Posted on 03/05/2018 6:41:26 PM PST by metmom
I hope that they tend to drift toward informative; too.
I love you with the love of Christ, my dear sister, and my most sincere regards to your husband.
Thank you for your response. I do consider myself a ‘Christian’, though I obviously don’t read the Bible in the same way that you do.
(As an aside, I also don’t understand your antagonism toward Masonry, having known many Masons myself who were fine men and whose lives, both religious and secular, were enlightened by that philosophy; but I’m not immediately concerned with your fantasies/delusions regarding that particular subject.)
Just out of curiosity: How much of the Bible do you take literally, and how much symbolically; and how do you determine the difference?
For instance, how do you interpret Matthew 5:29-30; or Mark 11:23?
How are you sure what ‘dead’ and ‘sleep’ mean, in those verses?
Being the heretic that I am, my current favorite ‘Bible’ verse, comes from the Gospel of Thomas, discovered at Nag Hammadi in 1945:
“The one who seeks should not cease seeking until he finds.
And when he finds, he will be dismayed.
And when he is dismayed, he will be astonished.
And he will be king over the All.”
- Gospel of Thomas, Logion 2
Did GOD really say... Genesis 3
We are to take the Bible as literally as Jesus did. Or Paul
About as 'sure' as I am about what asleep means here:
Matthew 27:52-53
... and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many.
I’m not sure of your point; but it has always seemed to me that if we had not fallen into matter through God’s love and expression of Himself as Man, we would never have had the opportunity to grow into an INDIVIDUAL realization of the Kingdom of Heaven, which Jesus has told us that we certainly can.
I’ve always thought that Eve was a true revolutionary in almost the American sense, by her decision that we should move forward from the safe Garden, and into all the frightening mess of Freedom - the first “Progressive”, in the original sense of that word. :-)
If we had not had the opportunity to experience Love and hate; to know joy and also to suffer here; had we never known all of these polarities with which we are presented on the material plane and had the opportunity to find the ideal way to position ourselves on the scale of them, we would as well have remained mere animals forever.
The story of Adam and Eve and the Garden seems to me to represent the point at which the animal had developed to where it was ready for the activation of the ‘God Stuff’ within - for want of a better way of putting it, and according to His plan.
Well; how literally is that?
When Jesus was alive -
(and I do believe that he was an historical figure, though I tend to be agnostic as to the literal truth of every bit of the entire Gospel narrative) -
there was only the Old Testament. Do you believe that he took the entire OT literally?
It was how the devil managed to get Eve to question what GOD had plainly said to Adam.
I'm not an agnostic and I don't believe that 'literal truth' applies to every bit of the entire Gospel narrative; either. Were the Pharisees REALLY snakes/vipers as Jesus said?
I think you misunderstood me. I didn’t identify myself as AN ‘agnostic’; I said that I was ‘agnostic’ as to the literal truth of every bit of the Gospel narrative; so we seem to agree in some ways.
And I was thinking of different ‘literal bits’ than ‘snakes and vipers’.
(We suggest that certain political figures are ‘snakes and vipers’ every day, here. We don’t mean it literally.)
My original question was: What in the Bible do you take Literally? And what do you NOT take literally; and how do you determine the difference? Do you take it all on the authority of your Church leaders or founders (which I doubt) or is there some subjective intellectual discrimination going on there?
Do you believe that there actually existed an ‘Adam and Eve’, who literally ‘ate of the tree’?
Do you believe that Noah actually put two of every animal in an ark - including all the insects, etc., and all of the food necessary for those animals to survive the duration?
I’m curiously interested in what the members of various traditional denominations believe; because I don’t have that background.
I was raised until about the age of 11 or 12 in the Presbyterian church - late 1950s, early 1960s.
At about the age of 12, I was introduced to Christian Science and became fascinated with that interpretation.
Ultimately, CS didn’t ‘take’; but I became convinced by other ways of thinking that also came down to us through the American Transcendentalists: Emerson, Thoreau, Bronson Alcott; and ultimately writers like Thomas Troward, G. W. Plummer, Quimby - the list goes on and on.
These ‘old guys’ started something that I believe will be the 21st century wave of Christianity. And there have been remarkable scientists who seem to believe similar things: Jean-Emile Charon; Mario Beauregard; that list could go on as well.
A lot of people will think this is ‘funny’; but my old Granny always declared Luke 9:26, when she spoke of her belief; and even though she may have had a simple understanding of it, the saying stuck with me.
Regardless if my honest conclusions have come down to ‘funny’ in the eyes of others, I can’t deny them and remain honest with God and with myself.
What in the Bible do you take Literally? And what do you NOT take literally; and how do you determine the difference?
Do you take it all on the authority of your Church leaders or founders (which I doubt) or is there some subjective intellectual discrimination going on there?
1. That would take quite a bit of typing; but Common Sense seems to have worked so far.
2. I can pretty much read and understand English fairly well. We KNOW from Scripture that 'leaders' don't exactly get it right all the time. The Bereans were NOT called MORE noble for no reason!
If I don't; then what other things that Jesus spoke about as though they were real do I not accept either?
4. Do you believe that Noah actually put two of every animal in an ark - including all the insects, etc., and all of the food necessary for those animals to survive the duration?
Do I believe that ALL the animals were named by Adam??
I've been to the Ark in Kentucky.
Do I believe a structure THAT big could have POSSIBLY been built by Noah and his sons?
We've been given no HOW clues as to it's building.
Likewise history has not left us any of them as to HOW the Pyramids were constructed; either.
Did fire fall from the heavens and incinerate S&G?
We know that volcanoes can do that, but where are they in the Dead Sea area??
Yet Jesus spoke of those cities as well.
Whether these things are 'literal' or not does not seem to impact much upon my salvation. Believing that eating a wafer and drinking some wine is a REQUIREMENT for my salvation; does.
Luke 9:26?
Not funny at all. It’s as good as any for a foundation of faith.
Granny did well.
In the end; I try to keep Romans 14:1 in mind.
(along with the rest of the chapter.)
?
Are you trying to ask me if I am what used to be popularly known as a “Fundamentalist” about forty years ago...? (in some weird and bogus argument against the veracity of the Word of God?)
I wasn’t asking what you ARE. I was asking what you believe, and in particular what you believe as to what beliefs that Jesus held with regard to the religious tradition in which He was raised.
(Though I think we tend to be/become, in our environment and experience, what we believe with conviction...and Jesus seems to have told us the same; that it will be done unto us as we believe it will.)
While there are metaphors in the Bible that some people take literally, and are in error for doing it, such as the issue of binding and loosing, and how the word “bind” happens to also be used by Christ in describing how we are to cast demons out “by binding the strongman in a house”... I think you should spell out what exactly you are thinking about in the Bible that you do not believe is a literal occurance.
As for binding and loosing and binding the strong man, these articles spell it out:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binding_and_loosing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Strong_Man#cite_note-JRE-6
But then you have overzealous Pentecostals “binding Satan in the name of Jesus” instead of understanding that this was not a model of prayer that Jesus was discussing, but rather a metaphor for His kingdom and they miss the import of exactly how powerful the authority of Jesus is, the Name above all Names.
And then you have these same Pentecostals “binding Satan” and “loosing angels”...
it’s nuts because it is all about doctrine and only Peter and those whom walked with Jesus in the flesh could establish doctrinal matters. (Which is why when Peter and Paul quarreled, Peter relented and then established Paul’s words as the Word of God)...
And these same Pentecostals forget that Jesus told us that, instead of being arrested at Gethsamane, He could call down angels... but He didn’t call down angels to avenge His arrest.
And neither should we take the doctrinal issue of “loosing/binding” to mean we ourselves have the spiritual authority to tell angels what to do, and when to do it!
So if that’s what you mean about taking something literally or metaphorically, I think there is a problem there.
Then you have the Mormons, who wear their magic underwear because there is something in the Bible about wearing the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness or something. (Elsie can correct me.)
This is clearly a metaphor. We are to “put on” the garment of praise when we feel depressed or heavy, and it will lift our spirits.
But ask a Mormon and they will tell you that they cannot enter heaven without these garments. (There are a mess of other reasons why Mormons cannot enter Heaven, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with mistaking a metaphor about garments for something literal.)
I once asked a Mormon if their magic garments did anything at all to mitigate their sin nature, and they admitted the clothes did nothing. (I rested my case.)
Finally, we have our true example for prayer and “spiritual warfare” in the manner in which Satan tempts Christ during the forty days in the desert.
Satan’s showdown with Jesus shows us how we are to regard the Word. Literally, but with faith’s logical application, and Satan will go down for the count. We are never to put God to the test, such as playing with poisonous snakes as such Paul was bitten and didn’t die... because to play with snakes is to tempt or test God... and not an accident.
See, this is where faith comes in. If God knows how many hairs are on your head, then surely, He knows if you are in an accident and didn’t try to kill yourself or whatever. We are never to put him to the test, but rather, trust Him like little kids trust their daddy.
Jesus regarded Adam in the Garden, Moses with the snake, Jonah in the whale as literal events.
So should we.
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