Well I’m back to work. It’s 11:43am and I swear this day is going super slow. Errr. I hate having really slow days with no motivation. So I’m already eating my Lean Cuisine lunch and doing a little blogging. Hopefully, this afternoon will speed right by.
Here’s a little story from my family outing that I thought was funny. The first night we are traveling, my grandma notices the tattoo on my foot. In the past I have made attempts to sort of “hide” the tattoo but in the last few years I’ve realized that I am an adult after all and I can have a tattoo if I want. Oh my gosh! You would have thought I had killed her first born and eaten him for dinner. (Just a note: I got my tattoos when I was 25 and spent a great deal of time thinking about getting them. I’m happy with them. Might I regret them when I’m 60? Possibly. Am I 60 yet? No.) Anyway, my grandma starts to go through a list – What else have you done? Does your mother know? Does Eddie have a tattoo? When did you do it? Did you even think about what you were doing? All the while, all I can say is “grandma, this is the wildest thing I have ever done” and I’m looking at our traveling companion, my father who has spent time in prison, been arrested multiple times, been a horrible father and continues to mooch off his parents. And yet, she is harassing me about the flowers on my feet. It was very interesting. I suppose I completely ruined the view she had of me – after all I was always the “good” one.
I have a spiritual matter I want to ramble about. I realize that I don’t talk about God much here so please forgive me if it bores you. And please if it interests you – give me some feedback because I’m looking for something here. I’ve been going to these small groups; you know the ones with kids and hardwood floors. We’ve been doing Lexio Divino in Psalms and I’ve enjoyed it for the most part. But the last meeting really bothered me. We read through this passage –
Psalm 117
1 Praise the LORD, all you nations;
extol him, all you peoples.
2 For great is his love toward us,
and the faithfulness of the LORD endures forever.
Praise the LORD. [f]
And this is my problem. I don’t buy it anymore. In the past, I could read it and believe it. Now I just sort of “roll my eyes” and the cynicism just kicks in. And the people in my group were all over it. I can’t play this game and pretend it all makes sense and settles well with me. Because it doesn’t – I have some serious doubts especially using the Bible as a means to a spiritual experience.
Sorry this is so negative but I’m just trying to be really honest so I can get rid of all the dishonesty in myself about this stuff. So this is my question(s) – How do I learn to read and experience the Bible when I really don’t trust it? It’s almost as if it was sold to me as a new Christian as the ultimate “TRUTH” and my faith depended on it. But now I know there is so much more to it – good and bad. And I do believe that it can be a living thing to me and help me in the spiritual journey.
I wonder is it possible to have a relationship, a truly spiritual one with God minus the Bible as a guide? I have to think yes. But then again, I have no idea what I’m doing.
I’m not sure that any of that makes sense…sorry.
And just to end things on a happy note…E and I had a great time Sunday and Monday.
Sunday we were super lazy and rented a couple of movies. Fun with Dick and Jane was funny and pretty much what I expected it to be. And I enjoyed Shopgirl, a nice little story. There was lots of sex with Steve Martin which was sort of odd. I never thought of Steve Martin as a sexy guy.
Yesterday we went to the Paseo Arts Festival. It was a nice day to get out. The art was a little odd…some good and some bad.
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2 comments:
Okay you have some sort of blog addiction, which is just fine really but it's a fact. Second, I'm sorry to hear of your cynicism towards the Bible or God. I'd love to enlighten or give advice but I'm not sure it'd change anything and actually that's usually what makes it worse. It's like I'd be trying to explain how to avoid the tempting donuts - just really doesn't happen unless you find the clarity in yourself. So good luck. The only insight I can't resist to give is that it finally gave me a big step forward in my own faith when I quit scrutinizing the Bible, other christians and my own faith, and finally just started focusing on helping others with whatever resources I had.
Your honesty about your struggle with the bible is commendable. I’m sure I can’t begin to give you an answer that will be alleviating but for what its worth here’s my input.
I view this change in your scriptural viewpoint as growth in action. Since there is a shift in your mindset about the infallibility of scripture, it seems like you are taking the opposite route going from complete trust to distrust. Yet you still have a sense that it can be a helpful tool in your “spiritual journey.” So maybe a change in perspective of how you approach reading the bible may be helpful like reading and studying it as literature. Instead of finding the history, context, patterns/structures within the text, there is a general tendency to read the bible and try to automatically apply it to ourselves (this is especially true in bible studies). We want to know what does this text mean to me before we ask what are these verses actually communicating and where does it fit in the perspective in which they were written.
Psalm 117 serves as a patterned hymn the Israelites used to worship God in community not an encouragement to how much we should praise God because of how much he loves us. Although this Psalm could lead a person to feel this way, skipping right to that conclusion and looking no further into the text does a great disservice.
I would encourage you not to give up completely on the bible since it does have very rich and albeit horrible things to communicate. Plus, I am sure it has helped you this far in shaping how you feel about Jesus, salvation, love, your attitudes towards others, etc. If left to our own devices on these sorts of things, I’m sure we’d come up with something even more untrustable.
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