So today marks 8 years that I’ve been doing this blog. That’s a pretty big milestone! I had two posts on November 14, 2006, and I thought it would be fun to repost them here (along with a little commentary).
Here’s the first:
Wish me luck… 🙂
So that was innocuous enough. Now here’s post number 2:
I think 1 Corinthians 1:18-25 best explains the way in which Christ’s gospel was/is a mystery. As vs 18 says:
18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
We can see from this passage that God’s plan of salvation makes no sense to those who refuse to believe it, but to those of us who accept it, it’s brilliant! Verse 21 goes on to say:
21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.
See, because the world is so “wise,” it views the concept of God as foolishness. They have been blinded by their own pretensions. For the Jews and Greeks of the day, it wasn’t that they didn’t believe in the supernatural; it wasn’t that they didn’t believe in deities. Their problem was that they thought they already knew what God would do. The Jews already had a fixed idea of what the Messiah would be, so when Christ appeared and didn’t lead them to victory against the Romans, they refused to accept him. The Greeks didn’t accept Christ because they couldn’t conceive of a god allowing himself to be put to death by his own creation. And because they already had things “figured out,” they missed their chance.
Today, people do the same thing. They would rather put faith in scientific theories that have not been proven. They would rather believe that all of the order we see in our universe (the fragile food chain, vast differences throughout the animal and plant kingdoms, the very specific orbits of planets, etc) was created through a giant explosion (something that, in all practical applications, has only been shown to destroy, not create). Have they been blinded by their own “wisdom?”
Too often, even those who profess to be religious only listen to their own ideas about what God wants. Many times they view the Bible as a collection of stories or suggestions, and not the “wisdom of God that leads to salvation” that 1 Corinthians purports it to be. How is that different from what the Jews and Greeks were condemned for?
Throughout the Bible, passages talk about truth and understanding. I firmly believe that God gave us understanding and intellect for a reason. We are supposed to be able to understand God’s message for us. It’s not supposed to be “mysterious” any longer. It’s not supposed to be some “better felt than told” experience. No, God’s word is supposed to be powerful and undeniable. It’s supposed to move us and touch us in a way that nothing else can. But for it to do that, we have to read it, study it, know it.
It’s a little painful to read through that. I cringe when I read how badly I understood things about evolution and the Big Bang back then, or when I alluded to non-Christians as just being those who “refuse to believe it”. It’s kind of funny, but I was guilty of the same thing I was accusing others of. I thought I had the answers, but I had never taken time to really examine any other point of view.
The one decent thing from the post that serves as a bit of foreshadowing about where I would eventually wind up is the last paragraph. You can see that while I was firmly ensnared in Christianity, I believed that it was not supposed to be utterly mysterious. It was supposed to be consistent and “undeniable.” It took a while, but I finally realized that Christianity just didn’t deliver in that regard.
Anyway, I hope you’ve enjoyed this little jaunt down memory lane. Someone suggested to me recently that I should think about doing this kind of review with more of my old posts. I’ve been considering it… Thoughts?
Finding Truth 
“Why don’t you want to answer these questions/ points Nate?”
Why don’t you want to answer these questions/points Kathy?
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@BAT-SHIT CRAZY KATHY:
“I give you the same challenge I gave Nan.. post my words that support your assertion up above.. that I’ve been telling you all this time that you “should” believe because the Bible or Christians or whomever says so. It’s an absurd assertion and I have no idea where you get it from other than your own mind.. (and Nan’s).”
well, here you go you goddamn stupid bitch, your own goddamn words:
“God doesn’t “owe” you ANY proof. The burden is certainly NOT on Him. He will pay no consequences if you choose to reject the proof He HAS given you.. that which HE decides to give, not you.”
well, that was easy enough,
it always is easy proving you to be a stupid fucking liar using your own goddamn words,
I’ve been doing it for years,
that’s why you are too much of a coward to even try to confront me.
I screw you every time , bitch. right up your fat greasy ass.
(again, these are the words god put in my mouth to say, so this absolves me from all blame, says so in the buybull.)
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and Kathy, before you say anything else, answer the damn questions presented to you,
or shut the fuck up!!!!
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Kathy,
Nate is asking for evidence of divine inspiration (is the Bible God’s word?). Are you saying there are witnesses that watched the process of someone being divinely inspired to write something? Are you saying that there are martyrs who died over the issue of divine inspiration? Is there a prophecy that supports the claim of divine inspiration? Is there archaeological evidence that supports divine inspiration?
Are you aware of how the New Testament was put together? In case you don’t read Nate’s links I will give you some highlights:
The first person we know of to put together a list of books was Marcion around 144 AD. He rejected the old testament, listed 10 epistles and 1 gospel. He had a stripped down version of what we now call Luke, but referred to it as “the Gospel”.
It wasn’t until around 180 AD that the next person, Iraneus, created a list of books and included 4 gospels. The reason he gave for selecting four gospels was that “there are four winds” i.e. North, South, East and West. His list included the The Shepherd of Hermas and did not include Philemon, II Peter, II & III John, Hebrews and Jude.
It is worth noting that other gospels were in circulation at this time including the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel to the Hebrews, Gospel of the Nazarenes, Gospel of the Ebionites, Gospel of the Twelve among quite a few others including gnostic gospels and gospels that were referenced but did not survive.
The next list comes from around 200 AD from the Muratorian Fragment and does not have The Shepherd of Hermas, I & II Peter, Hebrews, James and III John but does include The Apocalypse of Peter.
The next list is from Origen around 230 AD who listed all of the books that were under dispute at that time: Hebrews, II Peter, II & III John, James, Jude, the Epistle of Barnabas, The Shepherd of Hermas, The Didache and the Gospel According to the Hebrews.
The first list that actually matches what most Christians use today was written in 367 AD in a letter from Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria to the Egyptian churches.
To this day there are some sects of Christianity that use a different NT canon. The East-Syrian Nestorian Church has a canon with only 22 books and the Ethiopian Church has 38 books in their NT.
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Thank you, Dave.
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SaintPaulieGirrrl,
Kathy frustrates me, too. But I need to ask you to leave off the name-calling. A little while before you started commenting here, there was another guy who was pretty obtuse. He seemed more interested in starting arguments with people and making personal assertions about them than in actually having a real discussion. I eventually had to implement a “Comment Policy” and ban him because he wouldn’t tone it down.
So while I appreciate your sense of humor, and I especially dig your taste in video games 🙂 , I have to ask you to drop the insults. I know you have a long history with Kathy, and I admire your ability to hang in there with her, but I just want to be mindful of the overall tone of my blog. Does that make sense?
Thanks 🙂
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I’ve added another question at the end fro kathy:
1a – where were the angels encountered at jesus tomb (please provide scripture)?
1b – where did Mary, Joseph and Jesus go after leaving Bethlehem (please provide scripture)?
1c – what day was jesus crucified on, passover or the day before (please provide scripture)?
1d – during the triumphal entry, how many donkeys did jesus have with him (please provide scripture)
1e – how many people are in the linage of joseph and jesus (please provide scripture)?
1f – what is a list of all the things that the NT says that save (please provide scripture)?
An exhaustive list will require an assortment of books and letters, which could be problematic as that would mean that the people who these books and letters were written to didnt have a complete plan on salvation.
It will also show how certain works “save.”
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ok, Nate, I’m with you, handsome man. no more naughty language.
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😦
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Thank you 😀
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So, Cathy, I am having a ‘crisis of faith’: I believed the Bible was God’s word from my youth, I’ve read it through only 7 times so far, but I have studied the history, the ‘provenance’, the prophecies and so forth and am having grave doubts about the legitimacy of the New Testament and seeing some problems with the Old.
So, please, give me some encouragement and show me a way out this dilemma with validated history (established with two are three legitimate non tautological witnesses) and scientific proofs. I believe in God and am not an atheist, deist or agnostic, but the Bible is giving me a great deal of discomfort.
Please help.
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gee willikers, Black Ops Mikey,
it’s spelled Kathy, with a “K”.
what in blue-blazes are you thinking?
fudgesickles!!!!!!!!
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Good effort, Dave, and great research, but you don’t have the experience with Kathy that we’ve had over the past four months – she’ll ignore everything you’ve said (or minimize it), because there’s nothing about it in the only book she ever reads.
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exactly right, Dave, that was very informative, but by golly if Arch isn’t right again (as always).
Kathy, won’t acknowledge any of it, as we have all learned, Kathy can be a real, uh, well……..
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Kathy, I’m sorry that you feel you are being personally attacked. But when you repeat yourself again and again and again with the same blither-blather, many of us get frustrated. Moreover, what do you call it when you continue to tell Nate’s blog participants that they are close minded, lacking objectivity, and unable to see your points because of their liberal thinking? Do you not see this is also a personal attack on their character?
We (William, in particular) have posted certain questions time and again and yet you still refuse to answer them.
Instead you jump on certain posts and/or phrases and demonstrate your indignity that we can’t see beyond the nose on our faces. (Before you react, these are not your exact words but the intimation is certainly there.
Re: a couple of recent comments by you … and I quote …
1) “The Gospels that were chosen obviously met all the criteria that showed them to be inspired.. so they included them DESPITE the seeming contradictions.”
Who is the “they” that included them, Kathy? And what were their qualifications to make this decision?
2) “The Bible gives plenty of evidence.. prophecies, witnesses and martyrs, along with archeological [sic] and other evidence.”
You’ve repeated this time and again — and time and again individuals have challenged your statement. Yet you refuse to counter their challenges except with a comment similar to this (your words): “And again, my argument for accepting the Gospel accounts is that there isn’t anything in them to cause me to believe they are false.” In other words, God said it, I believe it. Again, perhaps not your exact words, but the suggestion is certainly there.
If you would only demonstrate some sort of reasoning beyond general statements like this: “God doesn’t “owe” you ANY proof. The burden is certainly NOT on Him. He will pay no consequences if you choose to reject the proof He HAS given you.. that which HE decides to give, not you.”, I think the comments you consider “personal attacks” would greatly diminish.
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Paul, you’re gonna have scars on your tongue, before this is over! I feel for ya, man —
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Yeah, I’m liking these “Leave it to Beaver”-style interjections, though. 😉
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So much more inventive, you know?
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What we need here are bigger words. To make the argument seem more impressive, y’know?
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How about supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?
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Sounds good. What about antidisestablishmentarianism? That sounds authoritative, doesn’t it?
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Mine’s longer than yours —
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I’ll take your word for that…
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🙂 @ Ruth re: Arch.
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Zoe, you don’t drop by often enough!
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