Defending the faith

I don’t shake my fist at the radio as much as I use to. Partly because I’m listening to Podcasts so I can turn off what I’m listening to at anytime. If it is the person doing the show that bothers me, I can email or comment on the show and get some satisfaction. The ones that still disturb me are the commenters. They are harder to reach, too anonymous, and they are legion. Particularly the ones that repeat the mantra, “you won that debate because you were debating a fundamentalist who doesn’t represent the true interpretation of the Bible.”

So here I’ll straighten this out, once and for all.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/reasonabledoubts/2013/01/31/rd-extra-debating-the-amalekite-genocide/

To get us all on the same page, I’ll refer to a debate about the slaughtering of the Amalekites featuring one of the podcasters at Reasonable Doubts. These guys are good. They take on respected theologians and support their arguments with data. The debate actually was aired on UK radio on a show called “Unbelievable”. Also a great show with a balanced approached. The Reasonable Doubts podcast included the follow-up comments read on on-air and some summary by the atheist debater, Justin Sheiber.

Here’s an important point: the only reason that people like Justin Scheiber make logical arguments against God is that there are people out there making illogical arguments for God. These arguments cause problems for individuals, governments and cultures. It is usually a fundamentalist/inerrant type of believer that agrees to engage in these debates, but it wouldn’t matter. They just happen to be the types who would try to defend obviously abhorrent actions of God. It is not the fault or the problem of those making the logical argument that other, more liberal debaters, don’t step up.

It wouldn’t matter partly because the believers are already arguing amongst themselves. It is very common to hear the kind of follow-up emails, tweets and letters that came to the “Unbelievable” show after the debate about the Amalekites. Those listeners were hoping for something better, but instead they got a guy who came out and said he believed the Bible as history from the get go. I can feel for them and I cringed right along with them.

What most of them did not supply is a counter argument; most simply said that the guy on their side, the believer side, presented a poor argument. I agree with that too. They then go on to say there are better arguments. I felt that way once. I attempted to develop that counter argument. I’m now convinced there isn’t one. Justin is right, it’s sick. If you are worshiping a being that directed those actions, there’s something wrong with you. If you worship that being because of other things it did, and you just didn’t know about these parts, that’s excusable, unless you are reading this, then you are no longer off the hook. If you are trying to compartmentalize these actions or hoping that someone can explain them or justify them, stop it.

http://www.amazon.com/review/RI1ONWP1IPZZE/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1434799808&linkCode=&nodeID=&tag=

One of the comments after the show did supply a pastor and even a specific sermon and book that just came out. This is where you can find an example of Christians arguing amongst themselves. I looked up an earlier book of his, “Letters from a Skeptic” and perused the comments on Amazon.com. Most of the negative comments attacked his theology. That is, they were happy that the skeptic in the book was convinced by the letters that Boyd addressed modern theological questions, but they didn’t like that he redefined God to do it. And, as this reader review points out, the so-called skeptic was very open to deistic ideas in the first place, and he had a weak scientific background, so the entire exercise has very little value.

So the question is, do we have a new emerging theology? Is there one that can reconcile the God who commands armies to the one who loves all his children? People clinging to the old agree that this theology is new one and they say it does not speak to the all-knowing all-powerful God that they know. This is as much a split as was Christianity from Judaism or Protestantism from Catholicism. The new does not seek the blessing of the old. It criticizes it just as Jesus criticized the Pharisees and Luther criticized the Popes. It posts its theses in public and invites you to read the scripture yourself and decide. And just like Luther and Christ, it claims the connection to the same old scriptures. It just knows them better and understands God better and is giving a better, more modern interpretation, or so they say.

If the emerging theology did not claim to be connected to the original story of the creation of the universe it could not make any claims about the uniqueness of Jesus. At the very least, it would have to disclaim the genealogy in the gospels that connects them. It would then need to provide reasons for disclaiming that and not other claims and the whole mess would start to crumble. Everybody knows this is happening.

To prevent the house of cards from falling, some have pointed to the fundamental cornerstones and said you must believe these or you’re out. They have returned to the repetitive claims of the end of times. Others are attempting to build new structures and scaffolding to hold up the old. Neither will allow the teachings of Jesus to compete in the full marketplace of ideas, because that would make the pastors and theologians redundant. That would require they support their philosophy with logic and that sounds like work.

It is possible that we, the skeptics, the a-theologians, could just stand on the sidelines and watch the two teams continue to carry off their wounded players. The danger is, in this world of modern warfare, allowing such battles to escalate could lead to unthinkable consequences. The fundamentalists are making themselves the easier target, but if they win, it is doubtful that we would have a just and peaceful world, unless you consider a world where women are not allowed to choose their careers and homosexuals are considered mentally ill a just world.

For the moment, we find ourselves in an uncomfortable alliance with the emerging liberal theology. They don’t seem to want to debate, at least not often, and we have no reason to force them into the open. If they, on occasion, speak out against the Westboro Baptists of the world, we acknowledge that. If they are offering classes on the true history of the church, that’s great. The good news, when they are ready to engage us, their lines of reasoning are nothing new.

The comment about Greg Boyd that was read on “Unbelievable” said this is the best reconciliation of OT and NT he has ever heard. If it is, then we don’t have much to worry about. I have examined many sermons, blogs and books like this and find this one a little better for its cleverness and the use of a new analogy. All of them are pretty much the same. I was unfamiliar with Boyd specifically, but a quick check shows he has a couple best sellers, a successful church, and he was a classmate of Bart Ehrmann.

In the recommended sermon Boyd begins by explaining that he will not be preaching dogma, that it will be opinion, and you can wrestle with it as you please. He opens with Colossians 2:16-17, where Paul talks of the shadows of the old laws. He relates this to the Jungian view of the shadow self, although he doesn’t mention Jung and I think he does a poor job of explaining the archetype.  When discussing the OT, he is completely open about how abhorrent the behavior is and berates a current pastor for suggesting the use of imprecatory prayer (Psalm 109) to wish death on Obama. He describes his own journey of attempting to reconcile this schizophrenic God who saves with one hand and smites with the other.

As an analogy for how God acted, he tells how missionaries today need to act. If they go to a village that is performing female genital mutilation as part of their rituals and traditions they can’t simply say to stop it in the name of God. If they were to do that, it is doubtful they would be welcomed to stay. Missionaries today need to gain trust over a matter of years and hope their teachings about the ways of Christ will lead to them choosing to treat their young women better.

The irony here, not mentioned of course, is that this is a modern phenomena required due to missionaries not having the force of a military to back them up and enforce God’s will. Christianity is being forced into taking these steps toward competing in the marketplace of ideas because it is losing its power. In a remote village, they can still control the information they are using to discern the quality of their ideas. As modern ideas spread, this will be increasingly difficult. Greg Boyd is seeing that trend and applying what he sees as sophisticated arguments to the bigger questions that educated American church goers are asking. I’m sure he believes he can head off this drive toward a world where books are considered special based on their quality, instead of their being in the liturgy.

He applies this missionary analogy to the OT God. God was the enlightened American (these are my sarcastic words, not his), going into the poor village and seemingly condoning abuse of women, but he did it only to gain their trust. As Boyd says, “God enters us” as we are, at whatever stage of development we are, “and slowly transforms us”. Today, we should only judge those missionaries on the results of their work. If in the end, the villagers stop their ritual circumcisions, we should not look back and berate them for not producing those results quicker. For God, we should judge him through the lens of the sacrificed Christ, hanging on the cross.

He goes on to use more metaphorical language about crosses and humble missionaries and weaves in some standard crapola about free will, but I want to review up to here. I’m not sure if I’ll go into more detail in the future or not. First, he has the balls to open with a statement about how new his ideas are. He wants to say that you, the person who has given up their Sunday morning to come listen to him, is special. You have made the right choice about church. You’ve come to the smart, cutting edge place and are about to hear something that very few others have heard. IMHO, what he says in this sermon is no better than any old church or for that matter a late night TV infomercial.

This is why people write comments like they do about debates with fundamentalists. They are parroting these opening lines even though they don’t really understand the arguments. They were told their knowledge is special and they never checked it out. They can’t repeat the logic because it doesn’t follow in a logical manner. But they are convinced that Greg Boyd gets it and could explain it. They think they just need to study some more, then they’ll be able to talk like Greg. Meanwhile, they'll just suggest you listen to his sermons. I wish more would do that study because in the process they would find out how full of it he is.

The second thing he does is classic emerging church manipulation. He admits the bad stuff is bad. He admits he spent years trying to figure it out and couldn’t. He engages your intellect, the part of you that has logically determined that there is something wrong here. He also knows you are sitting there in his church. You must want this to work. You want the good things about Jesus that you’ve heard about. You don’t want to be told to simply believe it and it will all work out. You want a mechanism. He provides the missionary work analogy; he provides the powerful images of a crucified Jesus; he calls the OT stories that you don’t like “a negative contrast”; he says they point to the “real” God in Jesus just like a shadow points to the real thing. Each step seems to have some logic to it but none is any better than the speculation of a third century Origen trying figure out what the gospels mean with little knowledge of the context of the history of the first century.

At the end, he blasts the congregation with a list of scriptures that seem to be as good as any scholarly footnote that would prove that Jesus is the “real” God. He focuses on the latter half Colossians chapter 2 where Paul says “These (the laws) are a shadow of the things there were to come;” and makes this rather bizarre statement, “The portrait of the law giving God is wrapped up with the nationalism which is what the violence is all about, so if one of them is the shadow, they’re all a shadow.” He gives you permission to dismiss anything you don’t like. His cadence quickens as he rattles off chapter and verse:

Jesus says, If you see me, then you see the father, don’t look anywhere but the father. This appears to be some paraphrasing around John 14:19 or so.

Matthew 11:27 No one knows the father except for the son

John 14:6 I am The way, I am The truth; and Greg emphasizes “The” and pauses to point out the singular is used here

Hebrews 1:3, the son is the one and only radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his very essence

John 1:17 The law was given through Moses, but grace and truth was given through Jesus Chirst.

Greg used “but” in this one, which seems to be a KJV invention. Other interpretations use a semicolon or comma indicating these are two separate functions, not one negating the other.

1 Timothy 2:15 There’s one mediator between God and humanity and it is Jesus

He also says, “There’s one word between God and humanity, it’s Jesus.” I couldn’t find a separate passage for this one. I guess he was elaborating on the one above. Later in 1 Timothy there are instructions for women to learn in quietness and full submission, which seems more “law-giver” to me, but whatever.

He finishes with, “One saivour, one revealer.” This could be the classic John 3:16, but hard sayin’.

He keeps repeating “Do you believe that or not” after each one. This is a very old technique used by preachers for centuries. It is semi-hypnotic. Then he gives the answer, just in case you don’t feel like thinking for yourself, if we believe those passages, then there is no way to look at the OT except as a shadow.

Of course, there are many scriptural references that claim the Old Testament God is the one and only “real” God. Greg Boyd does not mention those in this sermon.

Deuteronomy 4:35

Deuteronomy 4:39

Deuteronomy 32:39

2 Samuel 22:32

1 Chronicles 17:20

Psalm 18:31

Isaiah 44:8

There are also passages that say faith is the only way to God, or you can’t get to God without works, or that the end times are near, or just about anything else you might want to say is true.

After that, he practically admits that his “shadow” metaphor is a trick. He says he couldn’t figure out how to reconcile these passages, then he gave up, and click, the shadow. But he’s already drawn you in with an hour of Christian symbolism combined with pseudo-psychology and rapid repetition, so you’re left hoping that you’ll find time to read the book when it comes out and hammer through the details for yourself. He has convinced himself that this trick works and he is so energetic, animated and entertaining it just must be true. Plus he says he has an open door policy. Email him any time and he will consider your question. He must be right if he is so confident. Right?

Science 2

Checking snopes.com, this can’t be verified as something Albert really said, but I understand the sentiment, even though it is poorly worded. First off, every generation looks at the next one coming up and says they are idiots. That’s been going on for generations. It can be found it writings from ancient Greece. I don’t think we have actually been getting stupider for 3,000 years.

One way to look at it is the older generation just doesn’t understand the younger. They have different technology, which doesn’t make sense to them. And, when you grow up with something already in place, like a phone, or a TV, it is hard to appreciate all that went into creating it. Another way to look at it is, at some points in history, we do regress. There are golden ages and there are dark ages.

I’ve been reading lots of Richard Carrier lately. He calls these phenomena, science₁ and science₂. Science₁ are those times and places where new inventions are popping up all over and great progress is made in knowledge and health. Science₂ are the times when people just use those inventions without making much if any improvements in them. We could be entering a science₂ phase or we could be already there.

In the 1950’s, we cured polio, now we make Viagra. In the 1960’s we had a green revolution and fed the multitudes in Asia, but we still have cycles of famine in Africa because we didn’t finish the job and figure out how to apply those lessons in different climates. 1969 we landed on the moon and since then we have passed the dates of major science fiction movies that predicted moon bases, space stations and commercial travel to space without achieving those visions.

Some of my previous posts mistook the science₂ that was going on in the Islamic world as if it were science₁. They may have advanced the art of the astrolabe in that time, but they did not advance the science of it. They may have rediscovered some of the math about calculating the size of the earth and made excellent use of Greek knowledge of medicine, but very little can be counted as advances. They should be acknowledged for keeping science alive, but credit for inventions should only be given where it is due.

We still live in a time with more people dedicated to scientific discovery than ever before, so I don’t really believe we are sliding back toward some dystopia. At the same time, we have people who are using the new technology to promote the ideas that intellectualism is harmful and that only bad can come from scientific progress. Because the older generation gave us a world of instant global communication, they can be quite successful at that.

Theological malpractice

I was in an online, ummm, discussion, about whether or not Jesus actually existed. Such discussions require a certain amount of googling. In my travels I stumbled on an iTunes course titled, “The Historical  Jesus”. It turned out to be pretty good. You can hear the student’s voices asking questions. There was at least one Middle Eastern woman and an older guy, possibly from Texas, plus a few more. I would have loved to go out for a beer after that class.

The teacher has been around for a while. He talks of knowing about the new archaeological and textual evidence back in the 1960’s. Much of that went underground somewhere in the decades to follow. Some of it resurfaced with “The Jesus Seminar”, but much of it is still ignored. I only listened to the lectures, but here is the reading list, including the professors own work, free online.

New American Bible: St. Joseph New Testament Study Edition [ISBN 0899423116]

Thomas Sheehan, The First Coming: How the Kingdom of God Became Christianity

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/thomas_sheehan/firstcoming/

Paula Fredriksen From Jesus to Christ, 2nd edition, Yale-Nota-Bene [9-780300 08457]

Bernard Scott, Re-imagine the World Polebridge [0944344 86 0]

Robert J. Miller, The Apocalyptic Jesus: A Debate, Polebridge [0944344 89 5]

Dominic Crossan Who Killed Jesus? HarperSanFrancisco [0-06-06141803]

Stephen J. Patterson, Rethinking the Death and Life of Jesus [0-8006-3674-0]

By the way, Thomas Sheehan, the professor, is Catholic born, raised and still attending. He would often repeat that he doesn’t intend to challenge anyone’s faith, or change anyone’s mind on that topic. He does note that if you approach Jesus as he does, through his course, you may find yourself challenged, but that is not his intention. He would occasionally let his views on religion be known, they were more about people working together to find community for themselves, within God’s creation, but not as a way to win favor or avoid punishment. He would also argue that this was the message that Jesus, who he calls Yeshua, his Aramaic name, actually taught.

If you have some different ideas about what Jesus/Yeshua taught, you should take that up with Mr. Sheehan. He can explain where the theology that you espouse originated. Much of it came well after the death of Yeshua. He would argue that Yeshua did not see himself as the vessel of the message, or as divine. But I don’t want to get into those details. They interested me once, but no longer hold me for more than a few minutes.

What his course builds up to is the moments when the preaching of Yeshua was scrambled and turned into something more like history. Today the people who try to treat the Bible like history are called fundamentalists. At the time, they were people who had a message of their own, a political message, and were using the oral history of Yeshua to tell their story. They mixed the parables with the liturgy and said that these things; the virgin birth, the resurrection, actually did happen.

This does not trouble him. He understands that it was how it was done back in the latter days of the Roman Empire. What troubles him is that we have spent a few hundred years unraveling this, we have been lucky to recover ancient papyrus at Nag Hamadi, we have people who dedicate their lives to learning languages that are no longer spoken, and yet, we still have preachers telling the stories as if they are St. Augustine.

I have a study Bible that clearly states that the last chapter of the book of Mark was tacked on by later editors. They had to do it to harmonize it with the other gospels. Mark leaves you with an empty tomb and suggests you go back to your homes and live a holy life like Jesus. That is how you will bring the Kingdom. It makes for terrible liturgy on Easter Sunday. By the way, this is the New International Version, not some agnostic’s guidebook to Christianity. These are facts only disputed by those who refuse to look at the evidence.

For Sheehan, much of the evidence is “source” analysis; what were the authors of the gospels looking at, what were they reading and hearing. He also uses “literary” analysis; what type of writing were they doing and what message did they intend to communicate. So he looks at the book of John that has Thomas being an unbeliever. Now that we have recovered the gospel of Thomas, one that didn’t make into the canon, we can see how different it is, and guess that the author of John was giving a snub to the community of Thomas. Sheehan relies on the “textual” analysis from the people who translate the words, assemble the fragments and comment on the authenticity of the source documents.

This analysis does not end with the writing of the original documents. As he traces the formation of the early church, he shows how the Easter story, as presented in John, is “read back into” Matthew and Luke, then that reading is gathered together and read back into Mark. This proved difficult and thus the adding of the extra chapter. All of that is in turn read into the few comments about resurrection found in Paul’s letters. When St. Jerome translates the Greek into Latin he takes subtler meanings of words about waking up from sleep or being lifted up and uses the Latin for “resurrection”. From then on, we have a fabricated historical account of what happened in those three days after Yeshua died.

Sheehan steps out of his professor role at this point, about the middle of the 9^th class, and says, this is, “…the stupidity, frankly, of it all.” And he notes, it has given “the village atheist” all the ammunition they need to say it is stupid. He continues,

“And the fact that it is performed by people with doctorates and people who have the authority to preach from pulpits, doesn’t make it any less ignorant. If you went to a doctor and she didn’t know about the latest treatments for cancer, you’d probably find another doctor. And if she treated you with information about cancer from 10 years ago, you would sue her for malpractice. But preachers get a pass. Even though they are dealing with issues that concern the existential commitment of people’s lives, ‘does my life have meaning, will I end up in hell if I do this, that or the other’, even though they advise on those based upon their alleged knowledge of scripture. They get away with it.”

And the people in the pews let them.

If you’re interested, the course is in iTunesU. It is from Stanford University, 2007, given by Thomas Sheehan. That should be enough to find it if you have iTunes. Or try this link.

New Year's Day

Glad you all made it past the end of the Mayan calendar. Let’s hope those who believe that it is the dawn of a better world are right. I wasn’t worried about the world ending so much as I was that it would continue more or less how it has for the past few decades.

I put books at the top of my Christmas list again this year, although a very different list from last year’s. Last year was mostly theology. This year covers philosophy, psychology and history. There is one “A”-theology book in there, The Christian Delusion, a collection of essays edited by John Loftus. I bought this one at the suggestion of Richard Carrier, a historian whom I have read and heard lecture. I emailed him and asked for comments on my recent blogging, and he wrote back. It was not really flattering, but that is his style, and I took it as constructive.

He recommended I read his entry in this book. So there may be corrections coming soon. In his essay, he covers earlier history of science than I do, but notes that many of the claims made by Christians and Muslims about discoveries of science were already done by the Greeks. So although not directly addressing the Islamic Golden Age as I did, his comments are quite relevant.

Others are:

381 AD by Freedman, a history of the shift into monotheistic governing

The Republican Brain by Mooney, recent science on how conservatives think

Answers for Aristotle by Pagilucci, I’m not sure exactly what that one is about, but Aristotle interests me and I wanted to find out more about the author

The Structure of Scientific Revolution by Kuhn, this is an old one, but I see it referenced and recommended often.

Hard to say exactly what this year will bring.

Yep

The Secret

I found an interesting piece of sarcasm recently.  I am trying to cut back on sarcasm, too often it is only funny to myself, so I will let you find it yourself.  Consider it a quest.  When I found it, it was the top customer review for the book “The Secret” in hardcover on amazon.com.  Over 6,000 people found it useful, so I assume it will stay on top for a while.  I wasn’t planning on buying the book myself, but I was looking for some insight into what it was about.  I have been on my own quest for the secret most of my life and I am always fascinated by the latest popular claim to know it. 

I’ll save you the $17.49 and tell you that there is no secret, and the paradox is, that is the secret.  The book frames it along the lines of attracting good things by having thoughts, but that’s just another way of saying that you get out of life what you put into it.  You might also want to look at the companion DVD about Abraham, some kind of channelled spirit that helped write the book.  That is the point I knew I was not going to put anything in my cart.

I don’t expect that your life will change, or that you will experience enlightment from what I just said, but I have read the so-called secrets of many cultures and philosophers throughout history, and that’s pretty much it.  I have never personally created that experience for someone else, but I would suggest some much better sources than this one if it’s what you are looking for.  In the end it is a personal experience.  You may be wondering why I’m bothering to write this.  The reason is, I find books like “The Secret” not just a waste of $17.49, but harmful.  They go from something that can be dismissed to soemthing dangerous when they explain how the secret works, then go on to point out what is wrong with you that keeps the secret from working. 

I have had my own ah-ha experiences.  Those moments when everything came together, made sense, and I knew what was next for me.  Usually any attempt to write it down or explain it was futile.  Sometimes, I realized after a while that I wasn’t so sure.  When I was nearing the end of my college years, I went for an early morning walk in a park near my home.  I was in a hollow and I stopped and looked up and saw the most beautiful cascade of water coming down one side of the hollow, it dripped off the moss and skimmed around the rocks. It was caught by the filtered sunlight giving it the look of gold and copper and diamonds.  I was mesmerized.  I saw my whole life before me, I knew my future mission and felt the confidence of having done everything I needed to in the past.  I knew everything and at the same time knew that I knew nothing.  It felt as if the water in my body emptied out of me and this water was filling me again.  My life was over, and it was just starting.

I would like to take you there and give you that experience, but I’m afraid it wouldn’t do much good.  I have been back myself and it has never looked like that or felt like that again.  It’s really more of a drainage ditch coming off of a golf course than it is a hollow.  If I could simply tell you the location, and have it work for you, I would gladly do it.  To discover your own mission, you need to go on your own quest. 

What is unfortunate about books like “The Secret” is that they actually do work for some.  If you are unfamiliar with the concepts in the book, they seem very logical, and they are.  If you apply them, you might be successful, and the author deserves some credit for that.  If you have some success, then some failure, you might come back to that author looking for the DVD version, or the new workbook to refresh you, and that’s when it gets dangerous.  From the reviews, it appears this author is aware of that phenomenon, and plays on it very well. 

I don’t know if there is a name for this phenomenon, but I suspect there is, possibly in psychology.  When someone has an experience like the one I described, one that is difficult to explain, it is natural to associate it with a place, or perhaps a book.  For me, that little crack in the limestone with the cascading water is sacred, for others that place is just a parking spot, or a place where they lost their golf ball.  There was something there that tipped me into that sacred space, but I would have never got there without a lot of friends, a lot of effort, and many failures.  

Before you go off on a quest of your own, I hope I haven’t made it sound like it has to be a big struggle.  My college years were actually pretty easy.  There is no one way to go about it, and it doesn’t even require leaving home, although living in your parent’s basement until your 30 may not be the best place to start.  Important factors to include are a desire to learn, considering all viewpoints, pushing your limits, nothing shocking here I hope.  Some reading may be involved, but please skip books like “The Secret”.  I highly recommend “Siddhartha” by Herman Hesse.  For younger readers “The Alchemist: A Fable About Following Your Dream” by Paulo Coelho is quite good.

I hope no one is getting from this that I am recommending that each one of you needs to pull yourself by your own bootstraps and get out and figure this out for yourself.  We need groups of people watching out for each other and helping us to go beyond what we think our limitations are, and sometimes telling us to pull back.  If you have a group like that organized just because you live near each other, then you are lucky.  If you are doing well maybe it’s you who should start the organizing and find someone who needs a little help.  If you want to get together with people who have interest in the same book you do, that’s great. 

Some of you may be seeing some similarities with something else and I want to address that.  Some of you may want to quit reading at this point, I understand.  I recently came across another piece on the Internet, actually it was on You-Tube.  It started very slow, with classical music, using typed words, no voice.  It said that it was about to tell me something that would change my life.  It said I might experience feelings of great peace as I read the words that were coming.  Many of you would have moved on to the American Idol or UFO video, but this is my hobby.  It took a few more minutes, but eventually it told the story of Christ’s death and resurrection.  My only experience was disappointment.

The parallels here are that many people have had positive experiences with the New Testament.  Many of them organize groups based on those books, or join existing groups.  Some of them turn to that book whenever something goes wrong, looking for an answer.  Some of them want to convince everybody that this book is the only one with the right answer.  Some of them figure out that they can make a lot of money off the previous two groups just mentioned.  Some people think going to see the places referenced in the Bible is what they need.  Some claim to have seen visions of people from the Bible. 

The person who made the You-Tube felt that I only needed to hear the story and I would get the same experience they had.  I have never known that to work.  Any conversion story I have heard always began with a story of falling deep into a hole of degradation or egocentrism, or addiction to money.  Only then do they see the statue of the Virgin Mary crying or something else to shake them out of it.  There are of course many other paths to the same conclusion that are less dramatic.

Despite all that, I recommend leaving the Bible on your reading list.  I have heard a lot of bad things said about religion, but I have never heard someone complain about a criminal who found Jesus while in prison and now has a steady job and healthy children.  Unless of course his job involved coming to your house and trying to get you saved.  The difference between “The Secret” and the Bible is that it is only the interpreters that want to frighten you into putting their book above others.

A lot of people believe that the Bible tells them that they must get other people to believe.  I haven’t found that part.  I found something that says it’s a good idea to share the source of that which has helped you.  So, my work is done.  A lot of people believe that the Bible tells them if they don’t believe it, bad things will happen to them.  I found some things about seeking good things and good things will come to you, but also some stories about how that doesn’t always work out, and what’s really important is that you keep seeking the truth and living that truth. A lot of people believe that you have to believe all the miracles in the Bible or you don’t really have faith.  I can’t find that anywhere, in fact it seems like you need the faith first for the miracles to happen, or if you are lucky enough to witness a miracle that will help you get some faith.

A lot of people believe that God has a certain name and a definite schedule and you had better get on that schedule.

There is a preacher on TV who reads from the Bible and interprets as he reads.  He talks about the Hebrew translations and the meaning words had in the context of thousands of years ago.  Every now and then he stops and tilts the Bible up to the camera and says, “the answer is in here, if you just read it, have you read it?”  I have read it, and I have come up with much different answers from him, and I have read works by Bishops, priests and scholars that agree with me.  The TV preacher talks as if he wants me to study for myself and form my own conclusions but if I told him about those answers, I’m sure he would say, “well, you need to read it again”.