Jesus said onto him, 'Love thy Lord with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind. This is the first and the greatest Commandment. And the second is like onto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' Matthew 22:37-39 *It's right there in the book!
I am so sick and tired of hearing The Bible quoted as the reason why we should't be nice to certain groups of perfectly innocent people, or as the reason why God is an evil demon who wants to destroy most of us.
I have more faith in Love, and in a loving God, than in some book, even the greatest book.
There are a lot of great things in The Bible, but if The Bible tells me that Love is wrong, I believe in Love!
That does not mean that I dismiss The Bible. A lot of things in The Bible are highly complex, and don't translate well into the simplified language of most modern Bibles.
When I look through a modern Bible translation into simplified modern language, very little makes sense in the light of Love.
But that is because The Bible spends most of its time teaching highly complex ideas.
When I look through the King James Bible, with its complex literary language, 90% of what it says makes a lot of sense in the light of Love.
And a lot of it is very inspiring.
But only in the complex literary language of something like the King James translation, and often only in the wider context of the wider story.
And there are some things in there that are hard to understand without knowing a lot of other traditional Christian things first, many of them traditional Christian things that make sense only when interpreted in the light of Love.
That said, if one passage of The Bible does not make sense to me, it will not sour me to the rest of the book.
Especially as I only know it in translation.
Once I found the King James translation, I found in The Bible a treasure trove of wisdom and literature.
Half of those treasures only make sense if you interpret them in the light of Love to find the deep inner meaning.
A good guide is to keep in mind the Golden Rule.
Jesus Himself, right there in the Gospels, tells us that the Golden Rule is the key.
And virtually none of those treasures make sense in the simplified language of a modern translation.
Opened up with the key of Love, such treasures open up!
And if there are a few things that don't seem like treasures to me, well, the treasures in The Bible matter more to me, and I still have the light of Love to guide me!
Honestly, it astonishes and maddeningly frustrates me what parts of The Bible some churches cherry-pick to focus on!
They leave out all the treasures and focus on only the thorns!
They never quote the Golden Rule!
Honestly, the work that goes into cherry-picking angry passages of The Bible to fit an agenda!
Dismissing a treasure trove of literature!
Anyway, this is what I believe! I believe in Love!
God loves you!
Sincerely,
David S. Annderson
P.S. I know a lot of authorities say that modern translations are more accurate than the King James Bible. Here is the truth: that complex literary language that contains 100% of the intellectual complexity of the original and gets 4% of it wrong will come much closer to the original than simplified language that contains only 70% of the complexity of the original but only gets 1% of it wrong. That other 30% of the complexity is far more important than the 4% inaccuracy.
The Bible is a treasure trove, but most of those treasures turn awful when they are oversimplified even a little bit! The Bible needs its complexity!
And some of those treasures make sense only when interpreted in the light of the Love of the Golden Rule!