Christianity beyond the bible

1. Many Christians think the bible is full of good moral values that they in modern society agree with today.

2. The bible is actually also filled with a LOT of violence, intolerance, and hatred. It has genocide praised and slavery not objected to, etc.

Points 1 and 2 don't match up. I think most modern day Christians have outgrown the bible, morally speaking.

So the question is, can Christianity continue and be a force for good if the Bible itself is done away with? Is there really any need for copies of the book to be in church pews? Could a new morally superior version be released and braces to the point that it replaces the current bible? One that has the good parts about Jesus, and maybe the accounts about how the world was formed in Genesis, but cuts out the nasty parts?

I know this has been tried in the past, but do you think it could ever actually work?

 

it will evolve, the new is often built on top of the old.. Christianity was no exception to that rule

 

Countless people have started religions. So, start one that will be what you want it to be. Make it easy for people to join and you will get lots of converts. Women are usually more gullible than men are.

 

There are several predictions that in the Latter days, (which I assume to be our time period),that finally the plans of YHWH who led Moses to lead Israel out of Egypt would be understood perfectly.

Jeremiah 23:20
The anger of the LORD shall not return, until he have executed, and till he have performed the thoughts of his heart: in the latter days ye shall consider it perfectly.


Jeremiah 30:24
The fierce anger of the LORD shall not return, until he have done it, and until he have performed the intents of his heart: in the latter days ye shall consider it.



https://www.blueletterbible.org/kjv/dan/12/1/s_862001



And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.

But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.


I personally think that near death experience accounts where somebody meets Jesus are the clearest and most easily understood spirituality that I have ever read.

Here is a NDE account by a former Skeptic who became an Observant Jew after his brush with death. His NDE account reminds me of Matthew chapter four and his teachings since then remind me of Matthew chapters five, six and seven.






My Life After Death Experience" with Alon Anava
144,199 views
Oct 5, 2014

 

The "bible" whichever one(s) you are talking about was written by several men over several centuries. Boards (I don't know what they call them, but I'm referring to the decision makers) voted on what would be included and what would be excluded.

It's completely a man-made construct to control others. Naturally, it is going to be filled with hatred, anger, contradictions, irrational stuff (ie. talking bushes, floods, people turned into salt, blah, blah, blah).

Here's the deal. A person doesn't need another person to tell them what is right and wrong. For most of us, that's clear cut. This is why the argument/question about atheists ("Where do they get their morality?") is completely ridiculous.

A person is and should be in control of their own behavior regardless of anything else. At the end of the day, that has NOTHING to do with any bible in any version in different times or locations. I've known ex-cons that were the kindest people you'll ever meet. And, I know ministers who are rapists, bigamists, thieves and generally <censoring myself>. I've known people to turn their backs on their own children in favor of their religious beliefs. Notwithstanding anything else, that's really, really messed up. I have two kids and I would die for them and kill to protect them. NOBODY on this planet or any other would push me to reject my own offspring and this is why religion (and all the other junk you want to lump in there) is very, very dangerous and counterproductive toward the goal of providing peace and understanding.

But, again, if people just started minding their own business, stopped trying to force their ideas and ideals (about religion, diet, politics, etc.) on other people, much of the negativity we see and sometimes experience would have to throttle back. Hatred can't thrive in an unwilling heart.

 

Well, I think it would be a long discussion and debate to discuss that.
It's not so simple as you are presenting it.
Some of the violence is presented as historical fact, but is not necessarily condoned. In some other cases there were reasons for the violence that would have been obvious to the intended readers at the time, but are not so obvious to people reading it later. I can give you one example of that. Jonah wanted God to burn down Nineveh and everyone in it, even if he had to die to do it. Why? He actually had very good reason to feel that way and want that, but that specific story does not tell us. But everyone reading that story at the time would have totally known and understood why, and probably most of them would have felt the same way as Jonah.

There is absolutely no way to address a broad accusation like the one you are making. You would have to get into specific instances, and there would probably be hundreds of them. We would need a separate thread to discuss each one of them.

 

That seems like a stupid question.
I don't see how Christianity could continue to exist if you threw out the entire Bible.

Now if you're talking about throwing out just half of it, that might be another story.
But even that would be a little bit hard because the story and historical context is connected. It would be a little like trying to talk about the story of President Lincoln's life while completely censoring out the background of the slavery debate. There would obviously seem to be a big part of the story missing, and not everything could be understood or would make sense.

Yes, sadly it has been tried a few times in the past. And no, it never ended up going anywhere.

One of the reasons for that, I suspect most of the persons who would support this idea do not strongly support Christianity anyway and wouldn't care if it disappeared. So there you go.

 

Is it really fair to blame the Old Testament for laying a precedent for modern violence?
For example, religiously Jewish people do not have the New Testament and - as a group - they don't seem to have any out of the ordinary proclivity for violence (although we could of course argue about the political policies of the country of Israel... which by the way is probably not bad at all compared to most of the other countries in that region).

 

Thomas Jefferson beat you to it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible

 

Yeah .. to some degree .. but evolve into what .. hard to see that something built on "Junk" will amount to much more than that. Not saying the Bible is all junk .. nor all of Christian Dogma .. but some of it is .. and this infection will not go away by just building on top.

 

Name the nasty parts. Be specific.

 

Human sacrifice, genocide, being ok with slavery, punishing women for being raped, etc.

 

Not specific.

 

There is too much to cover if you want to go line by line. But if you flip to any random page, there will be something immoral being pushed within 10 or so pages from there. Usually within 2.

 

hard telling, recent religions like Scientology and QAnon came out of no where, so hard to tell what will come in the distant future

 

I think the next big religion will grow out of the Woke, but I think it will have a new name. It will be all about group identities and not god-centric.

 

i've been studying the Bible for quite a while now.. my conclustion is.. it's a supernatural book, inspired by the Creator, our Father in heaven, written down by man. Too many prophesies fulfilled, too many solid truths, too many archtypes revealed, too many things in the text that just couldn't be written by man alone.. Try readiing some Dr Charles Missler, astrophysist and Christian lecturer. he has one book called something like "can the Bible be true?' that demonstrates some of those things. it was written over 5000 years by over 40 authors and still retains a cohesive and overarching theme.. the redemption fo Man and the coming Messiah.

 

A "prophecy fulfilled" within the same text isn't really a prophecy.

Not seeing it.

Will try to remember to google him later.

Was it not compiled, with many stories left out, by a council who chose the theme and selected accordingly?

 

Is this him?

 

Pick one thing. Choose what you consider the worse. Point out where it is.

After all, you're wanting to update and/or improve the Bible. Possibly replace it? You'll need to be specific with examples of what you believe needs to go.

Someone here should be able to specify something specific, right?

 

That is not building on top though .. those are completely different religions .. perhaps I missed that we are not talking about the Bible .. not sure.

 

Well, lets start with the monotonous. Eject the begots.

Then we can move on to the truly immoral content.

Shall we start near the start of the book as presented in the Bible?

God commands Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit of knowledge of good and evil, or surely they will die. This is a death threat. It is also regarding the knowledge of good and evil so they can't have known if it was good or evil to obey God regarding eating the fruit. It was entirely an obedience test, not a morality test.

This is the first instance of many in the Bible placing obedience to power over morality, or confusing the two for one another. In this case to the extreme that God didn't even want them to be able to have a sense of morality.

God then punishes them and a talking snake with legs for suggesting the idea to Eve that they eat of the fruit. Some say the snake is just a snake (with legs), and others say it was Satan in the form of a snake. If it was Satan, then snakes are punished for something they had no control over. If it was just a snake, then we are talking just about talking snakes with legs (alrighty then).

Most Christians then take this story to be the "original sin", and that this act of these two early humans somehow is held over all humans who were born later, the wrongs of the father being put upon the son, and so on. Inherited guilt and sin is immoral.

Then later, many (but not all) Christians say that because of this, we all deserve to go to hell, which some say means eternal separation from God, and others say means endless literal fire and brimstone torture.

And they then say that the only way out of this is the torture and death of an innocent man, Jesus. Vicarious redemption redemption through human or demi-god blood sacrifice is a seriously messed up immoral concept.

But take Adam and Eve out of Genesis, and just have the God making the world etc, and take the "Christ" out of Jesus and you've got little to object to. A creation story and a cool guy who wants peace and love.

There's where we can start.

Then we can look at other seriously messed up immoral things in the bible, from the genocide depicted in Noah's story, to the demand for child blood sacrifice in Abraham&Isaac, to ridiculous things like Lot's wife being turned into a pillar of salt for looking back, prescriptions in the bible on how to properly beat slaves, that women are to be punished for being raped, that you aren't to suffer a witch to live, etc.

 

ahh, you added.

 

Also, lets not forget Job, who God messes with just to show Satan how mindlessly obedient his human slave is. Yes, God gives job some more kids at the end, because Job is such a spineless simp, but he doesn't bring back Job's family that he killed just to make his point.

You can also look at the Tower of Babel. People start cooperating. God doesn't like that, so he confuses them and makes them have conflict.

And you can also look at God hardening the Pharoah's heart in the Moses stories, God killing all the first born sons of egypt, etc. As well as God hardening the heart of others to make excuses so his "chosen people" (a messed up concept in itself) can feel better about slaughtering them on his command.

Really, any random page in this Bible book, and you are within 10 pages of something that should be ejected, and that most modern Christians would disagree with in any other context.

You could reduce the bible to a small pamphlet, just with Jesus being a happy hippy preaching peace and love, and that could work.

The Bible is a very immoral book. But most Christians are not very immoral. Most even think they take positive values of love and peace and kindness from the Bible, and rarely the nasty "values" the Bible also teaches. It seems obvious that many of them have never fully read the book and I bet you they wouldn't notice if it changed.

Hence my OP.

 

so many misconceptions.. be more productive to start at zero.