Way of the Mind

I want you to picture yourself performing the following experiment:

1- Pick about 30 books at random. Really, randomness is important. The books are supposed to be of varied genres, authors, and so on, and it doesn’t matter whether you’ve read them before or not. The sample is supposed to include many different kinds of books: technical, political, fiction, children’s, philosophical, erotic, poetry, whatever. Don’t restrict yourself to books you figure you will like, or authors you think you agree with. As I said, randomness is vital. The best way would be for a computer to pick books from a huge catalog, randomly.

2- Read them all. Whenever you find something you agree with, or something you find inspiring or insightful, remember it. Bookmark and/or underline those parts, or copy them somewhere else.

Note: there’s no need for artificial “fairness”. Don’t feel like you have to pick at least one thing from each book, or that you must take equally from each. It’s perfectly OK to take a lot from a book and nothing from another.

3- Forget about everything you didn’t mark or copy. From now on, think of the parts you marked or copied as the “core” of those books, as the truly meaningful parts of them.

4- Use the parts you collected as a “guidebook” for your life, as a wonderful source of wisdom, knowledge and morality. (Ignore the fact that you picked whatever you already believed or agreed with.) Follow that guidebook for the rest of your life. Defend it, if necessary.

Strange experiment, isn’t it? But you probably already know what I’m getting at. I’ve just described, in a way, what virtually every Christian does with the Bible. (Those who actually read any of it, that is.)

The “random books by different, random authors” part was important, because the Bible isn’t only one book, it’s a collection of several, written by many authors who never met each other, sometimes separated by centuries, and who sometimes contradict each other. Not to mention that some parts are song lyrics, some are proverbs, some are (highly biased) history accounts, and some are laws or moral rules.

So, most Christians pick the parts they already agree with, ignore the rest, and call their favorite parts “the core of the Bible”. You’re a nice person? Pick the few love / forgiveness parts (mostly in the Gospels). You’re a bigot? Pick Leviticus, or Paul’s books in the NT. You’re suspicious of science and secular knowledge? Pick Genesis, along with some parts from Job. Want to believe God is good, loving, and just? Ignore virtually all of the Bible, and invent your own God in your mind, with the traits you want him to have (but keep calling yourself a “Christian”).

And, no matter what you do, defend the parts you’ve picked as if they represent not only the entire Bible, but Christianity itself.

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Related posts:

1. Christianity without the Bible, part 2
2. Picking and choosing
3. Is Christianity to blame for Bible-inspired sexism?
4. Now reading: "The End of Faith", by Sam Harris
5. The Dark Side of the Bible, part 1