An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part XIX - No True Scotsman

In my previous "Agnostic's Look at The Bible", Christians Calling Other Christians Not-Christian, I discussed the phenomena of Christians deciding that other Christians weren't "real" Christians based on doctrinal disagreements. In this week's installment I'll look at how Christians behaving badly are dismissed by other Christians as "Not True Christians".

The classic example of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy, from whence it derives its name, is this: McBeth claims that a Scotsman will invariably eat haggis regularly. McDuff replies that he's a Scotsman and he never eats haggis. McBeth retorts "Well then, you're not a true Scotsman". The "No True Scotsman" fallacy is a species of circular reasoning where the premise is redefined to exclude any inconvenient deviations and contradictions. This is a pretty common fallacy employed by Christians who by and large adhere to the "love thy neighbor" ethos against coreligionists who don't. When someone points out the horrible behavior of a group of Christians, you can be sure that someone will claim that "they're not really Christians because true Christians wouldn't act like that". 

Of course, Love Thy Neighbor Christians will argue that they're not the ones deciding who are true Christians and who aren't, God has set the standards in The Bible. The trouble with that, as I have pointed out many times in this series, is that the Bible isn't clear or unambiguous in what it has to say. In addition, "Christian" is as much a cultural identifier as a set of religious doctrines and behaviors. Anyone who says they're a Christian is a Christian. One might argue whether a particular Christian is living up to some perceived Biblical standard, but that doesn't make them Not A Christian, any more than abstaining from haggis makes an Edinburgh native whose roots go back many generations Not A True Scotsman.  

This doesn't mean that the Love Thy Neighbor Christians don't have a good reason to be embarrassed by the antics of their bigoted, hateful brethren. Like a family of cops who have that one sibling who just got out of prison, they think they're making them look bad. Guilt by association. But these hypothetical cops don't claim that their ex-con brother isn't their brother. But Christians are trying to boost their godliness average by eliminating their more embarrassing brethren from the statistics. 

This is by no means a Christians-only phenomena. Fundamentalist Muslims who require their women to wear a hijab look down on the Muslims who don't as not true Muslims and the burqa-wearing sects are sure the rest of the Muslim world are just as damned as Christians and Jews, maybe more so. Ultra-Orthodox Jews are pretty judgmental about their Conservative and Reform branches - some don't recognize weddings officiated by non-Orthodox rabbis. Heck, I've even encountered this tendency among pagans! But since Christians are the power wielding majority in this country, this is whom I'm focusing on. 

The truth is, that between Fundamentalist Evangelicals, Conservative Traditional Catholics, Mega Church Pastors and the like, cultural Christians who identify as right wing conservatives and espouse beliefs largely divorced from the Love Thy Neighbor morality are likely the majority of self-identified Christians in the United States. You can't just pretend they're not the face of 21st Century Christianity. 

An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part XVIII - Christians Calling Other Christians Not-Christian

Growing up I didn't think too much about other Christians and what they believed, or whether they were "real" Christians. I was raised in the Catholic Church, which definitely teaches that it's the "One True Church", but it wasn't something that came up in everyday conversation. In my teens I became aware of the Protestant Churches in my neighborhood and attended their services out of curiosity. This disturbed my parents, but I didn't detect anything very different. It wasn't until I got involved in The Way that I was exposed to the idea that some Christians didn't think some other Christians were...Christians.

I'm not talking about one Christian judging another Christian's behavior as unchristian, but a characterization of another Christian denomination as being fundamentally outside what the Bible would define as Christian. I've written much about The Way's cultishness, but their attitudes about how one would define a "true" Christian was right in line with conservative Protestant thinking. The thinking that fueled the engine of the European religious wars of the 1600 and 1700's had definitely not gone away. Catholics viewed Protestants as deluded schismatics and Protestants viewed Catholics as Mary worshipping papists. In the nineties my ex-wife and I were home schooling our children and purchased some textbooks from a Christian book publisher. I clearly remember the description in a history textbook of Catholics as a "false religion". 

I mostly hear these accusations of Christians not being real Christians mostly in a political context. Supporters of both major presidential candidates are sure that no Christian could truly support the other candidate. Abortion is a major theme in this flinging of heretical epithets, but even something as ordinary as clapping back at hecklers becomes "evidence" that a candidate hates Christians. In the political realm it's not so much suspect doctrine that gets one viewed as outside the pale, but the assumption that God is without a doubt on one side. 

This is not something new. The New Testament Epistles are full of references to "false teachers" who are accused of leading people astray and even being diabolic influences. Who are these allegedly false teachers? They weren't pagan priests or Jewish rabbis, they were other Christian leaders! Of course, since history is written by the victors, we don't see what the non-Christian Christians of the First Century had to say, but you can bet that they were writing the same things about the eventual authors of the epistles that the epistle writers were saying about them. Even past the era when what we now know as The Bible was written there was a constant battle among different factions of Christians to decide what the truth was. There was a constantly evolving opinion about various topics about which the Bible was unclear. Why? Because the Bible was unclear.

And other than politicians disingenuously promoting themselves as the only Christian alternative, the reason that regular Christians can confidently conclude that what they believe is the truth while other people are deluded fools or shills for Satan is that the Bible is (1) Unclear (2) Internally contradictory and (3) Not a concise doctrinal statement. The Bible is not a manifesto laying out a clear statement of beliefs and clarifying all manner of moral and practical conundrums, it is a loose collection of biographies (which contradict each other) and letters addressing behavioral problems in specific places. 

In order to make sense out of it a Christian is required to cherry pick, ignore the contradictions and parts that they don't like and interpret the ambiguous sections in a way that props up their own morality. Then decide that any other view is not just wrong, but inspired by The Devil. 

Rings of Power

I'm a Tolkien geek. I'm so deep into Middle-Earth minutia that I can tell you the names of the horses of the Rohirrim that Legolas and Aragorn borrowed. I just finished Season 2 of The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power - there's a lot that I liked and some things that I didn't. 

The following is written mostly for those who have watched the first two seasons, whether or not they were familiar with the source material.

One of things that I recognized early in Season 1 was that the timeline is off. Let me take a moment to give a broad out line of the Tolkien timeline, working somewhat backwards:

• Third Age: this is the time period in which the Lord of the Rings (LOTR) and The Hobbit take place. It lasted around 3,000 years. The main events of LOTR take place in the final 2 years of this period; the opening chapter around 17 years previous and The Hobbit around 60 years before that. 
• Second Age: this time period ends just as the Third Age begins. It lasted around 3,400 years. The events of Rings of Power (ROP) take place during this time period. 
• First Age: ends when the Second Age begins - different interpretations on how long it lasted. It's final 500 years consisted of a struggle by the Noldor, one of three main divisions of the Elves, to recover three magic gems stolen by Morgoth, the first Dark Lord. It ends when Eärendil, the son of a human father and Elven mother, sails to Valinor, the home of the Valar (pantheon of gods) to ask for their intervention. The Valar fight the "War of Wrath" defeating Morgoth. 

Second Age outline:

• Begins as Middle-Earth recovers from "The War of Wrath" 
• The Valar allow the Noldor, who had rebelled against the Valar to fight against Morgoth, to return to return to Valinor, the Undying Lands. 
• The Valar give the Men who fought against Morgoth the island of Númenor, halfway between Middle-Earth and the Undying lands, which becomes the pinnacle of human civilization
• Other than a few Elven enclaves, the Men of Middle-Earth were effectively abandoned
• Sauron, Morgoth's chief lieutenant, survived the War of Wrath and declined the opportunity to be rehabilitated, building a power base among Orcs and otherwise leaderless Men. 

In Tolkien's books, Galadriel had four brothers, various cousins and uncles, all who were killed in the war against Morgoth. She and Gil-Galad are the only surviving members of the ruling family of the Noldor. They, along with many other Elves choose to remain in Middle-Earth

Gil-Galad, High King of the Elves along with the King of Númenor start to suspect that Sauron survived and was building his power base around 750 of the Second Age (SA 750) . As Annatar, he approaches Celebrimbor around year SA 1200, but the first 16 rings of power are not completed until 300 years have passed. Another 90 years elapse before Celebrimbor forges the 3 Elven rings. In ROP this seems to take place over several months. In ROP Pharazôn’s usurpation of the kingship of Númenor takes place contemporaneously with the creation of the rings, when in the books, Pharazôn, Elendil, Miriel, Isildur etc. all live during the final 3 centuries of the Second Age - 1700 years later! Regarding the Dwarves, the release of the imprisoned Balrog doesn't happen until 1980 of the Third Age (TA 1980) under Durin VI. Obviously you have to modify and compress the timeline in order to tell the story, since important events are separated by centuries, or even millennia. 

Overall though, I liked how the story progressed and portrayed the spirit of the Tolkien canon even though it changed up many of the details. Characters like Arondir and Theo are additions that fill in the gaps, obviously there must have been Elves who weren't kings and queens and Men who weren't great warriors. Adar, however was a major character in the first two seasons who moves the story along in significant ways, despite there being no mention of him in the books. He does present a way to insert an origin story for Orcs into the series in a believable, if not canonical, way. 

The crafting of the rings themselves was presented backwards from how they were forged in the books. Tolkien wrote that sixteen rings of power were made with Annatar/Sauron's help first, then later the three were created by Celebrimbor alone, that eventually went to the Elves. Sauron, after forging the One master ring, attacks Eregion and takes the sixteen and distributes them to Dwarves and Men. (No Adar, and the destruction of Eregion is after the One Ring is made) 

What made the rings magical was presented differently. Tolkien is vague when it comes to how magic works in Middle-Earth. It's fuzzily presented as something like an extra "something" in the creative process that Elves bring to the table. ("Angelic" spirits like Sauron and Gandalf too). The mechanics of how the rings influence or enslave people, and how the One Ring controls them, is never fully explored in Tolkien's works. The Seven and the Nine are not described as different in themselves, but have different effects based on who is wearing them. The Dwarves' rings effect them differently than Men's rings because Men and Dwarves are different, not because the rings are. Mithril in the books has no magical qualities and is simply the perfect metal.

ROP presents mithril as having a miraculous power to "preserve". It magically prevents the "fading" of the Elves so that they don't have to leave Middle-Earth for the Undying Lands of the Valar. This is why in ROP mithril is a critical ingredient in the rings. The Three, the Seven, and the Nine are all shown as being intrinsically different in their composition in order to explain the different effects, with the Nine Rings for Men even containing some of Sauron's blood. Initially I thought making mithril magical was pretty dumb, but to make the story coherent to television viewers, especially those unfamiliar with the source material,  there needed to be some kind of explanation to why they worked, and why they were different from each other. In the books the Three do have a power of preservation, and we see that in how Lothlorien and Rivendell are like the lands that time forgot, but it's not due to the inclusion of mithril, but an unspecified magical component. 

I thought that the portrayal of Sauron as a gaslighting, manipulating, deceiver, who nonetheless appeared as the charming Annatar, was brilliant. He seduced Celebrimbor, the people of Eregion, and eventually even the Orcs. But he seamlessly employed betrayal and cruelty when he thought it justified his goals. Celebrimbor's guards killing each other with just his thought showed his power was more than just talk. It's not evident in LOTR, but in one of Tolkien's letters he describes Sauron's motivations as a desire for order that was corrupted into a belief that he alone could bring that order and that the ends justified the means. 

The Númenor arc was disappointing. There is no rationale given for the political intrigue other than...political intrigue. There is little reference to what Númenor was, how and why it was established, or the reason for the antipathy towards Elves: generations of building jealousy of Elves' immortality and the fear of death. The Kings of Númenor (Westernesse) are all descended from Elros, Elrond's twin brother. (After their father Eärendil successfully sought the help of the Valar at the end of the First Age, the half-Elven were given a choice to live as Men or as Elves. Elros chose mortality as a king of Men, Elrond chose to live as an Elf.) The power struggle in Westernesse might as well be any succession crisis in late Middle Ages Europe the way it's scripted. And let's not forget that ridiculous trial by sea monster that supposedly vindicated Miriel and Elendil, but was apparently forgotten by the next episode. The added characters - Elendil's daughter and Pharazôn’s slimy son add nothing to the story.

And as happy as I was to see Tom Bombadil, did we really need to wait so long to find out that the Stranger was Gandalf? We followed him for two whole seasons and he didn't do anything. I guess all of Season 3 we'll be treated to hints on who the so-called Dark Wizard is. Not Radagast, that's for sure. He came right out and said that he was one of the five Istari, i.e. Wizards, so he could be Saruman, or he could be one of the Blue Wizards that we know very little of. Speaking of the Stranger, who we now know is Gandalf, the Harfoot (and now Stoor) episodes I could have done without, but they are trying to cram in as many origin stories as they can. 

I do enjoy the regular throwaway lines that Tolkien fans will get, but that those unfamiliar with the source materials will miss: the chants of Baruk Khazâd in Khazâd-Dum; the Dark Wizard mentioning Manwë; Elendil (finally) mentioning that he has a son named Anarion; references to Fëanor and the Silmarils; mentions of Tuor and Beren; Disa's mention of the Dimrill Dale and Zirakzigal (and Disa's name is similar to Dis, sister to Thorin and the only named female Dwarf in all of Tolkien's writings); the Doors of Durin crafted by Narvi & Celebrimbor; Pharazôn lamenting not being able to see Eressëa in the distance; the Palantir; Miriel giving Elendil Narsil, the sword that ultimately is used to cut the One Ring from Sauron's hand and is reforged as Aragorn's sword Anduril; the Stoors reference to a mythical home as Sūzat (the word that is translated "The Shire" in the appendices); Adar's mention of Melian...and some I may have missed...geek paradise!

I liked Season 2 much more than Season 1, and the ending was at the same time catastrophic and hopeful. The Elves, while defeated in battle, find refuge in what is surely the future site of Rivendell; the Stoors, accompanied by the two Harfoots are one step closer to founding The Shire (although that timeline will have to be off as well, since The Shire was founded in 1401 of the Third Age...and we still need to meet the Fallohides! 

An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part XVII - Christianity as a Cultural Identity

With the recent focus on the (White) Christian Nationalist Movement and its connection to right wing politics, one could be forgiven for thinking that this was a recent development. Christians completely ignoring the Gospel message in favor of an us vs. them mindset? We need to get back to Christians acting Christian...right? Not so fast. 

In our own lifetimes, and even going back to the days of Constantine the Great, people have always identified as Christians without having even a passing familiarity with The Bible. 

There's little objective information about Christianity in its first hundred years, but by the time Christianity became a recognized religion and later the official religion, it's evident that people were Christians because that's what everyone else in their culture was. Christian identity was inseparable from Roman identity. This tendency became more pronounced as the Arab Caliphate became a threat to the Empire's existence, since the Arabs very strongly identified as Muslims. Even within Christendom, the Western Europeans identified as Catholics and the Byzantines identified as Orthodox, both as intrinsic parts of who they were. 

Christianity splintered in the 1500's with the Protestant Reformation as different varieties of Christianity multiplied. But for the most part, individuals' religion was determined by their rulers and there were Catholic nations, Lutheran nations, Calvinist nations all warring among themselves for various reasons. As time went by there was more choice among various denominations, but for the most part the umbrella identity of "Christian" persisted. I'm not suggesting there weren't sincere Christians throughout all of these eras, or that no one studied the text of the Bible or lived lives according the teachings of Jesus, but that being a Christian wasn't something that you decided to become, but something that you were.

People my age remember that one of the bloodiest religious conflicts of our lives was not in Israel or the Middle East, and didn't involve radical Muslims, but was the Catholic-Protestant "Troubles" in Northern Ireland. For many reasons economic and political divisions also broke along religious lines. The poorer Northern Irish, who also favored union with the Republic of Ireland in the south tended to be Catholic while those who wanted to remain part of the U.K. and were of higher economic status, were usually Protestant. There's a lot of reasons for why this split developed, but people didn't spend a lot of time thinking about which version of Christianity they followed, it was just who they were. 

Even in my own youth, my neighborhood was made up of mostly Catholics, children or grandchildren of immigrants from Catholic countries. There wasn't violence or strife between Catholics and the few Protestants, but it was unthinkable that one would convert from one to another. Being catholic was what you were. My own generation was a bit more fluid. The so-called Jesus Movement was making inroads, and young people were more willing than previous generations to explore other traditions or join new religious groups. When I decided to ditch Catholicism and join The Way, (which was, as far as they knew, Christian) my parents' reaction was similar to how I imagine it would have been if I had announced that I had embraced Satanism. Milder, but still disapproving, were their reactions when my brother married an Episcopalian or when my niece was married in a non-church ceremony. In all of these cases, most people, no matter what denomination they identified as, would be hard pressed to articulate how their religion was substantially different that the other guys' faith. 

My point in bringing up these examples, is that identifying as Christian without any connection to actual Christian theology or principles is nothing new - it has a long history. Today's White Christian Nationalists are part of a long history of weaponizing religion and using it to "other" those they don't like. They have allies in Congress and in the courts. The Supreme Court majority has deferred to Christians in First Amendment cases and their doctrine of shaping opinions based on whether similar laws existed historically should scare anyone who believes that government should be neutral with respect to religion. 

So, You Want to Be a Manager While in a Cult

One of the hallmarks of cult involvement is obedience to authority. If you're a cult member you're expected to obey, no matter what, and if you're a cult leader you expect unquestioning obedience all the time. Deviation from this standard is seen as no less than sin. How does this translate into the non-cult world? As it happens I was first attempting to climb the management ladder while still involved in a cult.

I was 19 when I first became involved with The Way International, and in my early twenties when I first became a manager. Add to the mix having grown up in New York City, where being direct is valued more than being "nice", contrasting me with the people I was managing. 

The structure of The Way International was a multi-level hierarchy with leaders at the top and the ordinary believers at the bottom. In the United States where most members lived each local fellowship was overseen by a coordinator. Each state had its own coordinator, possibly with intermediate levels of leaders between the local group and the state leader. The state leaders answered to a regional leader who reported to headquarters. Many leaders were graduates of The Way's leadership training program, the Way Corps, in which the expectations of unquestioning obedience to leadership was much greater than with the rank and file. The framework where leadership was never questioned was based on the belief that leadership was basing their decisions on godly inspiration, or even direct revelation from God. It was stated clearly that you couldn't be wrong if you were carrying out the instructions of your leader...even if it later turned out that they were wrong. This meant that you couldn't ever question what leadership was telling you because obedience was more important than being right and you were somehow "protected" from any consequences of bad leadership simply because you were a good little follower. This was so effectively hammered into people's heads that it seemed that it was the only right way to lead.

The Way underwent a "civil war" during the late 80's after the death of its founder. His replacement had to deal with dissension amongst upper leadership and when the dust settled the organization had splintered leaving a stub of its former membership and leadership. This caused the new Way president to conclude that any questioning had to be the result of demonic possession. After all, he was the anointed (he was literally anointed by his predecessor in an installment ceremony) as the leader of God's people and any dissension had to be rebellion against God. He adopted a "yelling" style of addressing the membership and became even more insistent on unquestioning obedience. While not universal, his style soon became the norm among subordinate leadership and his harsh methods of communication became the standard and influenced any Way men and women interested in becoming leaders. 

It also influenced me. 

I didn't finish college. I didn't have any technical or vocational skills. In order for me to make a living wage at any job that I had, management was the only realistic path to make more money. Eventually I became good at it, but I first had to unlearn my cult's attitude toward management. 

Of course in the real, non-cult, world, you can't claim divine favor in order to get people to listen to you. Nonetheless, I had internalized the idea that my job title entitled me to lord it over people. Even in the non-cult world this is not uncommon. There are several sources of management power: 

1. Legitimate Power: The ability to influence other due to one's position, office or formal authority
2. Reward Power: The ability to influence others by giving or withholding rewards such as pay, promotions, time off, etc.
3. Coercive Power: The ability to influence others through punishment
4. Expert Power: The ability to influence others through special knowledge or skills
5. Referent Power: Power that comes from personal characteristics that people value, respect or admire

Many managers, especially inexperienced ones, lead with a combination of numbers 1-3, while effective managers lead from number 4 or number 5. As a new, inexperienced manager I not only harbored the misconceptions about leadership that most rookie managers entertain, but I had the additional burden of years of examples of poor leadership from cult leaders - including the way that information was conveyed - by yelling. Even after I left The Way, the ingrained habits that I had developed didn't disappear. I gained a reputation for being rough on people and stalled in my advancement in the company. It didn't help that my immediate supervisor was a "nice guy" (not necessarily an effective manager - just very likable!) and the contrast between us made me look even worse. Not to mention my very East Coast personality! 

As time went by the template of dictatorial leadership started to fade. What really changed my outlook about leadership was a change in my immediate supervisor. The new boss was most assuredly not the same as the old boss! Not a "nice guy" at all. He was convinced that he needed to restore order to a lax work force after the benign leadership of his predecessor. He wasn't all wrong in his assumptions, but he came down hard on the managers and employees. We also got a new Human Resources Coordinator, a former school principal who was every bit as tough as our new boss. The change in circumstance - observing the affect the new guy had on morale, allowed me to see just how toxic my own approach had been. I spent a lot of my time talking people out of quitting in response to the manager's style and the rest talking my boss out of firing good people. Within a short period of time I became the "good cop". 

In response to seeing someone else as the "bad cop", I began to reevaluate my own approach, putting my Way-influenced management style behind me, revisiting the management lessons I learned from "Managing Management Time". By the time I was transferred to another location a few years later I had completely rehabilitated my reputation among the managers and employees. Unfortunately corporate management still saw the "old me" and it was a long time before I saw a promotion. 

Cult involvement can be all-encompassing. It can affect everything you do. Even when you get out, it can take a while to flush the toxins out of your mental and spiritual system. What had been impressed upon me as godly leadership poisoned the career path that I had taken. 

It could have been worse - I eventually changed course. 

Your Favorite Band Sucks

Taste in music is subjective. Of course we all believe that the music that we like is good music and what we don't like is bad, it comes down to a matter of opinion. For most people, the music which they listened to in their high school years tends to define their musical tastes. Every generation thinks that their music is great while what came after is crap. Even within that window, the musical tastes of those around you influenced what you listened to. Kids in the same high school would be listening to different bands depending on what clique they were part of.  Attempts by others to introduce most people to different artists is usually ignored. Loyalty to specific bands often transcends enjoyment of the genre. 

A phenomenon that I have observed many times: two people are having a discussion about music. Person "A" mentions a couple of bands that they like. Person "B" recommends a band that they feel is similar to Person "B"'s tastes. Person "A" nods politely and never investigates Person "B"'s recommendation. I see this a lot with intergenerational musical conversations. Younger generation person forms an opinion about the older generation's music, sight unseen (or maybe it's hearing unheard?) even though if the exact same music came from a younger artist they'd love it. It goes the other way too - Boomers or Gen X who are convinced that anything that came after their generation's music is garbage - by definition! I'm convinced that this is true of every generation and will continue to be true. I have a vivid memory of my grandmother griping about my father's "crazy music" that he listened to as a teenager (it was Dixieland Jazz) and of course my own dad expressing his negative opinions about what I listened to. 

I consider myself lucky to have been exposed to a variety of musical styles over the years. Until my junior year of high school I mostly listened to Top 40 AM radio, but then I started hanging around with a group of guys that included some garage band musicians. Black Sabbath, Yes, Rush, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, ELP are bands I started listening to then and still enjoy. I worked with a guy who was into Southern rock and started listening to The Allman Brothers, and The Outlaws. At another job I worked with a guitarist in a jazz fusion band who introduced me to Weather Report, Return to Forever and Mahavishnu Orchestra. When I moved to Lincoln I stumbled across a jazz fusion show on KZUM radio one morning while trimming lettuce and became familiar with other forms of jazz, as well as blues and folk music. I was a deejay/programmer throughout the late 80's and early 90's and played jazz fusion, blues and even surf guitar on various shows that I hosted. Streaming services, while arguably unfair to musicians, offer a window into a wide panorama of musical styles. I've found many "favorite" artists just by listening to a random playlist.

Does this mean I'm immune to the tribalism inherent in most people's musical tastes? No, I'm as bad as anyone else. There are genres I don't seek out - mainstream country, most hip-hop, show tunes, Yoko Ono. I'm a bit of a musical snob in that I enjoy listening to those bands that "no one has ever heard of", and shy away from the popular, arena-filling bands of any genre. I love the Blues, but don't seek out the bluesmen who sound like every other bluesman. I still like the hard rock of the 70's, but can't see myself going to see one of the old guard bands that has no connection to the band that I listened to in my youth other than the name. 

Fortunately there's enough music out there for everyone, and enough variety in styles. 

Even if your favorite bands sucks.

An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part XVI - Agreeing to Disagree...Or Not

One of the problems in looking to the Bible as a rulebook on how to live life is that it's not arranged in any easy-to-access order. There's no index, it's not arranged by subject matter and there seems to be a lot of areas that simply aren't covered. The true believers will tell you that's because it's not supposed to be accessible to the disbelievers, but that if you have the Holy Spirit within you, understanding will flow naturally.

How convenient. 

Of course, I'm one of those disbelievers, and this series is about how I, an agnostic, look at the Bible. I don't believe that it was dictated, or even inspired, by God, or any other permutation of the idea that it's "The Truth". I'm just looking at it like I'd look at any other piece of literature. Viewed in that light, it's confusing. 

One of the sources of confusion is the dichotomy between the "Old Testament", aka The Hebrew or Jewish scriptures and the "New Testament", aka the Gospels and the Epistles. The Old Testament is without question written for Jews. The New Testament is more universal in who it's intended for. The Old Testament describes God in starkly different terms than does most of the New Testament. Most Christians ignore this difference, pretend that it's not there. Although there is a subset of Christian theology called dispensationalism which explains the difference by theorizing that God has different "dispensations", or administrations, where the rules of the game change. It's obvious that the institution of the Law of Moses changed the ground rules that existed before, and that Jesus' life, death and resurrection represented a further change. The Book of Revelation is without question a different milieu than the world as we know it, ending with a still different new Heaven and Earth. Dispensationalists can be thanked (or blamed) for the popular belief in "the rapture". An early Christian movement, founded by Marcion, believed that the differences were so great that the Old Testament God was a different God than the God of Jesus. So it comes down to either explaining away the differences in a pretzel-like manner, or just not thinking about them. 

The biggest dichotomy in the New Testament is between the Gospels and the Epistles of Paul. Jesus was primarily concerned with action, while Paul was mainly concerned with belief. Even though each of the four Gospels has a different emphasis, and even contradict each other, Jesus isn't telling people to simply believe, he's always talking about how one should behave oneself. Paul on the other hand, while he does touch on a few things to do and not do, it's all in the head - it's believing in Jesus, believing that he was raised from the dead and so on. 

The epistles of Paul are not an instruction manual on how to be a Christian, they're mostly in the form of letters addressing specific problems that various church communities were having. There's not a lot of internal inconsistency within the Pauline letters, but there's no definitive listing of doctrine and practice. The Catholic/Orthodox traditions tell their people to not worry about it, the leaders will tell you how to act and think. The Protestant traditions do that too, while maintaining the illusion that their people can see what the Bible teaches for themselves...as long as it agrees with what the leaders say it means. For any doctrinal position it's typical to jump from section to section and book to book putting together a supposedly coherent position, because you won't find it clearly delineated in any one place. 

What about the Ten Commandments? Isn't that a list telling us how to act? Yes and no. Yes, in that it's a list in the Bible. No - for several reasons. If we're taking the dispensationalist position that the Old Testament was for the Jews and not written to The Church, why would we pay it any attention? If we are supposed to heed the "Ten Commandments", why not the other hundreds of commandments? Like the ones involving dietary and grooming rules. Or the ones that allow slavery or that a woman marry her rapist. Quite a quandary. But what most people do not realize that no matter what position you take, there are two contradictory versions of the Ten Commandments (or Ten Words) in the Book of Exodus:

https://contradictionsinthebible.com/2-ten-commandments/

Ten Commandments (Ex 20:1-17)
1. I am Yahweh your god; you shall not have other gods before my face!

2. You shall not make for yourself a statue or an image.

3. You shall not swear falsely by the name Yahweh, your god

4. Remember the Sabbath day.

5. Honor your father and your mother.

6. You shall not murder.

7. You shall not commit adultery.

8. You shall not steal.

9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

10. You shall not covet you neighbor’s house.

 

Ten Commandments (Ex 34:14-26)
1. You shall not bow down to another god; for Yahweh is a jealous god!

2. You shall not make molten gods for yourself.

3. You shall observe the festival of Unleavened bread.

4. You shall redeem every first born of your sons!

5. You shall observe the Sabbath.

6. You shall make a festival of Weeks.

7. Three times a year every male shall appear before Yahweh, god of Israel.

8. You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice on leavened bread.

9. You shall bring the firstfruits of your land to the house of Yahweh your god.

10. You shall not cook a kid in its mother’s milk.

So, which version do you want to follow? Or post in your classrooms?