Tuesday, May 02, 2006

The auction house of religion

I am currently reading a book called "Blue Like Jazz." There is really no way to describe the book. Just... go and read it. You will not be sorry, I promise. Don, the author, was in one chapter (well... in a lot of chapters, but in one in particular) talking about the struggle he had with christianity and why he couldn't really truely believe in it. This is what he said. This is how I feel.

"It also confused me that some people would look at parts of the Bible but not the whole thing. They ignored a lot of obvious questions. It felt as if Christianity, as a religious system, was a product that kept falling apart, and whoever was selling it would hold the broken pieces behind his back trying to divert everybody's attention."

He goes on to say how eventually, by a very strange series of events, he came to believe. But as for me, I can still see the broken pieces the salesmen are holding, trying to pretend don't exist. And, I just can't believe in something like that. I'm sorry.

2 Comments:

Blogger Stephonovich said...

I have often wondered whether or not it is possible (permissible? Is religion confined by such rules?) to strip away all of the confusing parts of the Bible. For me, this would mean the entire Old Testament (malevolent, vengeful god - doesn't jive with Christianity), 3 of the 4 Gospels (just pick one, yeesh), Revelation (horribly ambiguous symbolism that's been accepted as literal truth), and pretty much all of Paul's writings. What I would have left would be Jesus's teachings. Love thy neighbor, and so on. I wonder if then I could accept it as a religion. Sorry for the extremely long post, BTW. It's going to get worse.

The early Christians had only what Jesus said, after all. The Jews had their law, but the Gentiles had nothing. Absolutely nothing. Yet Jesus accepted them. They had no book of rules, no standards by which to live. If it worked for them, why not us? Why do we insist on following the interpetations and teachings of other people, calling it divinely inspired?

Furthermore, if one was to strip Christianity down to such a level... was Jesus any better a teacher or role model than, say, Buddha? What then? What then. Always what then.

10:45 PM  
Blogger that girl said...

yeah...

10:17 AM  

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