Confusion in the Bible
The Bible is very ambiguous. Every verse is a product of people in particular times and places; always to assert authority, maybe to restate tradition, upstage a rival story, assimilate a popular myth, or create a new one. As a consequence, different authors had quite varied ideas about God and his relationship with humankind.
In the Old Testament, god was an anti-gentile racist. He was judgmental, sexist, homophobic and punitive. He told the Jews they alone were really special and that he had a never-ending covenant with them.
Paul came along and claimed a new covenant overrode the old. He wrote that God’s favorites, the Jews, were now the enemies of the entire human race.
The New Testament god was not so violent, did not talk as often, and was less likely to interfere in human affairs. His demands differed with each author. Paul put down that we would win God’s favor through faith alone, but James jotted that faith was futile without good works. Paul posted that the Torah was no longer important, but Jesus taught that the Torah must be obeyed.
Is God a pro-Jewish dictator who will reward you because of good works, or an anti-Jewish oddball who wants you to have faith? It all depends on which church you go to, your preacher’s prejudices, and which part of the Bible you read.
The authors couldn’t come to a consensus about Jesus. In Matthew, he was the messiah of the Jews and didn’t want to preach to gentiles, yet in John he was the savior of all humankind, 99.8 percent of whom weren’t Jewish, and he scorned the Jews. Jesus told people to forgive seventy times seven times, but condemned his own enemies to hell. He said
“blessed are the peacemakers,”
but then claimed he did not come to bring peace to the world but a sword. He put Peter in charge and gave him the keys to the kingdom of heaven, yet later said no one was to be in charge. Jesus’ own brother (James) did not know he rose from the dead, and nor did Mark, one of his first biographers.
Paul’s teachings were confusing and inconsistent, and his Christ figure, supposedly the same Jesus of the Gospels, obviously was not, and would not share his wisdom with the world.
Both characters, God and Jesus, had mismatched personalities, yet were sometimes said to be one, had odd allegiances, as they loved or loathed the Jews, and had irreconcilable rules, as they followed or forsook the Law. No wonder Christians are confused when browsing the Bible!
The Bible is a theological, philosophical quagmire! It had too many contributors to be consistent. Anyone can quote some bit of it to back up almost any belief. The philosopher Daniel Dennet points out that if we try to comprehend Christianity we’re confronted with
“a thicket in a swamp in a fog.” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0iVCxx-GkMg#!).
Strangely enough, if “God’s” rules were more reliable, the Bible probably would not be so popular. The confusion has deliberately not been cleared up because it conceals the fact that the creeds contain lame brained, antiquated ideas. Too many people blame themselves for not understanding the Bible, but the real reason for their poor perception is its crazy contradictions.
Christians should not waste time trying to rationalize Biblical teachings. Half-baked arbitrary interpretations of inconsistent ancient texts have no credibility. It is much more rewarding to trust our own reasoning.
The existence of so many versions of the Bible, which contain many different interpretations and interpolations, makes a mockery of the alleged “truths” they try to tell. Some translators are deliberately dishonest, for example.
“If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered…” (Deut. 22:28, New International Version). Compare this to
“Suppose a woman isn’t engaged to be married, and a man talks her into sleeping with him. If they are caught…” (Deut. 22:28, Contemporary English Version). There is a world of difference between rape and consensual sex.
The Bible Doesn’t Have All the Answers
“But if external evidence (in support of the Bible) be wanting, and internal evidence be fatal to the truthfulness of the writings, then it will become our duty to remove them from the temple of history, and to place them in the fairy gardens of fancy and of myth, where they may amuse and instruct the student, without misleading him as to questions of fact.”
(Annie Basant, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie Besant)
We won’t find all the answers in any book. Even our modern secular laws have deficiencies. We need to rely on our common sense and the impartial opinions of others to decide what is right or best. Some books may help by pointing us in the right direction, and some books are better at that than others. The Bible, a book riddled with inconsistencies, falsehoods and immoral ethics, is the last place we should look for moral guidance.