This week I read 2 stories and I immediately saw that they were linked.  Not that the authors had any intention of collaborating it's just that they both wrote, in very different ways, about what happens if you take the Bible at face value.

The first story is a brief article about a woman whole lived for a year following the Bibles instruction to / about woman at face value.  You can read the article here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/the-womens-blog-with-jane-martinson/2011/oct/06/woman-year-living-biblically


The second article was entitled "How can it be fair to say I can't be saved by God if I'm gay?" and it is written by someone with a personal experience of God in their life who just happens to be gay.  It includes this sentence "Every Sunday I walk into church to pray and receive disgusted looks from brothers and sisters." which, every time I read it makes something inside me hurt.  I hurt because it just doesn't fit with Jesus' words to us "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."  How much love is being shown to the author of the article?   She then poses the following question "Are the 12 mentions of homosexuality in the holy book due to cultural and historical mistranslations and misinterpretations?" which, for me, gets to the heart of the matter.  Which is more important following Jesus' command or insisting that the Bible has to be read literally.  You can read the whole article here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/oct/05/god-gay-christian-bible

For me, the Bible is very important but it has to be read remembering that we don't have a single original text and that we need to know the social context in which each part was written.

Where Did They Come From?

Over the last few weeks my Bible in a Year readings have taken me from Exodus to Leviticus where the people of Israel make and sanctify the Tabernacle - not the most interesting of readings.  Suddenly I got a feeling that something I was reading didn't add up but it has taken me a while to work out what.

In Exodus we have the Israelites complaining that they don't have anything to eat and, when God gives them manna that they don't have any meat.  God does hear their prayer and sends the a flock of quails but, we are told, for the rest of the 40 years they were in the wilderness they only ate manna.  Fast forward to Leviticus and God instructs Moses to build the Tabernacle and to consecrate bot it and Aaron and his sons as priests.  How does he consecrate them? By sacrificing bulls and lambs!  As I said in the Title "Where Did They Come From?"

Spiritual Journey

Of late I have been pondering how I have moved in my spiritual life. My upbringing was fairly traditional evangelical so how have I ended up in a more radical view on Christianity.

My problems started in my late teens / early twenties when I started questioning parts of my faith and found that my peer group would describe what I was saying as heretical. As a result I shut up and just got on with being an evangelical but my faith got weaker and weaker. I knew I was the 'seed that fell on thorny ground' but I had no idea how to get out of that situation.

Eventually, in my late forties, I bought a 'Bible in a year' and started to work through it. I admit that some of the Old Testament is hard going but two things in the New Testament were to completely change the way I looked at my faith. The first, which I have already blogged about, is in John 1 where it is clear that Jesus, and not the Bible, is the Word of God.

The other occurs in several places in the Gospels and it is how Jesus proclaims his message, he says 'The kingdom of God is near you.' and not 'The Kingdom of God is something you go to when you die.' To Jesus The Kingdom was about good news to the poor, oppressed and outcasts here and now. Now the classical evangelical way of looking at things is that Jesus' mission was all about what happens when you die and, although that is part of the picture, Jesus preached about the here and now.

These two things enabled me to start asking honest questions about my faith and finding that there are answers. It also leads me to a much bigger picture of God and His work in the world.

Noah's Ark

Interesting article about Noah's Ark here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/6923122/Noahs-Ark-was-circular-raft-made-of-reeds-according-to-ancient-tablet.html

This is, of course, a big problem for those who believe the Bible is literally true as here we have an earlier, different version of the same story. My view is that here we have an old folk memory from the Babylonian area that probably has some element of truth in it.

One theory is that the cradle of Western civilization was actually in a large low-lying fertile area that is now occupied by the Black Sea which was flooded when the Mediterranean broke through at the Bosphorus. The people living there would have had to flee from the only place they knew (the whole earth?) as the salt water arrived and it is possible that some fled to the Babylonian area taking the story of a mighty flood with them.

We may never know the truth but it does appear that the flood story predates the Bible.

The Bible

I'm thinking of doing a few posts on the Bible and what I see as misconceptions with the church about what it is or isn't.

Does anyone think this may be a good idea? I probably won't get round to it for a while as I'm off on holiday soon.

The Kings James Version

Coming to work by tram today I noticed that the man next to me was reading the Bible. Oh good I thought - then I noticed it was the King James Version (Authorised in other words.)

Why do people still use a translation that is a) not as accurate as more modern transaltations and b) isn't they way we speak / write now? It's not that I don't like the language of the KJV, in fact read well it is a thing of beauty, but it becomes a barrier between those inside the church and the majority of the population outside. The New Testament wasn't written in classical Greek but in the vernacular so that it was readily understood.

P.S. Please excuse the spelling mistakes but I'm blogging this quickly at work and the Spell Checcker doesn't work.