How I Became a Humanist #16: Who Wrote the Bible?

You're probably sitting in a chair reading these words.  There's a good chance that this isn't the first essay of mine you've read.  If you've read all the essays in this series up to this point, you've probably picked up on my tone.  You know how my paragraphs flow.  You might have noticed that I break paragraphs up for ease of reading, rather than keeping large chunks of text together.  You have a sense that there will be a picture somewhere between the top of the page and the third paragraph.

If I inserted a paragraph from another person somewhere in this essay, you might notice.  You'd be more likely to notice if that person was from a different part of the country or a different part of the world.  If the person were much older or younger than me, he or she might use language differently from me.  Education would play a factor too.  If you had some question about whether or not I was the writer, you could even observe how I use commas.  Or you could put my essays from this series in a word cloud generator and see if the author frequently uses the same verbiage that I do.  There are any number of ways that you could figure out whether or I not I was the author. If the essay were written by someone else, you'd probably guess it.

Probably a German Bible

Scholars use this same sort of analysis to determine who wrote particular books of the Bible.  They look at the words they use in the Greek.  "Does this person write like they're from around 100 CE or from 300 CE?"  "Does the original manuscript look like it was written by someone who was born in Tarsus or from someone born in Alexandria?"  Dialects change with time and location.

Of course, this only concerns who wrote the books as a whole and not whether or not additions have been made to the books over time.  Consider the game of telephone you might have played as a child only now the game is being played with the written word.  Remember that the Bible was copied by hand for about 1400 years of Christian history.  Scribes sometimes wrote notes in the margins of their texts and sometimes those notes were mistaken for scripture by subsequent scribes (remember that for a time the Bible didn't have chapters or verses and the copy the scribe was working with was likely the only copy the scribe would have had.  He couldn't cross-reference with another copy.  He had to make his best guess.)

How do scholars know what belongs and what doesn't?  First, they take the earliest manuscripts we have and compare them.  They compare them for age, but also compare them for location and lineage to the degree that's possible.  When they see differences between the various manuscripts they try to discern when the difference took place and where the divergence began.

One of the most interesting cases of this, to me, is the case of John 8 - the story of the adulterous woman who nearly gets stoned.  This is the beloved story in which Jesus says, "let he who is without sin cast the first stone."  The problem is that this story didn't start showing up in copies of John until several centuries after Christianity had begun and it's wasn't in the majority of copies until about the tenth century.  We even have evidence of church leaders arguing over whether or not the story should be in the Bible.

Perhaps the strongest evidence that it doesn't belong in the John 8 is that when the early manuscripts include it in the Bible, they sometimes place the story later in John.  Other times they actually place the story in the book of Luke.  If you remove the story from John, the text flows just fine.  I'll add, it's a weird story for John.  John isn't concerned about grace for the disenfranchised in the way the other Gospel writers are.

Mark Twain's writing from less than 200 years ago is easily distinguishable from writing from this century

You might think that learning all of these thing would have destroyed my faith immediately.  It didn't.  While the evidence is overwhelming and the methods not what I had expected before my studies, the Bible is still a powerful book.  Moreover the New Testament is not adulterated in the way its detractors sometimes suggest.  There are only a few changes from the original manuscripts and they don't change the overall message of the New Testament.

The same this is true of authorship of various books.  We don't really know who wrote much of the New Testament.  We have confidence that Paul didn't write all of the books ascribed to him, but those other books do reflect Pauline theology.  Maybe they were written by a secretary.  Maybe they were written by a student.  Perhaps they are apocryphal.  Here, I'm mostly talking about the pastoral letters, 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus and also Ephesians.  The other books ascribed to Paul are generally considered to have been written by him.  And again, the central message of these other texts coheres with the New Testament as whole.

While this information was troubling to me in some ways, it never made me question my faith in God
.  It did lead me away from certain kinds of Evangelical theology.  When I look back, I have to admit that these things were difficult to digest even if they didn't quite challenge my faith.  It's hard letting go of one understanding and picking up a new one when the belief in question is central.  Heavens, we even resist admitting that we were wrong about a referee's call during a sporting event.

How I Became a Humanist: Broadening Horizon's (Part 1): An Introduction to Philosophy

I grew up believing that the Bible was the only book I needed to know and that King Solomon (of Israelite history) was the wisest person who ever lived....

I'd grown up without much emphasis on academics.  My mom didn't care if I brought home As or Fs on my report card.  "You're a smart kid, you'll figure it out," she'd say.  And until I started studying theology, that's exactly what I did, even in college.  I had no concept of money or time or anything.  Almost overnight, my theology classes had transformed me.  I read constantly. First, I read the Bible cover to cover repeatedly. Then, I turned to theology and church history.  I researched topic after topic and found myself spending hours online reading texts from www.earlychristianwritings.com, which is, as of this writing, still a great repository for primary sources from church history.

On account of my studies, I could tell you why the early Christians didn't believe in the ascension of the soul.  I could tell you why any progressive who claimed to love the Gospel of Thomas clearly hadn't read the whole thing.  I could explain Paul's doctrine of the Fall based on what was commonly believed by Pharisees of his day.  I had gone from nearly failing out of college to being a rigorous academic.

One fall semester, at the advice of a friend, I took a Critical Writing and Literary Analysis class from a man named Tom.  Tom was supposed to be one of the most challenging teachers on campus.  Really, he just made students think.  He scared away half his students with a syllabus full of assignments. After half the class dropped the course, he'd reduce the work load and have us focus on digesting the readings. I still wonder if the school's administrators knew that he did this.  We loved it.

Tom had us read Aristotle, Plato, Nietzsche and so much more.  We analyzed the world from their perspective.  Tom played the Devil's Advocate, making sure that we both understood the author's perspective and took it seriously.  We wrote a lot.

The exposure to primary philosophy documents reshaped my mind.  At once, I fell in Love with Aristotle, Nietzsche and Hume - so I read them, especially Aristotle.  I read his Rhetoric, Poetics, Politics and more. His insights were so much deeper than Solomon's. It was undeniable. The realization slowly led me away from believing that the best knowledge to be had came from scripture.

Reading philosophy was more than just a ideological shift for me.  Not only was I openly embracing reason over faith, I was subjecting myself to scrutiny.  I began to use the perspectives of the authors I'd read to deconstruct myself.  I found myself compelled to criticize my own perspectives as if they were those of an intellectual adversary.  Deeply held convictions frequently changed overnight.  It was a terrifyingly stressful experience that gave me panic attacks for months.  It changed me forever.  Even now, when I consider an idea, a multitude of voices challenge my evolving perspective from a variety of angles.  I bring friends and authors into the perspective and even past versions of myself.  It's exhilarating.  It's bad sleep hygiene too.

One of the most important documents I read was a short essay by David Hume entitled A Standard of Taste.  The essays asks how people know what they know.  It changed the way I looked at knowledge.  We never have it all.  We learn bits and pieces.  We become experts in tiny fields of large subjects.  Information can make us less ignorant, but it never really makes us smart.  I came to distrust teachers who didn't see their own knowledge this way.  How could they teach me to think if they didn't understand the limited nature of human knowledge?  What could they show me if they thought that seeing one painting made them as much a connoisseur of art as analyzing a thousand?

The same thing happened when I read Emerson's American Scholar, an essay that tells us to read dead authors poetically, to be inspired by them rather than reading them like French Neo-Classicists.  If Karl Marx were alive today, he would say something different than he did in the 1800s, so we shouldn't apply his words directly to our situation.  We don't know what he would say, so we shouldn't pretend.  But, we can take his work and the situation to which he was writing and take inspiration.  We can extract things from the text and reapply them.  This is true of all dead authors. It's true of living ones too. It's even true of past versions of ourselves. The lessons we learn in one situation rarely directly apply to situations that follow. If we think they do, we may be led to apply the right lesson to the wrong situation.

How I Became a Humanist: How the Creationist Killed Creationism

I was visiting my fiancee Sarah at Northern Michigan University in Marquette.  While there I met a man named Jason who was dating Sarah's roommate, Rachel.  Jason was currently captivated by a Creationist by the name of Kent Hovind.  While the ladies were out doing other things, he and I spent time together watching Kent's videos.  I was intrigued and continued watching them after I returned to Rochester.

I watched video after video.  I believed every word that came out of Kent's mouth until he mentioned an early Christian bishop by the name of Irenaeus.  Kent claimed that Irenaeus' doctrine of theosis was identical to the one taught by the Latter Day Saints - something most Christians would consider heresy.  Irenaeus believed that Christians continue to grow to be more and more like Jesus even after death.  This is a doctrine that may surprise Evangelicals, but it is not heretical and very different from the LDS teaching that humans will themselves become Gods.  I understood Irenaeus' doctrine because I'd actually read his works.  It was quite clear to me that Mr. Hovind hadn't.  And that's where everything fell apart.

I started looking at the sources Mr. Hovind shared.  Upon inspection, they appeared suspect.  They were often websites that read like something out of the National Inquirer.  Perplexed, I decided to visit my science teachers.  I first went to an earth scientist who taught at Rochester.  I shared with him the earth science that Mr. Hovind taught concerning dinosaur fossils next to human footprints - a common evidence used by creationists.  "I've visited that site," he said.  "Those are not human footprints."  I was also told that my teacher had started out as a young earth creationist, but that geology had overwhelmed him.  "This happens a lot," He told me.  "It even happens at creationist schools."  He gave me some fraction of how many people left a particular creationist geology school believing in an old earth. I was shocked then. I'm not now.

I then went to my biology teacher to ask her about evolution.  She immediately pulled out an article about present day examples of evolution among bacteria.  She explained to me that evolution not only happened, but continues to happen today and that we have plenty of evidence of this.  Both of these people were and continue to be firm believers in Jesus.  My former biology teacher prays for me from time to time to this day. There's a good chance that she's actually reading this. Hi!

I did, around this time, also subscribe to Kenneth Ham's Answers in Genesis newsletter.  It didn't really grab my attention.  Ham's primary answer is that we should have faith.  He uses other "evidences," but it's clear that his faith is the guiding factor.  Blind faith seeking justification was always a non-starter for me. His newsletters sat mostly unread.

It wasn't much later that I sat in a Genesis class where I was taught that Genesis 1 was a polemic against polytheism, rather than against Darwin.  Who would have expected that a document written thousands of years ago was concerned with something other than modern science - obviously I'd not considered it.  It's the questions we fail to ask the leave us with the wrong answers.

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For those who are interested, the creation story in Genesis 1 is better read with this understanding.

Here are the days enumerated side by side:

(1) Light and Darkness   (4) Sun, Moon and Stars

(2) Sky and Sea              (5) Birds and Fish

(3) Land                         (6) Land animals, creeping things, plants, humanity

You can take time to see this for yourself.  Notice also that the text several times mentions "all kinds" and "every."  I used a literal translation in the link so that readers will see the words "Greater Light" and "Lesser Lights" rather than "Sun, moon and stars."  The reason for this is that the words "Sun and Moon" are named for deities in the Phoenician language, of which Hebrew is a dialect.  So instead of saying those names, the author omits them.  You'll only see this in a literal translation, but it's something contemporary readers would have noticed.  They would have understood it as the attack on polytheism that it was.  

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After a while, I came to trust the scientists and distrust the creationists.  I came to understand evolution.  This didn't create an immediate problem for my faith.  Indeed, much of Christianity believes in evolution.  I came to find it odd that so many of the Christians who think that "Believing in evolution is heresy," absolutely love C.S. Lewis.  It's still true today, and it's still weird. Most of them only read Mere Christianity, the Screw Tape Letters and his children's novels, so they don't understand that he wasn't an Evangelical.  I'm digressing.

On Christian Faith, by David Mahfood

I recently wrote an article about my experience trying to connect with the divine, which you can find here. My friend David, who has a doctorate in theology, wrote me a rather compelling response. It's worth reading what I wrote to gain the most from his reading, but his words below are worth a read no matter what. 

On Christian Faith a response by David Mahfood

1) You should visit some Dominican friars. 

2) Whatever faith is, for the Christian, it can't be some tacit inference from warm tingling sensations or communal experiences to full-fledged dogma, which you could then pick apart and reason your way into from a skeptical vantage point. Likewise, it's not something you can simply will yourself to have. Scripture insists that faith is a gift, not from ourselves. 

3) One brilliant Franciscan helped me (through his writings) understand faith as an intellectual virtue in the Aristotelian sense, albeit an infused rather than acquired virtue. On the Aristotelian scheme, knowledge is produced when the active intellect abstracts intelligible forms from the particular things it sees onto the passive or receptive intellect. The difference in the case of faith is that the form in question is impressed by God onto the passive intellect, hence it is a supernatural gift. 

It might be that the form impressed just is the knowledge in question, i.e., certain truths about God. But another way to think of it that I've been kicking around for a long time is this: the form that is impressed is the habit of recognizing and accepting truths about God. This would be analogous to the way that we come to trust other human beings or know truths about their inner lives. Through various forms of contact, a person makes an impression in our minds, so that we have something in our imagination about the inner lives, character, desires, etc., that lie behind what they see and say, and in virtue of that impression, when they do or say things that align with that character, or are reported to do so, we believe it. If the impression they form is of a trustworthy sort, then when they tell us things we believe them. 

So anyway I guess I speculatively lean towards the view that what happens in the gift of faith is that God impresses in us a sort of familiarity, so that when we hear truths about God, we habitually believe them, recognize them as true, because of an inner familiarity through contact. Once it's given, our minds possess a faculty which really is ours, because by it we really can believe the truth about God in a reliable way, i.e., we can reliably discern true from false when it comes to God. 

Faith would thus be the first step towards friendship with God, and like the formation of any friendship it requires that we gain a reliable cognitive impression of the character and inner life of the one who we will befriend. It's just that when it comes to God, we can't do this without God's gracious revelation of himself to our minds, and hence in this case it's a supernatural gift. 

This picture is, of course, theologically committed from the start. It's not an argument to a skeptic that they should have faith. But that's really a feature and not a bug: the point is (among other things) a picture of what faith is from a Christian perspective that shows that *given God exists and infuses this kind of intellectual habit*, it would be a rational, reliable epistemic faculty precisely without supplying a proof to available to skeptics.

How I Became a Humanist #14: The End of Church of Christ Dogma

Over the last several posts, I've discussed events and education that challenged my Church of Christ upbringing.  At the advice of David Fleer, I remained associated with the fellowship.  "Every fellowship has it's problems.  You understand ours," he told me.  Looking back, I should have listened to Mel Storm who knew me better.  He'd told me that I should consider attending grad school at a Disciples school.

In any case, the experiences and education caused me to question other Church of Christ doctrines that don't neatly fit in any other essay.  Our churches have a view of early church leadership that doesn't quite cohere with what historians know.  The Bible makes it clear that the early church met in houses.  There seem to have been several houses in the big cities.  Those houses, of course, would have had leaders, but those leaders would have worked with leaders who coordinated between houses.  In this way, there may have been a difference between elders and overseers - a difference the Churches of Christ do not recognize.

Moreover, the Apostles (and the elders in Jerusalem) clearly functioned as a council for the churches.  Several churches answer to Paul's authority when their local leaders can't resolve issues - and Paul seems to answer to Jerusalem.  The Bible doesn't suggest that no one should fill the slots of these council members or of people like Paul once they die.  In fact, we see in Acts that when a slot is emptied by Judas, that the slot is filled.  James the brother of Jesus ends up sitting on the council.  In other words, it doesn't look like congregations in the early church are run independently in the way that the Churches of Christ suggest.  One could still question the development of church leadership structure in later centuries, especially the pomp and circumstance surrounding it.  Nevertheless, I came to believe that the Church of Christ's primitivism concerning church leadership reflects a misunderstanding of scripture.

Learning everything I've explained so far and many other things I don't have time to explain caused me to turn Church of Christ rhetoric on it's head as a way of testing it's viability.  I wanted to know whether we took our own rhetoric seriously.  We say that we don't use instruments because they're not in the Bible, but our women pray with uncovered heads.  Paul is pretty explicit about the head covering, but says nothing clear about instruments.  Why are the pianos the doctrinal priority?  We have pulpit ministers when the early church was taught by its elders and bishops.  We have youth ministers, youth groups and church buildings - none of which are in the Bible.  We don't speak where the Bible speaks and keep silent where the Bible is silent.  Instead, we search the scriptures to justify what we already believe and ignore counter-testimony.

At the time that I realized this, I became reactive to Church of Christ doctrine.  I probably wasn't always very kind.

As I matured, more and more I realized that this is just how people usually search for information.  We're so damn sure of ourselves.  It really condemn us, perhaps not to hell, but to whatever ignorance we were born into. I wish I could say that this general knowledge of human behavior has made me more gracious. It probably has, but not as much as it ought to. I suppose that's a part of human behavior too. I'm as flawed as the people I'm inclined to criticize.

Christian Science Reading Room: On Being Wrong

On Saturday mornings I take my son to coding classes about 40 minutes away from our house.  The classes last 2 hours and during that time I try to find something useful to do.  Sometimes I go for a walk or a run.  Other times I find myself at a diner typing away on a keyboard.  One particular day several weeks ago, I found myself visiting a nearby Christian Science Reading Room.

Their room was on the upper level of a two-story building that held a variety of shops and offices.  I opened a see-through glass door and stepped in.  An older man sat behind a counter.  He greeted me with a strong Boston accent.  After a short conversation, I was shown a place where I could study, reflect and write if I wanted.

I sat down in a comfortable chair and began to type on my computer.  After a few minutes, I looked around the room.  I took notice of the brochures and books having to do with Christian Science.  There were several books about treating addiction, depression and suffering from abuse.  There were also books about the faith.  One was about how Mary Baker Eddy discovered Christian Science.  Another argued that Christian Science wasn't pantheism.  I began to look through the literature.

After looking at various brochures, it occurred to me that I'd never read Mary Baker Eddy's book Science and Health. A copy sat on the table.  I picked it up.  The book surprised me. I was expecting to read that all of my physical ailments were illusory. I was expecting the unsophisticated style I might find in the Book of Mormon - no offense to the Latter Day Saints.  That's not what I found.

The first thing I noticed was that Mary Baker Eddy was a fine writer. I didn't have to trudge through her words. She communicated clearly and interestingly.  Moreover, many of the ideas she communicated were deep spiritual truths that are found at the heart of many religious traditions, especially those that embrace mysticism.  Eddy was a mystic who almost certainly got some of her ideas from Hinduism.

I realized as I was reading through the book that Eddy's focus was on spiritual health more than on physical health.  She did believe in physical healing, but much of what I read focused on being spiritually healthy. After reading enough to have my perceptions challenged, I returned to the counter to discuss my question with the Bostonian. "You know," I said, "I've always thought that you folks believed that faith will make you physically healthy. I'm reading this book and I'm beginning to think that maybe I misunderstood."

He explained that while they do believe in physical healing and that faith does tend to make people healthier, that they don't believe faith necessarily heals the body the way that their critics often assume. He told me that they focus primarily on spiritual health, but that they believe that spiritual health often translates into physical health. At this, he pointed to recent research indicating that happier people tend to live longer.

After some time, I left the Reading Room to pick my son up from his coding classes.  On our way home, I reflected on my mistake. I should have known that my assumptions about the Christian Scientists were biased. I should have thought to pick up their book and at least look through it years ago. More than that, I should have been aware that the nuances of different religious beliefs are usually lost on their critics. We often fail to understand each other. I should have known better.

How I Became a Humanist #13: The Bible, the Churches of Christ and Christian Unity

The Bible and the Churches of Christ

In a recent post, I talked about how understanding chapters, verses, concordances and the printing press challenged my faith in Church of Christ dogma - and most Evangelical dogma.  It all appeared anachronistic (the view didn't make sense from a historical perspective).

As I continued to learn how to read the Bible, my faith in Church of Christ dogma was challenged in other ways.  Most importantly, I realized that the foundation assumption of the Churches of Christ was false.  We teach that the First Century Church was a perfect church.  They believed the right things.  They practiced ritual correctly.  And God was happy.  We seek to mirror their beliefs and practices.  We do this largely by reading Paul's letters to those churches.

Here's the big problem with all of that.  Paul is usually writing to these churches because of their imperfections.  He's writing to correct them.  If they needed correction, then the First Century Church wasn't perfect.  And if we're going to be like them, we're also going to be imperfect and need to be corrected.

What's more, when Paul writes these letters, he addresses the imperfect believers as brothers and sisters.  He doesn't assume that imperfection equals disunity.  Church of Christ founders would have agreed with that perspective.  While they emphasized doctrinal correctness, they fellowshiped ecumenically.  For the last century though, this hasn't been the norm.  Instead, the Churches of Christ excommunicate not only other denominations, but also churches within their own community for disagreements over how best to share communion or whether or not Power Point is biblical.  I wish I were making this up.  Oddly, the church obsessed with doing things in Bible ways is approaching unity and division unbiblically.

The Bible and Christianity

When I learned to read the Bible with a focus on books rather than specific messages, I also began to see that different books in the Bible contain different, even competing theological perspectives.  I recently discussed how Genesis tells us to welcome foreigners.  Ruth has a similar message.  Nehemiah has a competing message - "don't intermingle with those who aren't your kind."  Most of the Bible isn't all that concerned with women as people, Luke is almost obsessed.  He was the 1st Century version of a Marxist Feminist.  I'm not kidding.  Is there a Gospel story about a poor person? There's a 80% chance it's in Luke.  Is there a story about a woman?  There's a 90% chance.  Is there a story about a woman who gives her two pennies?  That's definitely going to be in Luke.  Obviously, I like Luke.  The other Gospels, however, don't have the same emphasis on women.  The Gospel of John isn't even all that concerned about the poor.

This may not seem like that big a deal.  If one Gospel omits a perspective, the others have it.  But, that wouldn't have always been true.  In the earliest centuries of Christianity, the church in a particular city might not have all of the Gospels.  They might only have Mark and Luke, but not Matthew and John, for example.  Each of these books was on a scroll.  The earliest churches didn't have whole books of the New Testament.

Knowing all of this, I read the Bible differently.  I saw a variety of nuances not only in the messages given by a single author in a single book, but in the complexity of the messages within the Bible as a whole.  I began to understand that the messages aren't simple black and white rules.  The Bible isn't a rule book or a constitution.  It's a multitude of genres of literature written by a variety of people who didn't always agree about the nature of God.  They disagreed not only about what was most important to God, but even whether God wanted one thing or another from us.  The Bible often raises as many questions as it does provide answers.  It might be easy to look at Genesis or the words of Jesus and say, "we should welcome the stranger."  But the Bible also warns us about people who are different from us.  The Bible as a whole forces us to take both perspectives seriously.  Used well, it shouldn't be used to beat each other up.  It should be used to facilitate conversation and understanding that might lead to consensus.  And when that doesn't happen, we should at least be reassured by the text that the people who came before us didn't always agree either.

Glen Bernie Church of Christ (Non-Institutional)

For years, I've wanted to attend a non-institutional Church of Christ.  I finally made the time.  This was different from visiting other religious groups, I knew what to expect more than I knew how to behave.  I wanted to ask honest questions without starting a debate.  Even now, I'm not sure if I succeeded.

As I pulled into the building I noticed a sign saying just "CHURCH of CHRIST."  Notably, it didn't say Glen Bernie Church of Christ.  I walked into a small foyer that wasn't exactly meant for socialization.  There was enough room for coat racks, entrances to restrooms and a few billboards, but it was clear that the building wasn't a social area.  I didn't see classrooms or a fellowship hall while I was there.  I don't think they have them, but I could be mistaken.

In the foyer, I noticed plenty of literature.  Most of it was what I would have typically expected in a Church of Christ.  There were pamphlets concerning the errors of other churches' doctrines.  There were some about instruments, others about Mary.  The literature generally carried this theme, "we're the right church because we believe the right things which we get only from the Bible."

The Churches of Christ distinguish themselves from other Christian denominations by claiming that they everything they do is sanctioned by the New Testament.  They claim that this isn't true of other churches.  Many of their members believe that the only way to be a true Christian is to organize their beliefs and practices around verses that come straight from the Bible.

They had pictures of their members - this is a common thing in the Churches of Christ.  I couldn't tell you where the tradition comes from.  They also had a missions board.  There was a time when missions boards were common in Churches of Christ.  I remember seeing them all the time as a child, but I hadn't seen one like this in years.  The church supported more than 15 missionaries around the globe.  They could afford to do this because their pulpit minister didn't take a salary, "he has enough money," one of their elders explained.  Another member told me that they preferred not to pay their ministers.  My guess is that both statements are true.

The service was like most Church of Christ services.  They sang acapella (without instruments).  The men led the service while the women sat quietly.  In most Churches of Christ, women aren't even allowed to pay offering plates or communion trays.  During the offering, they announced the visitors were not expected to donate.  During communion, which the Churches of Christ share weekly, they read a lot of scripture.  I'm not used to seeing this in mainstream Churches of Christ, but their message was similar to the one I'm used to, "Do this in Remembrance of me."

Throughout the service, I couldn't help but notice the diversity in the congregation.  The congregation was about 1/3 black and the black members of the church led the service as much as the white members.  I've never seen this in a Church of Christ; they are usually somewhat segregated owing mostly to history.

After a few more songs, there was a scripture reading.  The whole congregation read together.  This is the second time I've seen something like this in a congregation with a large number of black Christians.  Is this a part of their tradition?  Is this something one sees more frequently on this side of the country?  Or is it an odd coincidence?  I have no idea.

Eventually, one of the elders began to preach.  His preaching style was different from anything I've ever seen.  More than anything, he read scripture.  He must have read 3 or more chapters of scripture total during his sermon, commenting on a particular topic here and there.  He didn't jump around from one verse to another, which is what I'm used to seeing in Churches of Christ.  Instead, he read large swaths from each section he chose.  He was a good reader.  The overhead projector helped the audience follow along.

The service ended like most Churches that grew up in the 1800s revivalist traditions do.  There was a call for people who believed to be baptized.  The elder didn't threaten hell, but warned of the possibility of hell for those who left the building without being baptized.

I didn't get to socialize the way I normally do after a service.  I was in such a rush I forgot to get pictures.  I talked with the elder who'd spoken for a few minutes, but it wasn't the sort of engagement I usually experience at a church.  I couldn't tell you why.  Was it me?  Was it them?  Was it the structure of the building itself.  Architecture shapes the personality of a community.

One of the few things that really stuck out in the conversations that I did have was their pride in not having a pantry for the poor.  This particular issue came up several times when I asked them what was special about their church.  "We don't have a pantry."  It was explained that Christians were supposed to do good in the world, but that the Church's job was simply to preach the Gospel.  It's difficult for me to understand a theological position that allows for purchasing several projectors or flat screen TVs, but does not allow for a pantry for the poor.  I'm also uncertain how allowing members to collaborate by donating to a pantry is a bad thing.  I wouldn't even bother to mention it, but aside from being biblical based, it was the one thing that was mentioned to me at least three times during my few conversations.  They were proud of their lack of a pantry.  They were proud of the fact that, as a congregation, they are do not help the poor.  

How I Became a Humanist #12: How to Read and Understand the Bible #4

You'll meet people today who don't like Mark Twain, because sometimes he uses the work n***** in his books.  Of course, Twain was anti-racist for his time, but it can be hard for people to understand this because the word is so jarring to most modern ears.  It's easy to judge Twain by our standards today.  It's easy to forget that his books were written a particular point in time, and that to understand what he means, we have to understand his time to some degree.  This is true of all literature.  All literature is written in time by people from that time, at least originally to people from that time.

Let's talk about Genesis 1-3.

In many churches, Genesis chapter one immediately raises questions concerning science and religion.  "What does Christianity teach about evolution?"  Christians disagree about this, with Evangelicals usually stating that the earth was created in six days and more importantly believing that humans are not apes.  Theological liberals tend to believe in evolution and don't think the Genesis 1 narrative ought to be taken literally.

For now, I'm not interested in writing about evolution as a topic.  Instead, I'd like us to imagine reading this text before Darwin and any of his immediate predecessors.  In fact, I'd like us to imagine reading the text during the era it was written, a time before monotheism was common.  Normally, I've had people read the text before, but today I'd rather people follow along in the text as they read.  I'll point things out as we go.  To see everything well, you'll need a literal translation for this text.  I recommend using an NASB.

The first thing I want to do is to take a look at the days of creation.  I'll list them here, feel free to check it out for yourself.  Notice how the items in column A tend to match the items to their right in column B.


       Column A                                                                   Column B

DAY 1). Light and Darkness                                            DAY 4). Sun, Moon, and Stars

DAY 2). Sky and Ocean                                                  DAY 5). Birds and Fish

DAY 3). Land and Plants                                                 DAY 6). Animals and Humans

We don't normally see the days laid out like this, but take a good look.  In Genesis 1, God creates an environment and then fills it with stuff.  He paints the background, then animates it.  The days in each column correlate with one another to make this point.  One might think that the plants on day three are an anomaly, but that's only because we as removed from hunting and farming.  You can't have animals and humans without have plants first.  It's a different way of thinking than what we're used to, but the logic follows throughout the text.

Let's look at a few other things.  As you read through the text, notice the all-inclusive language.  In the NASB, the word "every" appears 11 times.  The word "all" also appears several times in the text.  It's important to the writer than the readers of the text understand that "God made everything!"  This message is lost on us, because most of us either believe in one God or zero Gods.  We don't understand why someone would bother to tell us that God created everything.  This wasn't true when the text was written.  Polytheism was once the religion of the day.  In polytheism, one god might have created the sky and another god might be responsible for the sea.  One god is responsible for the moon and another for trees, etc.  (For it's time, this was an incredibly controversial story, even among the Israelites who often worshipped Ba'al and other gods).

We see further evidence for this in the term Greater and Lesser Light.  A dynamic translation fails us here, using the term Sun, Moon, and Stars, but if you know anything about polytheism, you know that people used to worship these thing.  Their names were the names of Gods.  If you're attacking polytheism, you probably don't want to refer to these terms by the names of God, because you don't want your audience to think you're saying, "God created other gods."  So, in Egyptian, you wouldn't say, "God created Ra (the sun)."  You'd say God created the Great Light, removing the false god's name.  To a polytheist, referring to the Sun as a great light would have been more controversial than saying Happy Holidays during Christmas is to some American Evangelicals.  What's happening in this text was incredibly controversial for the time it was written.  Apparently it worked, since most of us aren't polytheists.

-You might ask, "would these be the names of gods in Hebrew?"  Yes, because Hebrew was a dialect of Phoenician.  In fact, El wasn't just worshiped by the Israelites.  El was the head of the pantheon throughout the Levant (what most Christians think of as Palestine).-

Genesis 1 was originally intended to defend monotheism in a polytheistic world.  What does that say about whether we should apply the text to the discussion concerning evolution?  You might expect me to say that it means that we shouldn't do it.  Clearly, I wouldn't do it.   But, I don't know that it's fair to expect this from every tradition of Christianity.  A text can have more than one meaning.  Even if the most important meaning isn't a literal one, that doesn't mean that one shouldn't also interpret the text literally.  Instead of saying that Evangelicals shouldn't interpret this text through the lens of evolution, it's better to say that they should be aware of the text's original context.

Zeus and other Gods.  In ancient times polytheism was the norm.  This is one reason why the Jews like the Persians (they too were monotheists).

My hope in writing this is that readers will understand that the historical context of the Bible matters when we read it.  The writers and original readers were asking different questions than we are.  Understanding that will help us access meanings in the text we might not otherwise have access to.  However, I can't fairly say that people shouldn't find more than one meaning in a set of scriptures or that people can't see meaning there that I don't.

I do hope that I have at least bridged some understanding between theological liberals and conservatives in writing this post.  They don't take the same approach when interpreting scripture, but if you can understand why the other party is interpreting it differently the conversations go a lot better.  It becomes easier to see each other as people seeking the truth, rather than heretics who have no concern for the truth whatsoever.  It's also easier have conversations if we understand each other's perspectives.  

Ethiopian Orthodox Church: Part 1

I walked into the Ethiopian Orthodox Church filled with excitement.  My experience with the Orthodox tradition is limited and here I was meeting with a Church that could trace its roots back to the earliest Christians.  Their history diverges from Roman Christian early enough that their Bible looks slightly different from ours, with several books that Churches which grew out of Roman Christianity don't use.

You may wonder what I mean by "Roman Christianity."  I mean to say that the Ethiopian Orthodox Church split from other churches before Rome had completely fallen, long before the Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox had split from one another.  They split before the New Testament canon was completely closed - although they do have all 27 of our books.

I was also curious because the Ethiopian Orthodox Church was supposedly started by Ethiopian Jews.  The Kingdom of Ethiopia had a relationship with Israel and Judaism from ancient times.  The Ethiopians continue to claim that they hold the original Ark of the Covenant.  The place they claim to keep it is well guarded.  These claims are not without their critics.  It is, nevertheless, clear that Ethiopia and Jerusalem had some kind of relationship that goes back further than historians can quite validate.  It's does not seem impossible that their claims are true.

I had no idea what to expect at the service.

As I struggled to find a place to park, I noticed a number of people walking towards the building.  A significant portion of them were wearing white, but not all of them.  The women had the tops of their heads covered.  I wonder if most Americans looking at them would have confused them for Muslims.

I walked into a small crowded foyer.  I waited at the back for a moment.  The service, according to the website, wasn't supposed to begin for another 15 minutes, but it had already begun.  I guessed it had something to do with Lent.

After standing at the back of the foyer for a minute, I determined that it would be fine for me to work my way through the crowd, so I did.  A kind woman asked me if I would like to head into the service.  I answered in the affirmative and she found a young man to lead me into the service.  Noticing that everyone in the service had taken their shoes off, I took mine off too.

The young man took me to the front of the auditorium where I sat shoulder to shoulder with the men sitting on either side of me.  The men and women sat separately.  The men sat in the aisle on the left.  The women sat on the right.

So much of what I saw reflected Eastern Culture: covering the head, removing the shoes, separating men and women.  It reminded me of the Mosque and of the Sikh Temple.  I don't think most of the members there would have said that these things were necessary for salvation.  The people I talked to seemed to understand the difference between culture and religion (to a degree that shocked me).  Still, these are the ways that people from these cultures recognize sacred spaces and sacred moments.  What do Westerners do to remind themselves that the time their spending is sacred?  Do we value that?  I suppose it varies from religion to religion and perhaps from person to person.

How I Became a Humanist #11: How to Read and Understand the Bible #3

In the last chapter, I discussed how to look for themes in sections of the Bible that are bigger than chapters.  I showed readers how to ignore subtitles using the Gospel of Mark.  Today, I want to talk about how some stories in the Bible are placed right next to each other to make a bigger point, and how understanding that can clear up theological misunderstandings.  Let's talk about Genesis 18 - 19.  (Feel free to read along).

In the beginning of Genesis 18, Abraham meets three men.  The Lord is there also.  When Abraham sees them, he runs out to offer them hospitality.  To him, it's urgent that he treat these strangers well.  It appears at first that he doesn't realize that this is the Lord.  After this, Abraham is told that the Lord intends to destroy Sodom because of its unrighteousness.  Abraham begs that the city be spared if a small number of righteous can be spared.  God agrees that if he can find 10 good people there, it will be spared.

Abraham and the Three Visitors

In chapter 19, the men enter the city to meet Lot, Abraham's Nephew.  Lot too goes out of his way to show hospitality to the visitors.  However, citizens of the Sodom don't take kindly to the visitors and intend to rape them.

In Sunday school, I was told that this story was about homosexuality.  There may or may not be an element of that in the story (The Bible does not look kindly on homosexuality).  Nevertheless, that isn't the main point of the story.  Obviously rape and consensual sex aren't the same thing, rape is at least partly about power.  More importantly though is the context in which their attempt to harm occurs.  We just read a story about how Abraham treats visitors.  We are then shown Lot, a man whom God thinks is worth sparing.  Lot treats strangers same way that Abraham does.  Then we're shown exactly why the city of Sodom needs to be destroyed - visitors who are still in their town after dark will be raped, probably to death.

Verse 9 makes all of this very clear.  When Lot refuses to turn the men over to the crowd, they respond by saying,  "This fellow came to town as an outsider, and now he' acting like our judge!  We'll treat you far worse than those other men!"  (NLT)  These people clearly mean to harm the visitors.  They also clearly think of Lot as an outsider, even though he lives in the city.  The issue here is their view of outsiders, their view of strangers.

The message, when we look at the stories side-by-side, is clear.  So why do we miss it?  Well, usually we aren't comparing stories side-by-side expecting to find meaning.  We look at the stories as history rather than theology.  We're not asking, "What does this story tell us about God, about morality?"  But, they aren't just history.  Moreover, we often come to the scriptures with questions we want to ask and points we want to prove.  The questions are fine, but points might not be.  The points are especially bad when they distract us from what the scriptures mean to say to us, in this case "don't hate foreigners."

Next time you read the Bible or another similar text, notice stories that are placed beside one another.  Ask, "are these stories related somehow?  Why does the author place them side-by-side this way?  Am I supposed to understand some greater point?"

How I became a Humanist #10: How to Read and Understand the Bible #2

Before studying theology, I think I read the Bible the way most Christians do.  If I read a section about Jesus healing a leper, I thought of it as history.  If I read a story about Jesus' geneology, I read it as history.  I looked at most the Bible as a sort of text book with stories that were more or less chronologically related.  It didn't occur to me that instead the stories might be theologically related, which is why the stories don't always occur in the same order in the various Gospels.  It's also why the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew differs from the one in Luke.  The two authors are making different points.  (I'll explain the difference between the theological difference between the genealogies if someone asks.)

Jesus Heals the Leper

One of the most common ways to see theology at play in the Bible is to observe how stories are placed alongside one another, that is, how they contrast and compare with one another (You don't need to know Greek to do this).  I'll use two examples.  Let's first start with the Gospel of Mark 1:40 - 3:6.  If you want to get the most out of this, read the text before continuing (If you can, read from a text that has no subtitles.)

Notice the following themes in several of the stories.

• Faith: 
• The leper demonstrates faith by saying, "if you will, you can make me clean."
• The friends of the paralytic man demonstrate faith by going out of their way to get to Jesus
• Mercy
• Jesus touches the leper before he heals him (this is technically against the law).  The man probably hasn't been touched by a clean person for years.  Jesus dignifies his humanity before he heals his body.
• Jesus forgives the sins of the paralytic man before healing him (again, treating the soul).
• Jesus recruits a tax collector (who worked for the Romans - they were hated as traitors).  Jesus recognizes the outcast (same with the paralytic and the leper).
• Jesus chills with tax collectors and sinners.  He's ridiculed for this - these people haven't straightened out their lives yet.  They're not the picture of charity work that you would put on a poster.  They're sinners.  He dignifies their humanity before they get it right.  He spends time with them before he heals them. 
• Jesus heals on the Sabbath.  Again, he's breaking the law, kind of.  What he's saying is "this person's humanity is more important than protecting our most sacred laws, even the Sabbath."

Jesus Heals the Paralytic (By Jan Luyken)

• Jesus Power
  If you go back even further in the text to 1:21 you see a theme of Jesus' power permeate each story.
• Jesus has power over demons
• He has power over illness
• He has power to forgive
• He has power over the Sabbath
• He even has authority to interpret scripture that the scribes don't.

When we split the Bible up into memory verses and subsections with neat little headlines, we can miss these themes.  We also miss them because we haven't been taught to look for them.  The stories tie together and are generally told alongside one another to bring about a variety of nuanced theological points.

On account of the lengthy section of scripture, I'll continue this topic next week.

Church of Christ Scientists: How Honesty Gains Respect

In my early 20s, I had the opportunity to stop by the Church of Christ Scientist in Rochester, MI.  Here's what I remember.

I walked into an auditorium.  There were two aisles on either side of the auditorium.  Upon the stage in the front of the room stood two podiums, one on the left and one on the right.  The congregation was mostly elderly.  This is true in many churches, but it was more profoundly true here than in most churches.  There were probably about 70 people in attendance.

The church service was predominantly led by women who read from two books.  One was the Bible.  I think the other was Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy.  Up to this point, I've not taken the time to read the other book.  Aside from the additional text and strong female leadership the service didn't strike me as anything particularly out of the ordinary.  I remember enjoying it in a dull sort of way.

Mary Baker Eddy "Discovered" Christian Science

When it was over, I found myself talking to a woman in her mid fifties.  She wore a red dress.  We introduced ourselves and chatted politely about the service.  I explained that I was a theology student from Rochester College down the street.  Eventually, we got around to discussing the Church of Christ Scientist doctrine concerning faith and health.  It went something like this:

Me: Correct me if I'm wrong.  As I understand it, your church teaches that if people have faith that they will not suffer from illness.
Her: Yes, that's true.
Me: Would you also agree that people who have practiced the faith longest tend to be the most mature in it?
Her: I would say that this tends to be true, yes.
Me: It also seems to me that the oldest people in your congregation seem to be in the weakest health.  Does your fellowship have a theological explanation as to why this is?
Her: I don't know.  Honestly, I've never considered it.  Let me tell you something though.  When our denomination was founded, most Christians didn't believe that God acted in people's lives directly.  It wasn't even typical to ask for God to heal people.

Christian Science's Mother Church in Boston, MA (I hope to visit in April!)

I don't remember how the rest of the conversation went.  It was pleasant.  I don't know if that comes out in text, but I could tell that she knew that I was seeking understanding rather than challenging her.

For my part, I was and am impressed by her answer.  She answered kindly and undefensively.  This isn't an easy thing to do when one of the key assumptions of our faith has just been challenged.  My direct questions don't always get kind responses.  More impressively, she explained the historical context of her movement and the value she thought it had given to Christianity as a whole.  It seemed like a mature perspective that reflected not only on her but on her denomination as well.

How I Became a Humanist #9: Understanding the Bible and How to Use It #1

I was brought up to believe that Christians have a duty to read the Bible.  From age 8, I read it regularly.  The funny thing is, no one ever told me how to read the Bible.  In church, we sometimes went through books, but often we had lessons in which the teacher would bounce around the Bible from verse to verse.  In my preteen years, when I was taught how to preach, I was given a concordance and told that I could look up topics and words to support what I had to say.  This way of reading the Bible is common in churches that grew up on American soil during the 1800s and afterward.

One of the first serious Bible classes I took in undergrad was a course in how to read the Bible.  In it, we learned a lot of things that changed the way I saw scripture and how Christians ought to use it.

One of the first things I learned was the Bible was not originally written with chapters and verses.  Admittedly, I already knew this, but I'd never taken the time to think about what it meant.  I'd also never taken the time to consider the fact that most of the Bibles we read don't just have those additions, they also have labeled subheadings.  Sometimes the subheadings explain the meaning of the scripture.  Even when they don't, they separate one story from another in a way that the author of the text might not have intended.

Matthew Chatper 5 - 6 NIV (Notice the Subtitles)

It will surprise some readers to know that chapters were not commonplace in the Bible until the 900s (though versions with chapters showed up in the 4th century), and that verses didn't become commonplace around the 1500s, which is why there are a few places in the Bible where Catholics and Protestants separate verses differently (the process hadn't completed when the Reformation started). (More Information)

Obviously, concordances like the ones we use today couldn't exist without verses.  The Bible wasn't written to be used in the way that Evangelicals use it - topically.  It was written book by book, and the books were meant to be read as wholes.  Imagine for a moment that a friend of yours is trying to convince you of something I want to say to you, but instead of giving you several paragraphs from me, he takes a sentence from my writing here, a sentence there and combines them to support his intended message.  Can you be sure that I would agree with his message?  Taking time to think about how the Bible was written and originally delivered to us forced me to think about how to read it well and to not force it to say whatever I might want it to.

One of the other things I learned, probably in a history class, is that the printing press didn't exist in a form useful to the masses before the mid 1400s.  In order to copy books, you needed a scribe to write down every single letter of every single word.  Imagine how long it would take to write a copy of the whole Bible - and that would be just one copy.  If you wanted another copy, the scribe would have to repeat the entire process.  Books were really expensive.  A copy of the Bible could cost more than the average person would make in his entire life.

Early Christians didn't own copies of the Bible.  In fact, since books were inaccessible to most people, the average person had no reason to learn how to read.  And so, he didn't.  Instead, just like there were scribes to make copies of books, there were professional readers who would read texts to audiences.  This is why Mark 13:14 says, "Let the reader understand."  Mark wants to make sure that the reader, obviously not you or I, understands.  For the first 1500 years of Christianity, the Bible was inaccessible to the average Christian not simply because of persecution from the Catholic Church, but because a single book was too expensive to buy and the average person couldn't read anyway.

The people who taught this to me rarely questioned what this meant for the Churches of Christ and other Evangelical Churches, but I did.  It occurred to me that if our churches couldn't have even existed in their current form with their current assumptions for the first 75% of Christian history, then we must have some false assumptions about what is required to be Christian.  Clearly, reading the Bible regularly isn't something God expected of the average Christian, otherwise he would have waited to send Jesus until the 1500s, or somehow inspired society with an efficient printing press much earlier.  God saw no need to intervene.

The Bible was originally handwritten.  This is a cleaned up version of Koine Greek.  The earliest versions didn't have dots or spaces between the words, which sometimes created confusion for copying or translating scribes.

I knew this was a problem for the Churches of Christ, but I didn't realize how much this information changed my perspective.  Looking back, I realize that I no longer trusted the Churches of Christ to interpret scripture.  Our founding assumption that God wanted us to all interpret it personally seemed to be false.  Moreover, we were using it in a way that early Christians couldn't have, with chapters, verses, concordances and cherry-picking.  

The Zoroastrians Part 2: A Religion in Transition

ZAMWI's building form the outside

I walked into the ZAMWI's building (Zoroastrian Association of Metropolitan Washington Inc.).  To my left were bathrooms.  To my right was a hallway that led to a room, that I later found out will soon be their sanctuary.  Ahead of me was a wide doorway that opened into an auditorium.

I stepped into the auditorium to see people gathering.  The room was long and rectangular with high ceilings.  It looked more like a dining hall than a place for religious gatherings.  I wasn't sure what to think.  I looked around to see people of various ethnicities gathered about.  Most of the people had some kind of Persian background.  They were Iranian, Pakistani, Afghan and Indian.  There were a few people of European ancestry in the room as well.  Most of them had come to Zoroastrianism through marriage.

As I began to talk to some of the people I learned a lot about their perceptions of religion.  A woman who had grown up in India talked about her view of religion.  "In India, we worship each other's gods.  It's not about believing in them, it's a way of respecting each other.  Before the British came, Muslims, Hindus and other got along well.  The British divided us."  The development of the Sikh religion makes me question how accurate that statement was, but it's true that people of differing belief systems usually get along until some power-hungry person comes along and amplifies divisions to gain power.

Their auditorium is built like a dining hall.  During class chairs and a podium were present.

I helped the community prepare for their service.  As the service began, everyone put white hats on their head.  They had extras and I followed suit.  The children assembled in chairs at the front of the auditorium and the adults stood around almost in a circle.  A woman made announcements.  After this, the priest spoke.  His message focused on the children.  He told them to

• Greet God in the morning and at night
• Make their beds
• Wash their dishes
• Do their part at home, school and elsewhere

The simple message took about 5 minutes.  After this he blessed one of the children.  I think it was for the child's birthday.  When this portion of the service was over, everyone grabbed hands for a quick prayer.  After the prayer, we went to class.  There wasn't a worship service in the way Christians would think of one, just the short lesson, the prayer and then class.

The class, too, was unlike anything I've ever had the opportunity to witness.  The group I met with was discussing what they ought to study together in the future.  They'd agreed to study the Gathas (the central part of the Zoroastrian text), but were discussing whether or not to focus on anything else in their studies.  Everyone agreed that the Gathas were the most important part of their tradition.  These are the oldest sections.  They're attributed to Zoroaster himself.  These portions of the text, as I understand it, are purely monotheistic and don't emphasize the rituals that later came to be associated with Zoroastrianism.

A framed rug for the sanctuary.  On the left is the king, on the right Zoroaster - the Holy Spirit hovers over each

The question in the group was how tightly to hold onto the things that had been added to the religion in the thousands of years since Zoroaster had received his revelation.  The most radical of the members believed that the rituals could be completely done away with.  Others disagreed and were in fact working to turn one of the rooms into a kind of sanctuary where rituals could be performed by a priest.

During class, I asked how one becomes a Zoroastrian.  The response was interesting.  I learned that no one could tell me whether I was or wasn't a Zoroastrian and that if I wanted to attend their meetings as a Zoroastrian that I could.  I asked whether everyone would except me.  "Most people here would," I was told.  Most of the clerics in India wouldn't.  I don't recall them saying anything in particular about the community in Iran.

What I observed was a community searching for itself.  I asked and the observation was affirmed.  "Zoroastrianism used to be associated with Persia, but that doesn't exist any more," I was told.  They were trying to decide what it meant to be Zoroastrian without a state or even a completely unifying culture.  It was interesting to see this conversation in person.  I wondered what Mary Boyce would have thought.

A Statue of the Holy Spirit to be used in their sanctuary in the future

While the Zoroastrians aren't evangelistic, they were more open to people joining than I expected.  I wondered if they were thinking what I think.  "It would be a pity if this tradition died.  It's one of the most important religious traditions in world history, even if most people today don't know about it."  I expect they do think this, though it's probably more personal to them than it is to me.

Judging Faith: Golden Plates and the Virgin Birth

"Don't judge unless you want to be judged, because the standard you use to judge others is going to be used to judge you." - Jesus of Nazareth

While being Mormon is more socially acceptable than it was a decade or two ago, Mormon beliefs are still looked down upon by Christians and non-Christians alike.  As an example, the Broadway show, The Book of Mormon, made fun of the religion in a way that would not have been acceptable if the show had been about Jews or most other religious minorities.

There are several reasons why both Christians and non-Christians have significant issues with the Latter Day Saints.  Christians have trouble accepting additions to their scriptures, Mormons have several additional books that they consider equal or superior to the Bible.  Religious skeptics are hard on  Mormonism because Joseph Smith was a known huckster before he became the prophet of Mormonism.  Other people are annoyed at their door-to-door evangelism.  There are any number of other issues that people tend to make fun of the Latter Day Saints - it all goes together hand-in-hand.  My biggest criticism of Mormonism is the poorly written scriptures that are supposed to have originally been written by different authors, but aside from those taken directly from Isaiah, all look to be written by the same author.  #LiteraryCriticism

Whatever the criticism, the level of ridicule hurled at Latter Day Saints seems unfair to me.  Are their beliefs so much stranger than those of others?  Never mind whatever beliefs comes to mind.  When discussing faith all ideas become relative.  It is just as impossible to prove a virgin birth as it is to prove golden plates.  And neither idea is more plausible than the other.  It only seems so because one is more familiar to us.

Growing up, I heard Church of Christ apologists bash the Latter Day Saints by stating that archaeology questioned their claims concerning Jews on the North American continent.  Those same apologists cast doubt on any archaeology, geology or any other form of science that questioned their own faith sometimes saying, "absence of evidence doesn't equal evidence of absence" or something like that.  The irony of this was completely lost on them.

If we are honest people, we have two choices, we can resort to faith or not.  If we do it is dishonest to judge others who do the same.  Once we believe in a Virgin Birth, we have no right to ridicule those who believe impossible things with no evidence.

How I Became a Humanist #8: Charismatic Me

During my time at Emanuel's House, I fell under the influence of several Christians with Charismatic beliefs.  I hadn't grown up open to the idea of God being so active in people's lives.  The Churches of Christ teach that God no longer directly heals the sick, especially not through spiritual gifts.  I can't tell you how many times I heard people pray for God to "guide the doctor's hands."  The understanding seemed to be that God worked miracles through every day events.  Admittedly, I never heard anyone pray for God to "guide the combustion engine," before road trips.

Through conversation, I became convinced that the Church of Christ idea that spiritual gifts died in the first century was bad interpretation.  There is a verse in 1 Corinthians 13 that says that spiritual gifts will cease when all things are made perfect.  The Churches of Christ interpret this to mean, "when the Bible is canonized."  Paul clearly means "at the resurrection." After all, the scripture says that we will know fully, in other words, we'll know more than the people who met Jesus in the flesh.  Knowing fully isn't something that happens on earth, even if you've got a leather bound Bible.  Of course, the reader is free to disagree.

On account of this, and of me finding my sister, I became convinced that God was active in our personal lives - that he answered prayers and that spiritual gifts may still exist.  I never claimed to have such gifts, but I did feel as though God spoke to me now and then.

Me late 2001

No doubt this idea will seem strange to some people, but I think I can explain it in a way that makes sense. Imagine for a moment that you've lost your keys.  You've looked all over the place for them; you've traced your steps.  You're about to be late for work and then it occurs to you to clear your mind.  Upon clearing your mind you don't just see, but feel exactly where they are.

Hearing from God is kind of like this, only you believe that you are being told things that you couldn't have known otherwise.  I once had the following experience.  My friend had just been suspended from school for having a substance in her room that she wasn't allowed to have - this was a Christian school, remember.  She was incredibly distraught over this.

On a whim, I decided to call her on the pay phone outside my room.  It was one of those years that men were living on the first floor of Alma Gatewood hall.  My friend decided that I should come out and visit her, that it might even help things with her family.  They were important people at both the school and at church.  They were livid.  

She gave me directions to her house.  On my way there, I realized that I'd lost the directions.  This was before the era of cellphones and for those who don't know me I am terribly absent minded.

Nevertheless, I remembered every single turn and made it to the right house.  I even remembered the address.  What followed was a rather dramatic moment, at least for a college student.  I had the opportunity not only to minister to my friend, but also to her family.  And I felt God's presence throughout the whole thing - even to the point of getting direct instructions.  My friend needed things from her room, which required that I find her roommate.  I didn't have to look for her.  I felt led to a particular building, Barbier Hall, and her roommate was there.

The Cross in the Woods

This wasn't the only time this happened.  I often heard God telling me what to do, and weirdly, things often worked out.  To this day, I couldn't tell you whether or not something supernatural was going on or whether I was experiencing confirmation bias.  Either seems plausible.

During this time in my life, everything was based around religion.  I woke up to God, I went to bed to God.  I picked up people who were stranded or having trouble with their cars.  If someone needed something, I either bought it for them or gave them the money if I had it.  Whatever happened, I believed that God was in charge and that my job was only to trust and be the best person I could be.  I wasn't perfect at this, of course, but I strove to be.  I was incredibly evangelistic - but I was also tolerant of people with different views.

Certainly, this period wasn't the height of my knowledge or study, but it was the height of my personal spirituality in the way most Christians would see it.  The next several years would see a gradual waning of this spirituality with ever increasing skepticism.  This begins with my biblical studies at Rochester College.

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This is a good time to talk about my goal in writing this series.  Humanists reading this will assume that I'm making a case for God.  In later segments, Christians will assume that I'm making an argument against God.  We live in a culture where most stories are meant to sway us to one perspective or another.  I want to create understanding.  This demands both that I explain why I believed in God so strongly and also why I came to abandon those beliefs.  If I have time, I may someday also write about my years as a Humanist and what I've come to believe now.  We're always learning - it's one of the reasons I think it is silly to condemn people for believing one thing or another.