More On Faith
I’ve been in a discussion with an online acquaintance about the evolution of God from the beginnings of Judaism to today. The point I was trying to make was that the God of the Old Testament, the God of Abraham, has changed pretty dramatically over the years so that the God most Christians claim today cannot be the same God.
An example I was using was the battle of Jericho when God told Joshua how defeat the Canaanites at Jericho. The Israelites obeyed God’s strategy and when the Jericho walls fell, they killed every man, woman, child and beast (except for a spy and her family). Following the battle, one of Joshua’s men took some gold and silver from the city, something expressly forbidden by God (I find it rather odd that He would permit the slaughter of every living thing in the city, but not permit the taking of gold or silver). In retaliation, God permitted the death of 36 Israelites attempting to capture the city of Ai and then directed that the thief be burned to death.
So I asked my online acquaintance, the following question when he told me that this was, in fact, the same God he now believed in as a “born-again Christian”:
What I'm trying to understand is, given certain facts about the bible, how does someone of faith discuss them?
His response was:
I think that a person of faith has to ultimately realize that there are things beyond our comprehension, to some extent. That's what faith does. It takes what we see as limitations and makes us ponder the bigger picture.
I find that to be an entirely unsatisfactory answer. It’s as though he’s saying, “Ignorance allows me to believe whatever incongruent and inconsistent notions I want.” So, my question is, is this an accurate portrayal of faith? Does faith allow an individual to believe in an incongruent being with no hint of doubt in that being?
Comments
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Interesting concept. Do you have a biblical reference that shows that the age of Jesus initiated the Holy Spirit?
Personally I think the "substitution" theory is one of the worst ideas in theology ever thought up.
Then why do you think Jesus died on the cross?
I'll be back!
The other method is not mutually exclusive with the literal-historical, but is decidedly different. It is a more mythological way of seeing things. Instead of thinking that the events in the story happened so long ago and now we only get echoes of them...the mythological view interprets everything in the story as happening in *my life* right now. On this level, there is no emphasis on a change in the history of the world. The emphasis is all on the truth the story exposes.
Say you read a historical novel, say, set during the holocaust. Through reading it, you get a hold of some important essence of truth about what it means to be human, and how that can be used in your life. Does it matter, then, if the story actually happened the way it was written? To some, of course. But the most important, life-changing message is communicated *through* the events, not by them.
Does that make sense? So why I think Jesus died on the cross has much more to do with what truths about being human and learning to live the best lives we can than what it did for us historically.
I think we'll start with that. I don't want to completely lose you (I tend to do that with people if I go too fast), so I just want to make sure that point is understood before going on. :)
Let me rewrite that sentence. But the most important, life-changing message is communicated through the *telling* of the events, not through their actually happening.
And most often we learn better through stories than we do through maxims and laws and treatises.
Oh, absolutely. But, I dare you to walk into any church and say "The Bible is fiction with some amazing moral truths in it." No, it sounds to me that you've decided that the only way to reconcile the inconsistencies in the history of the Bible while still clinging to the teachings in it is to say that the history isn't important.
God is a historical concept. His history is chronicled in the Old Testament. Wouldn't it be presumptuous of us to say that the authors of the Old Testament really didn't understand God. That they were more primative than we are and so we must have a better concept of God. They would likely say, "Nonsense! Our God is exactly what we meant it to be. God is nothing less than what He revealed himself to be to Moses and Abraham and Joshua and David. You, oh Christians of the 21st Century, have taken our God and turned Him into something foreign and man-made. It is not the God of Abraham, the God that led the nation of Israel to glory in battle against many foes, the God that favored the Israelites over all others. You have turned God into an idol of your desires for what a holy being should be in your eyes and not what He is." And they'd have a point.
Okay, so I get a little carried away, but you get the idea.
I'm just saying that of the two sorts of meanings, the mythological is *more* important, and when we put so much emphasis on the literal-historical to the point of *exclusion* of the mythological, we miss a whole aspect of our religion...and an important one.