Judaism, Christianity, History
Are the 66 chapters of the Bible "God-breathed" inerrant?
Of course not.
Preamble: "Here's the thing. We, ourselves, don't see much wrong with the Bible, flaws and all. It's a good book. It teaches lessons. It provides a history. None of which is bad. It's what people do with it, treating it as the ultimate authority, we disagree with."
And yes, this is what annoys us the most, and makes us respond. Because there's people that consider the Bible the ultimate authority, and then turn off any critical thinking. They ignore anything like why the Bible says what it does, what the cultural context for any given text was, the history associated with those parts of the Bible, even the theology surrounding those texts.
None of that matters to them. "The Bible says this," and their brains shut off.
That's wilful submission to authoritarianism, and anyone with authority who parrots what they believe the Bible says gets their unthinking loyalty. "Well, he's a priest, and he agrees with what I think the Bible says so obviously he's right and I should listen to him."
Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?
This is dangerous. And this is why we stand against it.
And worse, there's this entire mythology built around the Bible which has nothing to do with what the Bible says, or just re-interprets what the Bible says to mean things it never meant to say.
How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!
Not a demon.
Not a literal 'fall from Heaven'.
It was a mistranslation of Hebrew, discussing a king of Babylon.
Well, how about Satan?
Small-s-satan is an angel. Specifically, an angel who tests the pious, to see if they are worthy of God.
That's their God-ordained job.
Calling someone a satan was basically saying, "God put you on this Earth to test me."
Hell?
Hades. Greek / Roman roots. Judaism never had a Hell.
And then there's the entire Judaic roots for Jesus.
No, not as Messiah. Just in the nature of storytelling.
(And let's not get into Judeo-Christianity - there's no such thing. Judaism is one thing. Christianity is another. And Christianity tends to ignore the Judaic roots of the New Testament, anyway.)
An example? Jesus being tempted in the desert.
Christianity: "So, Satan wants to tempt Jesus, to have him sin before God, because Satan is evil."
Judaism?
"Jesus is a pious person, and a satan goes and tests his piety, to see if Jesus is worthy in the eyes of God."
This angel is not evil. It's doing it's job. This is what it does. This is what it's supposed to do. This has nothing to do with Good vs Evil, and everything to do with "are you worthy?".
"You say you are righteous? Prove it."
Jesus passed.
Jesus and the Legion is one of our personal favourites.
Guy's possessed by demons.
Jesus shows up.
Demons: "Have mercy on us!"
Jesus: "Sure thing."
Demons: "Hey, can you maybe move us over into those pigs over there?"
Jesus: "No problem."
Demons: *fling pigs off a cliff, freeing them from their physical bodies" FREEDOM!
Are the demons malevolent? There's nothing really saying so. Sure, the word 'demon' is used - but so what? That's just a name, it could be 'spirit', or 'daemon', or whatever. In the end, Jesus didn't treat them as an enemy, most certainly not a supernatural, implacable foe that must be put down and banished to Hell. He let them move out of the guy, and gave them their own bodies.
And they were free. They could have tossed the guy they were possessing over a cliff - but didn't. Why not? Maybe because they weren't murderers.
Judaism. Ever hear a Rabbi say they were going to cast a demon to Hell?
Of course not. In Judaism, there's no Hell.
Evil is a very Human thing. It is a choice people make.
This world, our world, and our place in it, is the most important thing. How a person treats those around them, how they treat the world itself, is super important in Judaism. This world, now, is our temporary "heaven" or "hell".
If you die? You rest in Sheol, and get to sleep until God brings Heaven-on-Earth. And when that happens, every single man, woman, and child, of any faith or creed, regardless of action, awakens and has a place in this Heaven. Yeah. Everyone. And for the truly vile? They might be delayed a little bit. But only a little bit. Because in Jewish tradition, you say a prayer to God which basically asks him to let them in. "Hey, yeah, so these people we don't know? Let them in." And He does.
(By the by, the Heaven of the Angels? Not human Heaven. Humans don't go there. There's, like, two, maybe three exceptions in all of the Books. Enoch, Ezekiel, etc. The ones God has whisked away before they even die. This is considered a Big Thing, very important. So this whole 'well all good people go to Heaven when they die'... yeah, no.)
But sadly, Christianity ignores all of this. It ignores the context of the Old Testament, and it ignores the culture and roots of the New Testament. It ignores, in essence, history and time period. The Bible is a book of learning, definitely, but it can't tell the complete story. That's impossible.
Because the Old Testament (the Torah) are about lessons for Hebrews, stories of their culture, their past, their promise to God, and what happens when you break that promise. The New Testament is for the foundations of Christianity, which still had strong roots in Judaism at the time (and let's not forget that sections of the New Testament are very anti-Judaism). But even then, there's the Tanach and the thousands of pages written by Rabbis over generations surrounding their Books. And even that doesn't give the whole picture.
You need to dig into Canaanite legends, and their culture - the roots of Judaism can be found there. The flood? Well, the ancient Greeks had that, and so did Babylon, and so did the legends of Canaan. How about Daniel? Oh, he's a Canaanite hero, beloved by El Elyon and Ba'al Hadad. (Though Anat didn't care much for him apparently).
Though honestly, you can't expect your average Christian to dig that deep. Of course not.
But the thing that could be done?
"This is a Book of learning. It isn't inerrant Truth."
Judaism generally accepts that.
Shintoism?
Sure, we've got stories of gods and heroes and great deeds, and all that.
We don't take it as gospel. Because our faith isn't pinned to a book.
Cool, Amaterasu Omikami is the Goddess of the Sun!
Great. So you pay respect to Amaterasu Omikami. As you would any god of any faith anywhere.
Did she really hole herself up in a cave because her brother tossed a head into her sewing circle and caused one of her hand maidens to die of shock?
To which we answer, "does it matter?"
Shinto tells us that good and evil are mortal constructs to help us work together.
Does it bring harmony and happiness to those around us? It's good.
Does it bring discord and pain to those around us? It's evil.
Has nothing to do with the faith.
Are you living a pure life? Pure of thought, word, and deed? Good.
Are you living an impure life? Full of anger, ill thoughts, ill words, ill actions? Work on it.
That's it. Try to be a good person.
That's all the faith asks of you. Everything else is a distraction from that.
You pray to the kami to purify you and help you live a pure life. But the work's on you.
And in a way, that's very much like Judaism.
You are responsible for your actions and choices. The world around you and the lives of those around you, and your life now is what's important. The now is our heaven or our hell of our own making. What comes next?
Not relevant.
And we feel, in some way, that there's people in Christianity who don't like that. They don't want to be responsible for their own actions. They don't want to have to care about those around them (or the world itself). They want their lives to be 'good', they want to be 'better' than the people who aren't like them. They want to be powerful, or rich, or whatever, not caring who it hurts to get there. And they want to believe that if they go through the motions, they get rewarded in the afterlife.
So screw 'now'. 'Now' doesn't matter, because it's temporary, the 'good stuff' comes later, and they want an easy ride to that. Or, they just want the 'good stuff' now, and don't even think about later - and don't care who they hurt.
And it's so easy to say 'well, this book says so', and not think about it.
Don't get us wrong. Not every Christian is like that ('not all Christians'), and we know this, because we know some really awesome Christians. They're the ones who walk the walk and talk the talk, and they care about the people around them, and being good people themselves, and treat everyone around them with respect.
They hold to their faith, and respect those of other faiths.
They don't judge based on sex, or religion, or sexuality, or sexual identity.
They look at you as a person, and they treat you with respect - until you decide not to treat them (or others) with respect.
To us? They're solid Christians. They understand the Bible, and what it's for. They understand Jesus.
We respect these people. There should be more people like them.
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