More or less unsolicited extracts from letters I’m exchanging with a good friend (BM) who has lots of interesting comments and questions on taking Scripture at face value, prayer, a perfect Being having regrets, etc.
“I was raised in a
"mainstream" Protestant background, the son of a Methodist minister,
and when I was young, I had deeply moving religious experiences.”
Hey I can tell we're
really gonna hit it off - my dad used to be a pastor in a Lutheran church
(smile).
“But as I grew older, I began asking myself more questions
and the "answers" I came to were hard for me to accept at first, but
now I am increasingly comfortable and confident with them.”
May I ask what kinds
of questions those were? And how did you come at those answers you
eventually came to?
”I have come to be an agnostic and I believe that natural forces are what
makes the world go 'round, in both the literal and figurative senses. I am not
hostile to Christianity and I leave the door open to the possibility that God
exists, and that Jesus may be the son of God. But I also leave the door open to
other possibilities and am actually more convinced by the possibility that
Jesus is not God's son and that God does not exist beyond the imagination of
mankind.”
A few questions here too: From the start, what was the reason you believed in Jesus in the first place? What changed? What do you believe about Jesus now? That he's just a good moral teacher, holy man, etc.?
“I guess I'm
writing you to give you my opinion on some of the articles on your site. For
example, you provided a critique
of a reader's belief that Old Testament miracles were not miracles, but natural
occurrences. In my opinion, either you didn't understand what your reader
was trying to say, or he set you up with a paper tiger-type argument. The
question about the Old Testament is: did things occur as they are told or were
the events embellished, creating a blend of truth and legend?”
I can agree with you that the REAL question is whether or not things occurred as the OT suggests. However, I don't think I read my friend's comments wrongly. He made, IMO, the mistake of *agreeing* with the 10 plagues narrative on everything except its declaration that God was behind it. So, what we end up having - according to him - is the 10 plagues occuring IN THE EXACT ORDER in which Moses had predicted/warned, yet being WITHOUT a personal meta-force behind them. Although I'll probably reword some of the rhetoric I used in the piece (*smirk*), I think the basic critique remains: To theorize that the 10 plagues occurred by RANDOM NATURAL FORCES without non-natural intervention takes a lot more faith than what 'normal' Christians have (e.g. what kind of 'natural' disease kills only the first-born in a single night?)
To address briefly some of your comments (please forgive my shameless editing of your letter!):
“Why do you take the Bible at face value? How can you be sure that there is not some embellishing here to make it look like divine intervention when it wasn't? The root of the problem is that you believe that the Bible is correct and so whatever contradicts it must be false, whereas I believe that the Bible is probably made up of some real events mixed together with a dose of myth and interpretation.”
I'm not a historian or an archeologist, Mike. But I DO know that when it comes to history the 'modus operandi' is to give the texts the benefit of the doubt. This means that a document is normally 'innocent until proven guilty'.
I believe the Bible is correct because as yet I have found no reason to believe otherwise(!). Granted that stories like the Exodus are 'unbelievable', I still gotta be careful not to write them off out of sheer prejudice of what *I* consider to be 'impossible'. I try to ask myself: On that which CAN be tested, has the Bible come out generally okay in the 'historical reliability/accuracy' department? Are there non-resolvable contradictions? Errors? Even if some passages contain mistakes - and I've yet to be shown any - are we then forced to disbelieve the truth of the other portions? On what basis?
Regarding 'embellishment' - and here I assume you mean something like 'deliberate human manipulation of the texts or outright fiction' - I can agree on its *possibility*, but that doesn't tell us anything of its historical value or authenticity. Invoking the mere possibility of errors is simply not how history is done... To answer your question,
1. We need to let the evidence speak for itself; we do not as yet possess any data to allow us to legitimately declare the Bible a historically unworthy document. In fact, the evidence suggests otherwise. The Bible's 'track record' leads me to give it the ‘benefit of the doubt’ on the dubious/ambiguous matters, or those for which evidence is scarce (but not *contradictory*, mind you!)...one of these is the Red Sea Crossing...(here I plan to include some data showing how archeology has been gradually vindicating the allegedly inaccurate claims of the Old Testament...will get some of these to you soon, they ought to give u some clue as to why it's still wise to trust in Scripture...)
2. The 'embellishment' theory itself lacks credibility! (smile) Even ASSUMING the Hebrews 'invented' God in their Scriptures, you'd need to explain why they then portrayed themselves and their kings as being evil, stubborn, dis-obedient, etc. Likewise, there are MANY passages in the NT where Jesus reprimands His disciples (and even one where one of his closest disciples *denies* him...why would a person deliberately write 'bad stuff' about himself? What would Israel hope to achieve by putting on paper their own atrocities and crimes?) And don't forget we need to ask the evidence question for this theory too – what data do we have for this view?
I suppose the point of my first post here is to point out that things are somewhat complex even for the agnostic (smile)...we all need to 'come to grips' with Scripture, and let our theories be scrutinized as well...
For e.g.: Did or did not Moses know that, say, a meteor (assuming a meteor can do what the Bible said was 'done' to the Red Sea) was going to hit the water right after the Israelites crossed the sea and just as the Egyptians were charging across? If he DID, then are we saying Moses was some super-scientist? If he did NOT, then was it a fluke? If we DO NOT BELIEVE what Scripture said about the Red Sea crossing, then what ELSE in Scripture do we not believe, and why not? What DO we believe, and why? And what’s the criteria we employ in distinguishing 100% fiction, part-fiction, non-fiction, etc.?
Christians begin with the assumption that the OT is generally accurate and feel no need to think otherwise unless the evidence warrants it...
Later (much later, sigh) I hope to show u some data more or less 'proving' much of what Scripture says about the Pharoah of the Exodus, the striking of the first-born, etc...I also hope to write about Sodom & Gomorrah, the Flood as well as deal with the other issues you raised...it'll be fun, I'm sure! ;>)
Yours,
Al