This is the second installment of my look at Christians and Gays. In my first piece I wondered why certain Christians were so dead set to destroy or hurt homosexuals. These Christians made it seem that their religion demands that they do this – I just asked why.
To be able to discuss this there are a few points that need to be made. Without reaching some form of consensus on these points, further discussion would be hopeless.
Professional religious scholars admit that Americans are biblically illiterate. Basically that means they really do not know biblical history, where the Bible came from, who wrote what, who Jesus really was, etc… This does not mean they are stupid, it means they were never taught and did not seek knowledge on their own.
Divinity Schools, Theological Seminaries and other religious schools teach their students everything that is known about Christianity. This knowledge is almost never conveyed to normal Christians because, in my mind and the minds of church leaders, that knowledge was deemed as unnecessary for the practice of Christianity. We will let that sit for awhile.
Growing up as a Catholic, I was told NOT to read the Bible because I may get the wrong ideas and only Catholic leaders (priests) can explain the Bible to me. This is hundreds of years after Martin Luther defied the Church and published the Bible in a secular language (not Latin but German) and made it available to every simple shmuk out there.
The point that I am trying to make is that after the death of Jesus THERE WERE MANY CHRISTIANITIES. Beliefs ranged from Jesus being a smart and holy man to Jesus is a god in a human body to Jesus is both a god and a man to almost any variable thereof. These were “competing” beliefs and this went on for a good long while.
I point this out because TODAY we are still in the same boat. There are many Christianities with many competing beliefs. Christianity is not a unified movement; just look at all the denominations out there. Christians do not always agree with each other and this is a FACT of reality.
My second point is more ticklish. It is how American Christians perceive the Bible. There are those that think the Bible is word for word of God. There are those that believe the Bible contains works that were written by humans but inspired by God. And then there are those who attribute Bible stories to humans who wrote them for many reasons.
The belief that the Bible, word for word, is the word of God is indefensible. Speaking of the New Testament, we do not have an original or even a first copy of any of the books in the NT (New Testament). We have copies of copies of copies………………………….and many are also translations of copies. Since the earliest copies were made by hand, errors had to have occurred. Also translation from one language to another is hard and imprecise.
Another historic fact is that some copyists changed the wording of the copy they were making because they felt it read better or had a better meaning or this is what I think Jesus really said.
My point is that if you believe that the Bible is the absolute word of God (every word) then we have nothing to discuss – we cannot go any further.
For all of you with an open mind and a willingness to learn and discuss – we will talk in part three.
Janusz
No comments:
Post a Comment