What is the Bible, to Christians?
In general, it’s their religion’s “holy book”, though some sects, and believers, give more importance to it than others.
To some (so-called “liberal Christians”), the Bible is mostly a collection of parables and stories, to teach something about God, faith, and so on, and not to be taken literally (in other words, a lot of Christians don’t actually believe in the story of Adam and Eve, for instance). Also, many believe the New Testament (more focused on salvation, faith, and the afterlife) “supersedes” the Old (which is more historical, deals mostly with Israel, doesn’t really mention the afterlife that much, if at all, and shows God to be everything but “a god of Love”).
Then you have many degrees of “taking the Bible seriously”, up to the ones (I’ll call them “fundamentalists”) who believe the Bible is the actual, literal word of God. (even if it was, originally, they’re still quite naive to believe that it hasn’t ever been altered by interested human hands… but that’s another story) These are the ones who can find passages in the Bible (and they’re not that hard to find) to justify the killing of homosexuals, abortion clinic bombings, sexism, distrust of “secular” education, and so on - after all, it’s written in the Bible! (though I’m sure it didn’t exactly specify using “bombs”…)
Luckily, most Christians fall into the first group, not the second (though, again, there are degrees, it’s not a binary thing).
Now, as an atheist, I’m certainly not advocating fundamentalism; if anything, I believe that the “liberal” Christians are much more rational, and certainly a lot healthier, than the fundies. But what do they do - indeed, what do they have to do - to be that way?
They pick and choose from the Bible. They ignore a lot of it.
They pick the few parts that teach forgiveness, love, justice, care for others, and that show God to be “a loving God”, like a heavenly father. And they base all their belief on those.
And they ignore the rest. Which makes up most of the Bible. They ignore most of the supposed “divinely inspired, word of God”.
They ignore the many parts that call for fanaticism, rigidness, killing of unbelievers, punishments that affect not only the supposed sinner, but his family, including several generations of descendants. They skip the parts that say than people should be put to death for homosexuality, or for disobeying their parents, or for doing this, or that - even for gathering wood on the Sabbath. They move over the parts that don’t make any sense (4 links). They believe in an all-powerful God, so they ignore passages like this.
So, basically, the only way to be a non-fanatic Christian is to ignore, say, 90% of the Bible.
While I applaud such people for rejecting the obviously “bad” parts of their “holy” book, I have to say that it doesn’t really make a lot of sense… that is, if you pick and choose from the Bible, following only the parts you like (about, say, 10%), then aren’t you, in a way, creating your own religion? Aren’t you saying that 90% of the Bible is worthless for you, yet the remaining 10% is worth following, believing in, basing your faith on? Aren’t you, in effect, saying that 90% of the supposed “word of God” is… crap?
Or, putting this in another way: if you already have a system of beliefs, a sense of right and wrong, and you reject everything from the Bible that feels “wrong” to you, and accept only what feels “right”… then what do you need the Bible for? You already had a system of beliefs! If you know that killing innocents is wrong, do you really need the Bible to tell you killing innocents is wrong - while having to skip all the parts where it says God commanded the Israelites to put several entire peoples to the sword, including women and children?
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Well, then they are this time’s protestants, in a passive manner.
But what’s wrong with filtering the Bible’s content? Isn’t that what we have “freedom of thought” for? It’s not like they’re trying to convert someone else into a christian, is it?
I can’t speak for the whole “liberal” christian population, so I won’t, but I think some have read through the Bible, from one end to the other, but rather chose not to follow its every “command” because it’s out-of-date, it no longer makes sense (and it may never have made, I really don’t know) in our society.
Let me give an extreme example (like I usually do): imagine your (grand)father ran a Nazi concentration camp. Do you go around rounding up jewish people in a similar fashion just because someone who is important to you “says” (or in this case, did) so?
Aren’t you responsible for your actions after a certain age?
Of course, if it’s denial we’re talking about, then it’s a whole different matter, but I really won’t go out on a limb and speak for “everyone” or “the whole ‘liberal’ christian populace”, it’d be arrogant of me.
The thing here is that the Bible is supposed to be a “holy book”. The “word of God”. “Divinely inspired”.
Or, putting it in another way: if there *was* a God, and the Bible was his divinely inspired word, don’t you think he would be angry, and even offended, by people throwing 90% of that divinely inspired word away? The nerve, the arrogance of these mortals!
Hmmmm, you seem to assume that the “Holy Bible” goes hand in hand with Christianity. The ‘holy bible’ in its current form was compiled centuries after jesus death, and was never in anyway endorsed by him. Fact is many christians, since the first latin versions of the bible became widespread, denounced the churchs book as propoganda.
Even today many christians give no heed to many of the books that are contained in the King James Version, and its many sister versions that are todays bibles. ‘Real Christians’ follow the doctrine recorded in the gospels, (the first four books of the New Testament) laid out Jesus of Nazareth. As you said yourself, it would be naieve to belive that the bible has not been altered since the orginal texts were recorded, much less when they were compiled by the most politically motivated roman catholic church. Even barring intentional manipulation, many of these books, especially the old testament were passed on by word of mouth for centuries before they were ever recorded on paper.
A large number of christians I know belive the New Testament, and even the gospels themselves have been altered over the years, but Jesus makes it very clear that his message is simple, Love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as you love god. Show me one example where history has not distorted accounts and records of events and texts even half the age of biblical texts.
So yes, “those” christians do think the 90% of the bible is crap, because it is not from christ but from man.
Any christian that belives that he/she in anyway is more righteous than anyone else is ignoring fundamental “christian” doctrine, and should not be considered to represent true christian ideas. Nor, should any christian that claims christian absolutism.
The philosophy that jesus preaches,is so stark in contrast to the rest of the Bible, that i can only belive that mans additions are to be looked at, not as doctrine, but as a history of the church.
Indeed, the writings of early christians in the church already show that even they had already begun to lose the message that jesus tried to teach them, bending and manipulating the teachings for personal gain, or promotion of personal belifes.
It is naieve to think that a book, changed so much over time would NOT take the shape of the will of men who edited it, and that the original message would NOT distorted.
Think of it this way, if Jerry Falwell wrote a book, does it become christian doctrine because he is a self proclaimed christian? Or what if the American Protestant churches decided to add it to their bible, does that text automatically govern all who profess a belife in christ, or those who live in accordance with his teachings?
Joe: I’d agree 100% with you. But my point is that you (assuming that that’s what you believe) are one of the so-called “liberal Christians”. A lot of Christians aren’t like you, believe me. A lot of them truly believe that the Bible is divinely inspired, the “word of God”, and all that - and they believe that when the Bible says one thing and their senses show another, it’s their senses that are wrong.
Jesus’ message, as you say, has nothing to do with the rest of the Bible - including Paul’s writings (that is, most of the New Testament), which ignore everything that Jesus said, and just focus on “accepting him as your personal savior in order to be saved”.
I’m not sure what i belive actually. I truly do find anything OTHER than intellignet design for the explanation of universal origins a bit hard to belive, on the other hand i still like my belifes to be backed up by facts. Even if i could say for sure i belive in intelligent creation i wouldn’t assume that christ was from god as he claims. However I do have a deep respect for his message.
Anyway you do have a nice site man, keep up the good work!
90% of the bible is crap, but that’s because 90% of everything is crap.
SCNR.
Acts 10: 14-15
Unfortunately you are making a number of assumptions and unfounded claims without properly understanding the context of the biblical text. Please, do some reading on the concept of old and new covenant, form vs function of OT/Levitical law and the historicity of the Bible. I’m sure you’ll find lots of interesting stuff!
[quote comment="6081"]Unfortunately you are making a number of assumptions and unfounded claims without properly understanding the context of the biblical text. Please, do some reading on the concept of old and new covenant, form vs function of OT/Levitical law and the historicity of the Bible. I’m sure you’ll find lots of interesting stuff![/quote]
Care to give an example?
You know, the problem is that Christians selectively pick passages as they please: “this is literal”, “that is a metaphor”, “this one doesn’t really mean what it says”, and so on. That makes it easy, doesn’t it? Take the ones you agree with literally, and the others as mere metaphors, and, what do you know, the Bible fully agrees with you!
Case in point: “homosexuals are an abomination” - that’s literal. “Shrimp are an abomination” (those passages in Leviticus are pretty close to each other, by the way) - oh, that one should be seen from an historical perspective, it isn’t really literal, it doesn’t apply to modern Christians, etc., etc….
umm the gospels can be found only on the dead sea scrolls(and others) what is in the bible was decided by commitee in the 4th century…altought the modern gospels contain some of those teachings, entire gospels were exclulded so you have have to learn aramaic to decipher the real gospels or you can take the churches word on it
Great thoughts, but I find the background color of these pages unattractive.
[quote comment="6087"]Great thoughts, but I find the background color of these pages unattractive.[/quote]
Not again!
Any suggestions? 
I kind of like it as it is now, but I’m always open to new ideas, as long as it isn’t “white background with black text and light green titles”, which describes virtually every web site created in 2006. 
Pedro,
Again, I really like your post. I think you’ve thought through this quite a bit. Personally, I can’t say that I completely agree with you, though I see some of your points. I guess I wonder if you think there might possibly be a different way of approaching the “holy bible” then the way you currently expect a “christian” to.
I’m also curious of what your motivation for writing a post like this is? Are you hoping to convert so-called Christians to the truth? Are you debating specific people? Are you questioning these things for yourself?
just curious
Ariah: I write mostly for two reasons: because I like to, and because I hope that readers will think about questions they haven’t considered before, and/or do so from a different point of view.
Any approach to the Bible other than a literal reading (which I actually don’t encourage - much the opposite) is picking and choosing, as I said. Now, if you’re interpreting the parts you agree with as “the word of God”, and acting according to them (and, quite often, attempting to impose those parts on others, too), and ignoring the parts you don’t agree with as “non-divine primitive bigotry”, “translation errors”, and so on… then why use the Bible at all?
Yet this is what, I believe, every Christian does. It’s understandable, in a way, as following the dietary rules in Leviticus would probably make anyone insane, and following Deuteronomy would get one quickly arrested for murder and other hate crimes.
And what about when one part flatly contradicts another? Did God change his mind? If the explanation is that one part didn’t come from God at all… how do you tell which?
I’m perfectly aware that a fundamentalist Christian will ignore my posts (and probably leave a rude comment, too), much like he or she will ignore anything, including their own eyes, that may ever cause the slightest doubt in their “holy calling”, which gives their life meaning. But there may be Christians “in the fence”, who’ve started to think critically about Christianity, the Bible, and so on. There is hope for those - even if they don’t leave Christianity for good, they may at least get rid of literal interpretations, “gays are an abomination” bigotry, young earth creationism, and other garbage.
And they may wonder about the paradox of having to ignore most of their supposed “holy” book in order not to be a criminal and a monster…