{"id":319,"date":"2009-06-11T12:06:11","date_gmt":"2009-06-11T17:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=319"},"modified":"2009-06-26T12:04:46","modified_gmt":"2009-06-26T17:04:46","slug":"monopoly-on-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=319","title":{"rendered":"Monopoly on Truth"},"content":{"rendered":"

While I have talked about this topic before in my column turned blog post titled \u201cWill the Real Christians Please Stand Up<\/a>,” It seems that I have to go into a little bit more detail here. Every Christian (I can\u2019t think of one exception) that I talk to seems to claim to have the monopoly on how to interpret God\u2019s divine message. That in and of itself is not the problem, I claim to have the monopoly of understanding on many issues. The difference here is that so many Christians have so many different and even opposing interpretations of the God\u2019s divine message.<\/p>\n

Obviously it doesn\u2019t take a genius to figure out that all these Christians can\u2019t be correct in their understanding. So how do we figure out whose interpretation is correct and whose interpretation is inaccurate? Well that is the problem. There is good reason to support almost all of the claims that various Christians make. The Bible is so open-ended and contradictory that it has become a spiritual Rorschach Test.<\/p>\n

The Bible has become a mirror in a sense. If someone is a good person who believes in people and in compassion than they focus on the parts of the Bible in which Jesus talks about turning the other cheek and are completely oblivious to the parts of the Bible where Jesus talks about cutting out an eye or chopping of a hand if those parts of your body \u201ccause you to sin.\u201d If someone is a hateful person, they focus on homosexuality being an abomination, but ignore the parts where God talks about other more positive aspects of the Bible.<\/p>\n

The fact is that there is far more cruelty and bad morality in the Bible than there is positive moral values. But most people aren\u2019t evil enough to really treat women as property in today\u2019s modern society. No one today focuses on the parts of the Bible which advocate stoning non-believers, adulterers, non-virgins on their wedding night, and divorcees. No one in today\u2019s modern materialistic society is willing to give away all of their money and possessions the way Jesus commands.<\/p>\n

Christians all pick and choose which Bible verses they already agree with and then use those Bible verses to justify their actions whether those actions are positive or negative. That\u2019s fine though. I have no problem with picking and choosing. I pick and choose which moral lessons I choose to follow from many different philosophy books. The problem is that the philosophy books that I pick and choose from weren\u2019t alleged to have been written by the perfect Creator of the Universe.<\/p>\n

Now that I have pointed out some of the parts of the Bible that no one follows, I am bond to get comments claiming that I don\u2019t understand the \u201cTrue\u201d meaning of those parts of the Bible or that I am not taking those verses in their \u201cTrue\u201d context. Again, every Christian claims to have the monopoly on what the \u201cTruth\u201d is in regards to the Bible and its \u201cTrue\u201d meaning. You see, when the Bible says slavery is okay, it doesn\u2019t really mean that slavery is okay. If you change the meaning of the word slavery to mean something else or if you change okay to mean morally wrong, than it all makes perfect sense.<\/p>\n

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