I think I can say I get it. Christians seem bent on taking a happy marshmallow-Peeps-filled Sunday and instead making it about some grisly execution 2,000 years ago. I think I get the confusion of those outside the church because for the bulk of my life I was not a follower of Jesus and had no interest in it. To me it seemed like a bunch of angry and boring male chauvinists protesting things I had nothing against. Add to that the fact that they hung everything on this very old book that seemed like it had an awful lot of holes.
Let me tell you what changed my mind. Not that I think it will necessarily change yours - but then, that is the beauty of the op-ed, eh?
I started looking into my doubts and found there was much more evidence for the accuracy of the scriptures than I would have ever thought - a jarring amount. I started to look into the way it described God and what he has gone through for me.
A key teaching of the Bible is that God is not one person like we are, but a united being who is at once three and one. Not three gods, not one with multiple personality disorder. It is called the Trinity.
The scriptures and Roman history point to the crucifixion of Jesus, who the Bible states clearly as the part of God that came to earth. He expressed the heart of God physically while he was here. He touched people who no one (in the Jewish culture or out of it) would ever touch. He healed people; he valued everyone. Everyone.
But this week, Christians everywhere celebrate his death, so let's get to that. Let's skip to that horrid Friday (even though I get why we call it "Good Friday," I still hate that name). And let's think about what God went through to give us a chance to reconnect with Him and to live the full life He would call us to live.
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The bible is a work of fiction.
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I prefer "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas". Better illustrations.
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"I started looking into my doubts and found there was much more evidence for the accuracy of the scriptures than I would have ever thought - a jarring amount." [Citation Needed]. Seriously...if you are going to say things like this, you need to back it up. This is where every opinion article for this newspaper fails.
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Jim: I would be interested in having a discussion between some of the more Apologetics minded Christians in your group and some of the Freethinkers in mine. I think that given the right tone of discussion, we could learn a lot from each other.
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