The Bible & Homosexuality

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My spiritual manifesto

It occurred to me this weekend that it's often hard for me to explain what it is I actually believe. I hope this blog entry will clear up any confusion that may exist concerning my personal "statement of faith" as it exists today. Please note, my beliefs can be fluid as I tend to read quite a bit and may adjust my beliefs to reflect the new information I gather.

I can remember a day when I was afraid to explore the possibility that God might exist outside the traditional Judeo-Christian construct. As a Bible-thumping believer, I said things like: "God said it and that settles it," because I didn't want to consider the likelihood that we, meaning my church, my pastor, my tradition, my experiences, or my beliefs might be wrong.

As the years go on and I continue to witness tragedy, death, war, civil unrest, poverty, confusion, religious tension, and injustice in our world, I wonder why- if God is omnipotent- doesn't he just reach down and fix all of this.

The thought that God would simply allow his precious creations to suffer somehow seems morbid. That's why I believe there is a God, but not in the way that we've known or understood him in the Western world. I believe in God the love force, the life force, the peace force, the provision force, the keeper and dissiminator of Wisdom, the ultimate spiritual example of what humans can be at when we're at our best. God is an infinite and eternal being who communicates with humanity and intervenes in mysterious ways. He is the person with whom I commune when I choose to pray, and he hears me.

I believe that like Christ, we have a responsibility to help others hope in goodness, search for peace, and find unity wherever we can. We should embody the love force, life force, peace force, and justice that is wholly and truly God, even though we don't fully understand him.

I refer to myself as agnostic because there are so many things that I don't believe I'll ever know. For instance, I don't know the true nature of Christ. Frankly, no one does. I would like to believe that he was born of a virgin, was crucified and resurrected, was God, and will return, but I'm not totally convinced any more. The similar, yet competing contemporary legends of his day (such as Mithras and Buddha) lead me to believe that the Christ story may not be totally authentic. I also believe that much of what is recorded about him in the Bible could be mythological as it was recorded 40 to 90 years after his life by people who didn't know him personally.

At the moment, I believe it's more likely that Christ was a mystic, a teacher, a wise holy man, a revolutionary, and a man who challenged tradition in his day. I believe that he transcended humanity to tap into divine power in ways that often manifested through signs and wonders. I believe he impacted people and gave them hope. He was as Godlike as any human could be.

Finally, I believe the Bible is the story of how humans have tried to commune with God. The Bible is a collection of "why" tales, but not "how" tales. It has examples of why we have felt separated from God and how we handled it. It has stories of redemption, hope, and profound pain. It shows that humans have had tribal ideas about God since the beginning of time. It contains allegories about why we are the way we are. It shouldn't be viewed as the only written testament to the character of God or the life of Christ.

I am a Christian in the sense that I follow Christ's teachings, his example, and his mystic nature. I am agnostic in the sense that there's plenty I don't know about God, divinity, and Christ. I read the Bible and follow it to the extent that it offers many perspectives of God to which I can relate. I handle it carefully, knowing that there are verses in there that don't necessarily apply to our modern era. I accept that there are things about God, Christ, and life that I'll never know.

So this is my "statement of faith." It's all I can believe at the moment, and I am quite comfortable in this place.
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The Haiti Earthquake: Where is God when tragedy strikes?

The catastrophic earthquake in Haiti has caused people of faith all over the world to ask themselves: “Where is God?” In such times, many Christians with agnostic leanings (including myself) find it hard to peddle conventional wisdom about God: that he protects us, that he cares for us, that he wants humanity to be whole, and that he has created a world in which it’s easy to have faith in him. In these times, many seekers struggle with even his existence.

However, I find comfort in an old account that records God’s presence. It is found in the story of what most of us regard as the most important day in the history of Christianity: the crucifixion.

The Bible records that when Jesus was crucified, he cried out “Eloi Eloi lama sabachthani” which means “My God, My God… Why have you forsaken me?” Note, we could discuss why it was that Jesus referred to his equal as “My God,” or how it is that an omniscient being would ask why he was being crucified. We could also ask why, if Jesus knew that he was going to be resurrected into divine power, he felt forsaken… But that’s not the purpose of this blog entry.

The purpose of this short entry is to highlight two things that are evident to me when I read this story:

1. Bad things happen to good people.
2. Even the godliest among us often die unjustly.
3. God’s presence is in the midst, even when we don’t realize he is there.

So while I don’t have the answers, I want to show that Christianity doesn’t teach that God always prevents bad things from happening. We all want a world without pain (and God knows I certainly do)…. Since we don’t have such a world, we have to rely on the goodness of the Holy Spirit inside us to make the world a better place. I can’t speak to why such tragedies happen, but I know it is in these times that we are called to exhibit the kind of unfailing love that the world needs. We have to be Godlike, Christlike, and more empathetically human than ever before--- and we must pray for the strength to carry out our duty.



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President Obama & Haiti... Thanks for doing the right thing

The Religious Right has propagated for more than two years that President Obama is not “Christian” enough to be the leader of the free world. Their argument is deeply rooted in their belief that good Christians do superficial things like going to church, swearing on the Bible, and revering the obvious fallacies found in scripture. Fundamentalists have upheld these pharisaic arguments despite Christ’s obvious position that his true followers would be known by how they treat people and NOT how well they uphold superficial traditions.

In the wake of the most terrible natural disaster many of us have seen in our lifetimes, President Obama has stepped up to the plate to help those referred to by the Bible as “the least of these…” He has promised resources that will translate to food for the hungry, medical attention for the ailing, and shelter for the homeless. The character of our President touches my heart. Thank you, President Obama, for caring about the people of Haiti.

If you would like to give to the people of Haiti, please consider one of the following organizations:
American Red Cross International Response Fund
Clinton Foundation
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
Mercy Corps Haiti Earthquake Fund
Partners in Health
ShelterBox
UNICEF
UN World Food Programme


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Can a Christian Agnostic go to seminary?

I will admit, I've toyed with the idea for some time now. I have visited the website of my dream seminary... I've read the course descriptions and pondered my path to a Master of Theological Studies, or even a Master of Divinity... I've considered the research track that would lead all the way to a Ph.D., and yes, I've considered ministry; a chance to show others that it is possible to love and worship God with questions burning in our hearts. Then I ask myself: "Do I belong in seminary? Is there really a path to ministry for me?"

The question of seminary is one that rears its head so intrusively that it interrupts my sleep from time to time. Would I find any like-minded students there? How would I handle it if my professor tried to teach something that isn't historically sound... or worse: contrary to my humanitarian beliefs? Would there be enough academic freedom there for me to cultivate my faith while staying true to the hard truths I've accepted on my liberal Christian journey?

I know that fundamentalists don't have a monopoly on truth, God, the Gospel, Christ, or seminary. I guess I worry that maybe my professors won't know it, too. The fact is, the only way to know would be to actually go. And who knows... the journey itself may be worth the experience, even if it challenges me to suppress my opinions for awhile.

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ProfessorMTH and Bible Blunders

While YouTube sensation ProfessorMTH and I disagree about the existence of God, I have to say I can't get enough of his Bible Blunders series. Using his own unique brand of tongue-in-cheek humor, some pretty nifty software, and his extremely impressive grasp of scripture and Bible history, ProfessorMTH has developed a series of videos that shed a blinding light on the inconsistencies in our Bible. One such tidbit of thought-provoking (and hilarious) infotainment is Episode 2 of the Bible Blunders series.

In this video, ProfessorMTH points out that Exodus narrative has a very inconsistent account of what went down with the cattle. Yet another reason why we shouldn't be afraid to embrace that our Bible is NOT inerrant...

Be sure to hop over to YouTube to watch a few more of ProfessorMTH's masterpieces.

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Two Creation Stories in the Bible (With Video)

Several months ago, I found a website called Living the Questions (www.livingthequestions.com) that is devoted to people like myself who choose faith in the midst of spiritual uncertainty. Recently, LTQ posted several excerpts of its videos to Youtube, with one of those videos being a brilliant discussion of the two conflicting creation stories found in the book of Genesis.

I have written about our fear of admitting that the Bible is not inerrant, but did not expound on the inconsistencies that appear in the Bible. However, this video captures a fundamental inconsistency in a way that I could never capture in writing. (More analysis after video...)



For those of us who are "living out the questions," the commentators in this video hit on several extremely important things. First, as indicated by Dr. Amy-Jill Levine, such discrepancies are only a problem for those of us who are uncomfortable with the possibility that the Bible may NOT be inerrant. Many Christians feel that the Bible's inerrancy is central to the credibility of the faith and insist that the Genesis narrative is how it all happened. Most won't admit that such errors exist in scripture, even when they are this obvious.

However, reasonable Christians cannot ignore that in chapter 1 of Genesis, Adam is created after the animals and vegetation, but in Genesis 2, Adam is created first. More perplexing is that in Genesis 1, Adam and Eve are created together near the end of the story, while in Genesis 2, Adam existed for some time before Eve was taken from his rib.

I've known about these inconsistencies for some time now, and would submit to the unyielding fundamentalist (as postulated in the video and by various scholars) that the Bible story is more likely to be a metaphorical story of why than it is a literal story of how. That is, the story when read properly explains that God created man to commune with Him, that God intended for us to have relationships with one another, and that we are to take care of the planet because its resources are "good" and precious in God's sight. Such a concession won't undermine the existence of God or the beauty of the creator's love for us, even if it does challenge our existing dogma.

To read more about the two conflicting creation stories found in Genesis, visit ReligiousTolerance.org...
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Christians... What are we afraid of?

I remember the last time I visited a fundamentalist church. I went to the altar for prayer and explained that I had been studying Bible history and needed clarity as some of the things I learned were controversially opposed to traditional evangelical Christianity. The lay minister began to pray: "Dear Heavenly Father... Please protect your child from false beliefs that come from lies and high sounding arguments- and help her to stop reading material that might be toxic to her faith."

It was then that I knew my path was going to be a lonely one. It seemed the lay minister wanted me to be afraid of what I might see in a book at a library somewhere, even if what I found was true. However, I knew God wouldn't want me to be afraid of the truth- even it if was different from the current traditions found in Christendom. I left church that day with a stronger sense of curiosity and a burning question about my Christian brethren: What are we afraid of?

The truth is that if there is a God (and I believe there is one), He is more intelligent than we could ever know or understand. With intelligence comes an inquisitive Spirit. If His Spirit is in us and we are truly created in His image, then we are inquisitive by nature. This could explain why Eve was so enthralled with the tree of knowledge. It would also explain Solomon's request for wisdom when he could have had anything else in the world. It would explain why Christ inquired in the temple with educated men at such a young age and why Job pondered the plan of God so deeply in his moment of tragedy. If God is an omniscient entity who wants His creations to follow Christ, then He must know that a large number of His beings will ponder the whos, whats, whens, wheres, and whys of this tradition.

Yet, rather than embracing the natural tendency to be curious about the mysterious, we quiver in fear that our dogmas may be challenged if we turn over too many stones. We reject the possibility that truth could exist outside our faith bubble and are scared to consider that another tradition may have the answer. We seek to protect ourselves and one another, and we often reject our opportunity to embrace the possibility that God may exist inside the realm of reason.

Our fears are simple. We're afraid of losing our faith in God and very much afraid of finding new ways to understand the world. We're afraid that the God story may be bigger than our creeds have captured, afraid that the wars we've historically waged in the name of God may have been fought in vain, and afraid that our politics may be based on a fallible faith in God. We're afraid that truth may carry a definition we don't recognize. We're afraid of being wrong.

We continue to base our faith on the belief that we have a monopoly on the truth, and reject proven truths that hurt the arguments of our forefathers.

We would do well as a group to reject fear and embrace possibilities. After all, "God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind."
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Can someone be a Christian and Agnostic?

I wondered this for years... and many others may as well. If you're anything like me, you believe that there is a God... You may even believe that Christ is somehow divinely related to God, but you may feel so overwhelmed by the logical questions that come with such a belief that you've chosen to suspend judgment and seek truth. That's what I did. One day, I accepted the fact that my questions about God, the Bible, history, and science couldn't be answered through a dogmatic system, and I embraced that there were several things I simply don't know and can't know. Without realizing it, I had embraced a sense of agnosticism along with a whole new spiritual journey. But what does that mean?

At the heart of the word "agnostic" is the root word "gnosis" which means "to know." The prefix "ag-" means "not" or "the absence of." This means that the word "agnostic" means "to not know" or "unknown / unknowable."

Therefore, a Christian Agnostic is someone who believes in God, follows Christ, but acknowledges his or her inability to know or fully understand various things about God. This kind of agnosticism is often spawned after learning something that doesn't coincide with a preconceived religious idea. In my case, it started several years ago with a college course in which I learned about the myth of Mithras and the contradictions that exist in our Bible. I started to wonder if it was possible that God might exist in a context other than the one I'd accepted my entire life. In a series of personal moments of reflection, a life-changing journey ensued.

So, while it may be impossible to believe in God and be an atheist, I believe it is absolutely possible to be a Christian and be agnostic. In fact, it's a fascinating and liberating journey for those who aren't afraid to throw tradition aside in favor of approaching God in context of the history of humanity, the discoveries within science and with an open mind.
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