Those are common statements in religious debates, most especially when the person on the receiving end is a catholic. We all believe all believe in God and with out any reasonable doubt we have heard of what he has done and some have even seen things happen. So on the record I don’t want any body to miss understand me with whatever this article is going to point out.
When God started doing his work through the likes of Abraham, Moses, e t c, he worked directly with such people by sending them to deliver his massages and warnings. This was the time before Christ. After Jesus’ life and death the twelve disciples preached and taught the word directly, like this they torched a lot of souls which is manifested in the big numbers of Christians today. Such things like the bible didn’t exist and the church was one and not divided. Today we have the bible that has not only confused Christians but divided the universal church. But before we reap our selves into pieces, why should we base our faith on the bible, do we even know who wrote it?
Its better to believe in God and the Ten Commandments, being good to others with out unnecessarily quoting certain verses that will make some believers feel unworthy. Am one Christian who has for a long time tried to understand the bible but the more you will understand the bible is the more you will distance your self from God?
For starters, the bible was written by anonymous people who later posed and impersonated different prophets and apostles. They used the events of God and his son Jesus to put together our modern bible, by doing these they both helped to organize and disorganize the ministry.
The inconsistencies of the bible are too hard to pass by through the different stories. First of all in Genesis they present to us the creation story like they were there. This actually contradicts what the bible says that we shouldn’t try hard to understand God, human knowledge is limited to a lot of things but you don’t really understand why some one had to pen a story of the beginning with so much authority. Who was there to profile these events when they unfolded to an extent that we have them in our modern bible. Why didn’t they live us with what we knew that God is omniscient with out a beginning and an end? Why did some one come up with some beginning? Then when Cain killed his brother Abel God chased him out of the land and in their dialogue Cain said to the lord “……….whoever finds me will kill me.” This sends you wondering who those other people were and their origin considering the fact that Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel were the first earth family.
Further in the Old Testament we have the story of Noah and the floods it’s been highly criticized by non believers though the real problem here might have been the writer not the events. First of all you wonder where the writer was standing when all this happened, there’s no way that he saw what happened inside the ark and what happened outside it at the same time. According to the bible God asked Noah to let in “two of all kinds of animals, male and female” yet basing on studies done by the likes of James Edward, executive director of the encyclopedia of life said this of the biblical account “its physically impossible, there over 50million species out there” this means the ark would be small for even half the species on earth then considering that amorphous creatures like dinosaurs still existed. Another scholar David Menton, an associate professor emeritus of anatomy at Washington University and works for Answers in Genesis, a controversial museum in Kentucky. It’s not noted if the owners of the museum are either believers or not but they depict the bible first book Genesis as literal truth. Its (museum’s) arguments have however been welcomed by many believers. Menton talks about it as some thing plausible; he reckons that Noah probably had to take aboard about 16000 creatures. He continues that Noah might have taken pairs to refer to closely related “kinds” of animals such as cows and buffaloes, dogs and wolves than different the different species that the modern bible talks of.
Then still in the bible David and Solomon are referred to as God’s favorite kings, they happened to lead after Moses had been handed the ten commandment but these kings sacrificed, married many women opposed to what the Ten Commandments preach, seems some things were missed out here and then on to the new testament.
When the archangel Gabriel visits Mary and says “ave Maria gratia” it was such a sacred greeting by an angel of the lord seems so inspired that Mary even goes on to sing that “…….all generations will call me blessed.” And it’s this same book that goes on to refer to Mary as merely woman rather than blessed as they wrote when she was still looked at with great importance. Then still in the new testament, its kind of an irony that almost all books miss Jesus’ first miracle of changing water into wine yet we believe this was meant to be some kind of a hallmark in his ministry and for it to miss out from all the other gospels is not only absurd but puts the authority of the holy book in balance.
Before we exhaust every thing we find another important story of Lazarus who Jesus raised from the dead, the significance of this story was meant to prove to the doubters that there’s life after death or that Jesus can give you life even after death. But this story is restricted to just one gospel of john and all the other gospels did was to tell a parable of another man named Lazarus. Such a mileage of giving Lazarus life back was meant to be all over our faces whenever we open the bible. Since it’s a common saying, that the reason for many churches today is to bring God closer to the people then what a better way to inspire souls than flossing the miracles every where in the bible?
The authority of the apostles to be the writers of their gospels is very much questionable. If they say the apostles wrote the gospels, what happened to their authority to own their stories, on many occasions in Mathew’s gospel, he refers to him self as “a man called Mathew” this is the opposite of what any of us would refer to our selves while narrating accounts we were involved in. we expected Mathew and his company to refer to them selves as me or my self this would have given their gospels some authority than sounding like hear says or narrations. At the turn of events, in his gospel Mathew presents his calling to join Jesus’ ministry in chapter 9, this makes his information in his first chapters vulnerable since he wasn’t part of the ministry by the time they happened, how did he then come to write about them like he was there? Why didn’t he present the source of this information to us?
Again the dogma nature of Jesus’ birth features in all the gospels, it was written in a way that even the private conversation of Mary and angel Gabriel not mentioning Joseph’s dream to marry Mary are narrated. Much as these stories are important to the scripture, they are too private for some outsider of the holy family to write about them with authority considering the fact that Mary, Joseph and their son Jesus didn’t write any gospel. Even if they had happened in the open, many of Jesus’ apostles who allegedly wrote the gospels were either too young or not yet born to witness the events before Jesus’ birth. Considering the fact that Jesus’ age mates and all those under or slightly older were killed by King Herod and the holy family had fled to Egypt where no body knew them.
However on the other hand, Paul owns his writings in fact, his letters to the Corinthians and Galatians inspire more than some gospels, he represents a very accurate literature in an inspirational form. Paul writes with such passion, he witnessed whatever he talks of in his letters and this is manifested when he includes himself in his stories with statements like “….lord Jesus talked to me…” contrary to the gospels where they would in the same statement have said, “lord Jesus talked to his apostles” which in the end sounds like there was some one watching every thing and later narrated it.
The fact that some books are missing or were omitted from the bible is also disturbing, we love God but there some questions we should ask our selves about the bible before we dismiss people’s faith basing on it. Do we know why they removed those books? Which criteria did they follow? Some say the omitted books were not inspired but were those who conducted the exercise inspired and who certified that. If those other books were not inspired who says that what we have is inspired content. How did they judge the inspiration of the content? Research shows that by the time the bible was written many of the witnesses of Jesus were dead or rather too old to remember any thing. There many chances that the bible research was based on interviews and how do we know that the parties questioned by mistake or deliberately with held information. Peter was said to be the oldest among the disciples thus may have seen almost every thing but doesn’t own a gospel yet his would be first hand information.
On a website of lost gospels, it’s said that Jesus had a gospel and that if it was published it would have been the shortest gospel with just a simple massage “you can’t confine the lord in beautiful storied buildings only, slice a peace of wood you will find me there, uncover a stone and I will be there.” It’s written that this text would have caused a rift between the church and the public since no one would have gone back to the church after listening to such sacred words thus the first fathers had to do away with that text so as to have the control of the church.
Much as Jesus did most of his works among women, no woman wrote a gospel or a letter yet they were religious collaborators with the Christians. Is it possible that women of that era had no interest of seeing the church grow? Of course not they wrote some text but for some reason they were ignored.
The reason is, the era of the first church was almost a non feminine period, women were declined to just the kitchen and they disrespected them, in such a way only men were allowed to conduct prayers. It’s because of the bias that the first fathers had towards women that all books written by women were neglected; Mary who had been by Jesus’ side was relegated to simply woman and all books that talked about her were labeled uninspired. That also tells you why to date the Catholic Church; women are not allowed to become priests but nuns and thus can’t conduct mass but services. It’s because of this misconception that we don’t have a gospel by a woman and why all books related to Mary were originally removed from the text.
It was such a hard thing for some men to give a woman like Mary so much importance that the blessed was only venerated after she appeared to many different people with massages that the church could hardly ignore her. Years later after rigorous investigations the church decided to declare many things surrounding her dogmas venerated her and even recalled those apocalypho books that had written about her like Judith. But this was the beginning of the church division that’s when we saw those who couldn’t take it leave the original church labeling it satanic.
The bible is well written, documents the life of Jesus and other prophets we do need it but some mistakes done by the writers are not only dividing the church but also generating seeds of resistance. In his book The God Delusion, Richard Darwin used the bible to discredit every thing Jesus stood for, the Pentecostals use the bible to discredit the Catholic Church and the later also uses the bible to dent the other and none of them is wrong since they both have text they base their arguments on.
The problem is that we fail to interpret the Godly words thus end up using them to wage war and mortgage for peace at the same time. Paul was strongly against this in his teachings about the use of the tongue. if we call our selves followers of the bible why on earth do all christians have to say the apostles creed yet its no where in the bible and its too not wrong.
Some people wrote the bible with good intentions, but their weaknesses as humans caused more harm than they imagined thus contradicting themselves a number of times and making the authority of this special book questionable. Am one of those believers who love God one heartedly but accepted the fact that he didn’t write the bible but humans did and thus much as the bible is so important we shouldn’t let it guide our faith, God gave us heads.
nice articl true the church is slightly losing focus when you look at the recent golola incident. true the church is lost
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