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Yep…that sums it up. When some people read the bible and come across “difficult” passages they are tossed out. Sometimes we have to dig deep to find answers. That is what makes Theology so much fun.
Hehehe, I don’t think this is about the Bible…
…but a passage in it that says just as much.
I like this one a lot. Heheheh
Sometimes it IS rubbish – I’m thinking of the philosophical discussions that veer off into
“God beyond God, church but no church, me without me” discussions. This might have been fun back in college when those present were probably under the influence of some substance that could have gotten all involved expelled. But after a while, doesn’t this all seem a bit sophomoric? Try to disagree with these guys and you’re called every name in the book. So what is rubbish?
that’s funny I feel the same about maths or sums as we used to call them.
It was like shear frustration and I just couldn’t understand what to do with those numbers and those teaching me just didn’t know how to communicate it in a way that things would just click! sometimes they brought me to tears with their bullish tactics, ironically it can be the same in a church context.
I remember a time in school and long multiplication and finally I got the right answer but the teacher wanted to know how I got the answer so I showed her my working out and now she was baffled!
How did I get the right answer with the wrong working out, I didn’t care I was just happy I had the right answer for once she however punished me for not doing it the “PROPER” way.
some things however do change I have learned that if I don’t get it I will come back to it later otherwise I might have a tendency to run away forever, some stuff does scare me but ill still face it.
Whilst I understand the point you are making, Jon, and do disagree entirely with this man’s logic and attitude, I must admit I still sympathise with his frustration!
mercifully the psalmists give me full permission to both not understand AND to disagree
i use this freedom often……..
am guilty of selecting translations, sometimes the NIV seems so so condemnatory, whilst the Message or Goodnews bring a gentle warm glow, nice
sometimes I find people reading texts loaded with lively human content, (like the letters bursting with affection,) as if they are legal documents. maybe the speaker’s just uncomfortable with the concept of human feelings, and would rather have a book of codes of conduct?
I definitely wouldn’t use the word “rubbish”. But a combination of the bits I can’t understand, with the bits I think are just “wrong”… it does make me question whether the provenance is everything it’s cracked up to be.
I find that if something is rubbish, then I don’t understand it. Oh, wait, that’s just Coldplay lyrics!
…you know? You wouldn’t believe it….
…but…
some students have said the same about my lectures! 80
hmmm
that shouldn’t have been 80
but 8o
rather looses it’s punch in repetition, sigh
ops;
oh I HATE these smilies… goes off in a petulant sulk
there, that’ll work 
Interesting
My experience is that sometimes people mistake the way their brain plays connect the dots with the text of the Bible for “What the Bible says.” And then if anyone disagrees with them, or they can’t even understand someone else’s point, then the one not understood or disagreed with is being “unbiblical”.
A person can equate their understanding of the Bible with the Bible. “You disagree with me? You’re surely being unbiblical then.”
Then again, maybe I miss the point of the cartoon and am overlaying my own current frustrations on it. (shrugs)
Something I struggle with; so many parts of the Bible I don’t agree with at face value (passages on women spring to mind!), some of the OT stuff which depicts a wrathful God visiting fathers’ sins on sons. What do we do with these passages which make us struggle? I really have no idea
I wonder if some of it isn’t just phenomenological language. Like when we talk about sunrise and sunset. It looks like the sun rises, crosses the sky, and sets, to travel to the other horizon for the next day. We know that isn’t a literally accurate description, but we also understand what it means.
Maybe some of those things are just what *appeared* to be true to the writer. Then again, maybe that’s not a can of worms anyone wants to open because it causes as many problems as it solves.
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These Old Shades (#15) — I agree that there are passages which make us struggle. I’m having particular trouble at the moment with one of the parables (I won’t say which one because it will only ruin it for everyone else) which portrays God in a way that, if a human behaved in that way, they would have Amnesty International and several other campaigning groups after them! And to make things worse, the parable completely loses its point in the process.
A wise friend gave me some advice — he pointed out that sometimes Jesus exaggerated. Can you imagine someone with a plank in their eye?
good point rebecca
there is some seriously heavy duty aggression in the bible, I really don’t feel this is ‘endorsed’ by God, rather sometimes accounts of what happened.
I don’t know. Israel has been playing the whore and I will put them to the sword type language is pretty ‘endorsed’.
Subo, the ‘heavy duty aggression’ in the bible really upsets me! No matter what explanation I read or hear, I cannot reconcile a loving God with agression etc. It makes me think of the crusades and such.
But then I also cannot reconcile a God who’s mercy is limitedless with the idea that some might not be saved…so, at the moment, I’m investigating universal salvation (the idea that all will reconciled with God eventually — He will never give up.)
Basically, the bible gets me in a muddle…I want to learn about the character of God, but sometimes I don’t like what I read…
I dunno
I read the last part of Judges and it just seems horrible to me
it’s not that I disagree with it
it’s just horrible
and somehow, the people seem to think that God’s involved in all
this horribleness
thank goodness that doesn’t happen nowadays,
you won’t catch anyone going to war, claiming that God’s on their
side as they slaughter people in offices, or as they invade another country or innocents in school yards..
oh… oh dear….
maybe that horrible bit of the bible is horribly relevant
time for lament?
But Robb, was that what was actually ‘said’ by God? Or how someone tried to warn Israel of the potential consequences of the course of action they were pursuing as a nation; or how they subsequently interpreted what had happened to them? Or did I just completely misunderstand you
Theseoldshades, Rebecca, Hayles – I think how we approach managing the kind of cognitive/emotional dissonance you describe depends very much on the nature of our prior theological commitments when we read the Bible.
Good point Pat — but my worry is that the less importance I place on the bible being the final word on something, the more comfortable I feel when reading it.
Lately when I read something harsh I just hope that maybe the writer was feeling a bit moody that day!
It’s pretty much the only way I can cope with it.
Also, with regards to your reply to Rob, I’m sure there are bits in the bible where (it says) God instructs people to take over land etc.?
My friend (an atheist) said to me a couple of years ago: ‘The Old Testament is basically a book about a God who advances his people through war and the wiping out of other nations — it’s like ethnic cleansing.’
I didn’t know what to say — he had a point.
Hayles – then I’d say that what you need to examine is what lies behind your worry about downgrading the Bible’s status as ‘the final word on something’.
With regard to my reply to Robb, what I’m saying is that even if the OT text reports something as being directly ‘said’ by God, this may still cover a variety of possibilities: So it may reflect how the writer chose to state something in order to imbue a particular direction or action with authority. It may represent something written at a later period and be the fruit of post- event reflection/rationalisation/justification etc.
I think your friend’s comment has an grain of truth, but it is only part of the whole. I’d say the OT shows an evolving picture of God from ‘Tribal Deity’ (so yes – specifically located, ethnic cleansing, human sacrifice etc) to something much more expansive and complex (justice, mercy, God interested in all people etc). But it is not God who changes, it is human understanding of God.
What lies behind my worry is that I may be wrong — some Christians do think it’s inerrant.
You’re right that it’s not God who changes. But it is troubling that some Christians, for instance, believe that if someone commits suicide they will go to hell. Now I think this is absolutely in opposition to everything God is (LOVE). When we stand side by side in Church, we are ultimately believing in different Gods, aren’t we? Because our understanding of Him is so different. There is surely only one correct way to view God’s character, but we all see Him differently. I find this worrying!
Basically sometimes I worry that to a certain extent I try and find evidence to make God the God I want Him to be, and feel disappointed when I hear/read evidence that contradicts this. I want to believe in a God of limitless mercy, love and forgiveness. The God other Christians talk about sometimes seems to jarr with something inside me. When I read the bible sometimes I feel like inside I’m thinking ‘no, the God I believe in wouldn’t do that. How could he?’
Sorry, this thread has meandered a bit!
Hayles, I think we all in one way or another, “…try and find evidence to make God the God [we]want Him to be…”.
Regarding your comment that “There is surely only one correct way to view God’s character”, I don’t think any of us (despite what we might like to think sometimes
)has a grasp of the full reality of God’s self – we see glimpses of facets – and what we know and ‘understand’ is partial and provisional, but capable of developing and deepening.
There will always be these tensions to which you refer and I think that for each of us, no matter which position we come from, or how much we try to accomodate different perspectives, there is always going to be some point where someonelse’s take on God’s character/actions/demands goes beyond a point that we can accept as being commensurate with our understanding of ‘God’ or ‘Christianity’. Then we have to decide how we are going to deal with that…..
As to managing the tensions around whether or not one is right or not in what one believes – I try to be open hearted/minded in my attempts to explore the mysteries…..and I trust myself to the mercy of God. What else can one do?
Pat – This morning when I was reading out Jeremiah 5 it was the voice of God. Being delivered by a prophet. Jeremiah uses the image of an adulterous relationship to show how Israel have wrecked their relationship with God. The previous chapters have been about them “playing the whore” and lots of lovely talk of “whoredom”. Today they were “going to prostitutes”. They were definitely being “put to the sword” with only a remnant being left.
“There is surely only one correct way to view God’s character”
God is omniscient and omnipresent. We aren’t. We have heads that are only so big. We can’t ever know everything about God. I find it hard knowing everything about my wife and she is finite.
What we can have is relationship. With relationship we can gain an understanding of Gods character as God reveals it to us.
Pat, what you wrote was very wise, and it has really helped me – thank you.
Rob, I was very clumsy with my expression when I said there is only one correct way to view God’s character. I meant that God’s character is a certain a way, and it doesn’t alter with our views – (isn’t that relativism?) – so I find the fact that people’s views differ so much troublesome.
Problem is, how can I trust in the mercy of a God I don’t understand? How can I trust in a God who, some Christians argue, won’t save everyone?
Some people seem to start with ‘God is good’ then take everything from that point. ‘God is good’, so therefore His reasons for doing x, y ,z must be loving and just. That’s not really how my mind works! I like to look at the evidence and then decide. It is just two different ways of approaching it, I guess.
‘What else can one do?’
Indeed! What a pickle I’m in
@ beckyG (#3) to whom are you referring? Emergent types? The only reference point I can think of for those types are discussions is Peter Rollins, and I like him and know you do too!
Hayles –
Robb – I’ve never studied Jeremiah, at least not in the sense of textual criticism of any kind, so I’ve no idea about how it was written and redacted etc. I (rather lazily
) assume that it’s similar to Isaiah – parts reworked and recycled at different periods of time as part of the ongoing reflexive response to what was happening in the fortunes of Israel. I guess my point was really that tags like “thus says the Lord” cover a variety of possibilities.
Hayles – there is only one me. Some people think I’m nice, some don’t. Some think I am funny, some think I am cocky. Some think I am brash and others think I am self conscious.
Pat – I haven’t done a particular study of Jeremiah either – I just know what I was reading out this morning.
Yes Robb, but you change day to day…do you think God does?
(for what it’s worth I think we’ve got our wires crossed – I know that there is only one God, and that we can react differently to Him – that’s not what I’m questioning. I’m more addressing the fact that our different understandings of His character can’t all be right…)
So who is the real Robb? My character doesn’t change. If I speak in a crowded room people interpret that differently depending on who they are. English lit students keep telling us that a book isn’t definative, it is the reading of the book as the person reading the book has their own interpretation. The words are the same but our experiences are different.
To use an example –
One of my best mates an I disagree about the film Hellboy We both read the comics and then watched the film. He says “when I read the comics it was like Ron Perlman was Hellboy and the film was just like the comics”.
I say “I don’t like the film because Ron Perlman is nothing like Hellboy from the comics, he’s too jokey and not as disconnected as I read him in the comics”.
Who’s right? Both of us – because we are both saying something about ourself and the way our experiences brought us to the text.
As humans we aren’t very good at disagreement or at holding things in tension. We want answers. We want boxes because we can put things in them.
Is there a real presence in the eucharist? Yes
Is the eucharist a symbolic act that just recreates the last supper? Yes
I can quite happily live with the tension. Jesus neither said “represents my body” or “becomes my body” he said “is”.
Is God all loving? Yes
Is God a jealous God who doesn’t like his people “whoring” themselves to other gods? Yes
It is a dichotomy. Why don’t people (human ones) like it when the person they love cheats on them?
Does it mean they love them any less?
If they love them can they not also fly into a rage when they are cheated upon?
What about the French? They have “the crime of passion”.
fascinating conversation… thanks.
Robb, I think God is above such things. Or at least I hope He is.
i reckon it just makes God more mysterious. thank Jesus his thoughts are not our thoughts or his ways our ways. lots of mystery – makes God a lot less boring!
Robb – I completely agree with you about the need to be able to live holdimg things in tension (i think it’s the only way one can survive as a Christian – well, as a person actually
) – and I think your choice of eucharistic significance as a paradigmatic example is spot on: One can assent to both propositions and, at different moments each can be an equally powerful way of understanding the significance of what we are doing and drawing strength/encouragement’healing from our participation in the eucharist, or of opening ourselves to the challenges it presents. And neither understanding negates the other….
However there might be a difference between accepting that God becomes upset when we go off ‘whoring to other gods’ and claiming that he himself actively instigates vegeneful or punitive acts in response to this – which I think is the issue Hayles finds troubling.
buzz – I love your love mystery. I personally am fed up with it! It may make God less boring, but it also makes His character/image more readily manipulated.
(I don’t mean God is manipulated by us, I mean that ‘mystery’ leaves room for interpretation and thus misinterpretation and blatant abuse.)
*’I love your love for mystery’ is what I meant to say!
Great is the mystery of faith!
Sorry, I was trying to emphasise the emotion. A crime of passion is just that. The passion overrides the reason and the result is … a little more than “upset”. Upset is what happens when you get gerkin in your cheesburger. A crime of passion is a little more than that.
I hope the phrase “whoreing to other gods” hasn’t started to cloud the question. It is only because it was the reading this morning and I had to read it.
Again I am using crime of passion to convey something rather than making a direct comparison. It is yet another of those human metaphores that breaks down.
I suspect also that I have committed the heresy of speelong. How many e’s does it take to change a lightbulb?
I don’t think it clouds the issue Robb, on the contrary, I think this specific instance helps me to get out of ‘abstract mode’ and formulate a concrete question: Does a reading of the OT force us to the conclusion that God actively instigates , (i.e is directly, causally</em)responsible for)punitive or vengeful acts in response to human rejection of his love/breaking of his laws/resistance to his will? It is, after all, what some readings seem to claim; and indeed is the default understanding that many seem to adopt (‘Why is God doing this to me?’)
As for the heresy of speelong…..I guess we all sucunb from time to time
Oops – and I’ve just commited a tagging one!
Wow thats a lot of modern bible teaching out of the window.
Things such as Gay sex is ok, or Women elders….
And all are born sinners and are therefore evil
http://www.beatthedrum.wordpress.com
Beatthedrum: I’m afraid you’ve completely lost me
I’m not sure what this first comment connects up to/follows on from. Sorry to be a bit obtuse 
i can only make sense of the whole ‘god said’ thing of scripture, in the light of how people use ‘god said’ these days… and i conclude that ‘god said’ means a mulitude of different things and has a myriad different motivations behind it… not always good.
i am, of course, aware that many people read these words differently to me… and if the bible says ‘god said’ then that’s it, god said. but that doesn’t match my experience of the world at all. in the last year, i wonder just how many things ‘god’ has said, that wouuld shock us to the core. anyone using god as a reason for genocide these days is judged harshly by all of us. why do we apply a different logic or moral/ethical values to older texts?
Good point Jon!
it’s certainly a point that most seem happy not to address.
I’ve never really understood why some Christians are so afraid of questioning things, (like the Bible, for instance), but my mum once said perhaps their faith is like a wall, and if you start taking the odd brick out here and there the whole thing might come crashing down.
Maybe they don’t want anything to threaten the wall, even if it is full of crumbly bricks.
sounds like a good analogy hayles.