Believe It Or Not It’s True David McClellan, © January 7, 2015 mark10.1727@outlook I’ll show you later that what I’m going to say here is true but, believe it or not, when in the Bible it says that God said something, what’s really being said is that the writer is saying (though he didn’t realize it) that his concept of right and wrong is telling him something or that it’s telling something to whoever is the topic of the context. If what they decide is thought to truly be in the best interests of humans it’s interpreted as being the will of God or God speaking. If what’s said is sincerely believed to not in the best interests of humans it’s interpreted as being Satan trying to deceive someone. In other words, the concepts of right and wrong have been given “anthropomorphic” characteristics similar to those of humans. They represent “spirits” or what we usually describe as attitudes and so can’t literally be seen except as exhibited by a person’s actions correctly judged. If, for example, you accuse someone of doing something bad or not really in the best interests of another person without knowing the true spirit behind what they did which was really unselfish, you misjudge them. When you judge someone’s actions as being selfish when, in reality they were unselfish, you are doing something that you obviously wouldnt want people doing to you. This makes you a hypocrite. Let’s look at an example. Take a couple of minutes to read Deuteronomy 18. You’ll see that it says a number of times that God spoke to Moses telling him very specific things meant to be in the best interests of the Israelites. Near the end of the chapter you’ll notice that the Israelites had a very legitimate question. “How are we supposed to know for sure if someone is telling us what God says?” Notice that “God says” that wanting irrefutable proof is a good thing and that it will help people establish their faith on what they can know for certain instead of just having to guess and be wrong. Due to assumptions (guesses) they’d made about the nature of God however, these people were afraid for God to actually speak to them face to face because they believed that they’d die. They don’t know how to explain the fact that Moses had supposedly been in the very presence of God and lived but they didnt think they could do it. So, the assumptions they made about the nature of God forced them to have to find some person that they could trust had a special relationship with God who would not die if God spoke directly to them and could and would accurately relate God’s will to them. Well, the answer in this case was certainly a fair and logical one. They could trust a person to be truly representing God that could predict in every detail something that would happen in the future. Now, obviously, it couldnt be something that someone could just accidentally get right. That kind of thing could never prove that a person was actually representing God. It would have to be something that would be impossible for anyone to guess. Now, keep in mind that every book of the Bible was written many years after what was being discussed supposedly took place and that people that could read and write were relatively few. This meant that much of what people believed was passed down to them by word of mouth and if you ever played the game of “gossip” as a child you surely know how things can get twisted or embellished or things “deleted” as it passes from one person to another. Now, believe it or not, to say that the scriptures were inspired of God just means that the writers wrote what they did because they honestly believed that what they wrote was in the best interests of people just as they’d want other people to have the best interests of the writer at heart. In other words, they were practicing what we call the golden rule which is an eternal truth that anyone can recognize is true and will bring peace and safety to people to the degree that a society accepts it. “But,” you might say, “the scriptures are inspired of God, God actually spoke to the prophets so everything they said was true and they couldnt have been mistaken about anything.” May I point out to you, however, that there are several different ideas of what is meant by the scriptures being inspired of God? There is no firm consensus and it would be wrong to quickly assume that people would intentionally lie about something so serious. So, my question to you is. “Which of those ideas is the correct one or are all of them wrong?” They can’t all be right and the idea you have could be wrong. You have to be able to legitimately prove that you’re right before you can rationally or justly accuse me of being wrong. Do you really believe that God spoke to the prophets like one person speaking to another and that they wrote down what he said as he spoke like a secretary taking dictation? How do you plan to prove it in such a way that every honest person can know its true? If you can’t do this then you can’t say that what Ive said isnt true. Now, I know that just because you can’t prove me wrong doesnt mean that I’m right but it does mean that you need to hear me out if you’re really interested in finding out what is true. You can’t afford to not listen to what other people say until you have discovered for sure what the real truth is. Believe it or not it’s true.
Posted on: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 18:13:35 +0000
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