the diversity of belief systems we discover in the wild, it occurred to me that perhaps we each read a lengthy book like the Bible and then we each find something of ourselves within this book. We find our loves, our fears and our hatreds –and of course being flawed humans– accentuate and embellish those things we find that stimulate a particular emotional charge that makes each of us unique. In effect the Bible can reveal to us our biases and our prejudices and we are then turned over to our own strong delusions to create our own man-made religion. So in a sense our reading of the Bible can be like looking into a mirror of Erised. So how do we avoid the mirror of Erised effect? Firstly, we must be willing to gore our own ox in the pursuit of truth; and secondly, we must be lovers of the truth. In short, we must have a pure heart. Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. (God = Truth = Light = Love). More on this topic in the link below…
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