MY SEARCH FOR MEANING

God Behaving Badly: Is the God of the Old Testament Angry, Sexist and Racist?  (Author: David T. Lamb) is a relatively recent book about the Bible and problems associated with belief in the Bible as a book inspired from a righteous God. It also addresses God's apparent controversial behaviors throughout the ages found in the Bible.

About 15 yrs ago, I made a fervent promise to myself to re-read the entire Bible starting from Old Testament.  After a long time, with little exposure to religion since childhood, my adult senses were throttled repeatedly while reading how God allows (?) makes possible (?) initiates (?) despicable acts toward his “children!”

Someone close to me once told me, "If you have any questions about the Bible, please feel free to bring them to me and we can discuss it!  I will attempt to answer those questions!"  So, I got out paper and pencil and began making notations and writing my queries.  

It took me a very long time to get through the OT because, with almost every page, I was consumed with questions about the nature of God.  As I progressed through the book, I became more and more disgusted and shocked with what I read.  (They didn’t teach us all this stuff in Sunday School!)  

I ended up with a stack of notes and questions that almost could have become a book in itself.  Who was going to take the time and effort to explain away all, or even effectively answer most of my questions?  It became clear that there were no answers—at least no acceptable ones to my way of thinking.  Ultimately, I threw my notes away.

With my senses developed over many years, and my critical thinking skills honed, I still could not make sense out of God’s behavior.  However, the haunting refrain I remember people in church saying, “God’s wisdom is not our wisdom.”  (Or words to that effect…!) stayed with me. So I continued to use faith.

At the time I was struggling with belief in God and the Bible, I was living in Greece on an island without a computer. (Hadn’t even touched one until 1999). I became very confused and frustrated with the cognitive dissonance I experienced while reading the Old Testament.  


I believed I had nowhere to turn for answers, except for a handful of fundamentalist Christians on the island.  Of course, speaking and trying to worship with fundamentalists truly made things worse!  I railed against their dogmatic style, the intolerance to my questions, the incessant singing of hymns, and other Christian songs, and the occasional outbursts of the “speaking in tongues.” Ridiculous. This was surely not what I was seeking. 


One member offered to have a question-and-answer session with me and 3 other fundamentalists. However, I was certain they couldn't answer my questions, especially because they believe every word of the Bible to be correct!  (Really?)

I was hungry for answers and for a more spiritual connection in my life.  So, when the local women’s expatriate group organized evenings with a Buddhist monk, I took the opportunity to learn more about it.

A young French man, quiet spoken, struggling with English, headed the sessions.  He seemed knowledgeable and intelligent, however, and kind.  I liked many aspects of Buddhism.  I wasn’t sure about the no-God theory, but after reading the OT, I was open to the prospect.  At least I wouldn’t be knocking my head against the wall feeling guilty for blaming an apparently contradictory, mean, sexist, racist, and murderous God, who needed to be obeyed, worshiped and loved all the time.  (And a God who was jealous and vengeful strained credulity!)  Anyway, the godless concept gave me some relief.

Buddhists main teaching is that all sentient beings desire happiness and contentment and that the “fly in the soup” is that we suffer because of our “attachment”.  So, to overcome suffering, we must learn “unattachment”.  The Buddhists believe that with unattachment we can still care and love because we are not dependent on love for anything, any concept, or anyone.  Voila, you are then open to finding happiness!  (Basically...I think that is their creed.  Forgive me if I’ve misunderstood the very complicated concepts of this religion.)

I liked many aspects of Buddhism. It is very clearly expressed and in very psychological terms; that, especially, appealed to me.  Yet, what I witnessed, what I experienced were the many trappings of religion:  special garments, a throne, incense, repetitious prayers, hierarchies, and some other very superstitious kinds of beliefs.  


Another major Buddhist belief was at once both hopeful and disappointing:  reincarnation.  I could see the concept perhaps working for humans, but the human to animal to insect thing was too much for me to swallow. Anyway, I wouldn't want to take a chance for another life.  I'm not that much of a gambler--or masochist!

As with every religion  I have investigated since (and there have been many), I discovered each religion required a vast amount of faith, and logic was, too many times, thrown aside or at least minimized (…or put on the “back shelf” as we were instructed in Mormonism).  We didn’t need to know all the reasons for everything, and everything would be made clear and just, eventually (after death).  A comforting thought. But that is just one price we pay for believing in a fairy tale like fantasy of a loving God who will save all the good people and let them live for eternity in happiness.  (No wonder it is so difficult for people to let go of their religions!)

What I needed was to believe in a reasonable God who was logical, all-powerful (with few constraints regarding physics, as I was taught?), who loves us unconditionally, and would not allow or cause his children to suffer. Surely, he could have thought up a better plan than for us to be victims of the freewill of others!

SEE POST:  "WHY DOES GOD ALLOW SO MUCH SUFFERING?"

The whole concept of prayer is another clincher.  Why grant prayer requests of some people and not others?  Yes, prayer works--in a way--it keeps hope alive, and that is important.

MY HIGHER POWER?

I also had the choice to do what 12-step programs advocate, and just assign anything, even a pencil, as God, as the higher power. (Oh, THAT makes sense…!) Or I could just hope that the Old Testament is really screwed up and that man's translations and personal, political, power interests (namely the Jews?) corrupted the Bible and left us with our 21^st century mouths hanging open. That, however, sounded like an illogical, desperate and pitiful way to validate my early religious conditioning.  Surely, God would not leave us hanging in disbelief and in such a wretched state, at the mercy of the freewill of those misguided individuals!?  Nope.  Not good enough.

This whole concept of obedience and authority and mixing religion with money…ack…just feels like walking through a dangerous swamp.  My generation questions authority (or did). In addition, obeying authority without very good reasons is not even in my DNA!  I can’t help it.  I’m just not made that way!!  I hate to go against the beliefs of my childhood, and I desire to please my family, but I found too many impediments to swallowing these beliefs.

I read a debate between two very respected theologians discussing the nature of God—one of the greatest concepts that troubled me.  What I discovered was a lot of hot air, twisting, and turning, and rationalizing, and maybes!  Unsatisfying.  The same old, same old...

After researching many creeds and religions, I decided that no one really has all the answers, or knows what they are talking about, or can present any logical, reasonable grounds for believing in God and Christ, as described in the Bible.  That realization was heart-breaking for me.  I was often jarred at the thought that I had been deceived most of my life.  I felt grief at "losing my religion."

In my opinion, all religions have very few answers and rely heavily on FAITH.  However, they also rely on standard, universal moral teachings that can be found in EVERY major religion.  Somehow, THAT rings a bell.  It seems that people have learned, evolutionarily over thousands of years, that in order to live happily and peacefully together, we need to live by certain rules. (Nietzsche called it "the herd morality.")


Does that make any particular church "the only true one" because they offer more answers and more rules?  No!  The conclusion indicates that there is wisdom in many theologies and philosophies.  But, it also suggests that we may not need religion to live happily and peacefully, as many agnostics and atheists testify and demonstrate.

I tried to weed out flaws from the roots of my conditioning, always asking, "Is what I had been taught in my religion true?"

Suddenly, my eyes were opened by a YouTube video called “Zeitgeist.”  From there, I was inspired to study the books of D.M. Murdock.  And the pieces of the religion puzzle started falling into place!  It was as if a veil fell from my eyes.

SEE POST:  "...AND THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE..."

The following is for your enlightenment:

Bible

 

"If thou trusteth to the book called the Scriptures, thou trusteth to the rotten staff of fables and falsehood." ~Thomas Paine
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"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God." ~Thomas Paine
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"If a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If he would follow strictly the teachings of the New, he would be insane." ~Robert Ingersoll
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"If a man really believes that God once upheld slavery; that he commanded soldiers to kill women and babes; that he believed in polygamy; that he persecuted for opinion's sake; that he will punish forever, and that he hates an unbeliever, the effect in my judgment will be bad. It always has been bad. This belief built the dungeons of the Inquisition. This belief made the Puritan murder the Quaker." ~ Robert Ingersoll
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"I know of no book which has been a source of brutality and sadistic conduct, both public and private, that can compare with the Bible." ~Sir James Paget
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"No other work has more often been blamed for more heinous crimes by the perpetrators of such crimes. The Bible has been named as the instigating or justifying factor for many individual and mass crimes, ranging from the religious wars, inquisitions, witch burnings, and pogroms of earlier eras to systematic child abuse and ritual murders today." ~Nadine Strossen
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"The God of the Bible is a moral monstrosity." ~Rev. Henry Ward Beecher
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"The obscurity, incredibility and obscenity, so conspicuous in many parts of it, would justly condemn the works of a modern writer. It contains a mixture of inconsistency and contradiction; to call which the word of God, is the highest pitch of extravagance: it is to attribute to the deity that which any person of common sense would blush to confess himself the author of." ~ Elihu Palmer
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"It is like most other ancient books – a mingling of falsehood and truth, of philosophy and folly – all written by men, and most of the men only partially civilized. Some of its laws are good – some infinitely barbarous. None of the miracles related were performed. . . . Take out the absurdities, the miracles, all that pertains to the supernatural – all the cruel and barbaric laws – and to the remainder I have no objection. Neither would I have for it any great admiration." ~Robert Ingersoll
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"The Bible, taken as a whole, can be used to praise or condemn practically any human activity, thought, belief, or practice." ~Peter McWilliams
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"Let us read the Bible without the ill-fitting colored spectacles of theology, just as we read other books, using our judgment and reason. . . ." ~ Luther Burbank
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"If you really delve into the Bible you will see that it is a maze, a mass, a veritable labyrinth of contradictions, inconsistencies, inaccuracies, poor mathematics, bad science, erroneous geography, false prophecies, immoral comments, degenerate heroes, and a multitude of other problems too numerous to mention. It may be somebody's word but it certainly isn't the product of a perfect, divine being. The Bible has more holes in it than a backdoor screen. In a society dominated by the Book's influence, all freethinkers should do what Adam and Eve did when they were expelled from the Garden of Eden. They went out and raised Cain." ~C. Dennis McKinsey

http://www.humanismbyjoe.com/religion_quotes.htm