The Book of the Volcano God:
book worship vs God worship
book worship vs God worship
There exists in human nature an insatiable
desire for answers to life’s deepest questions, to make sense of it all. Our souls crave a larger basis for the
meaning of our existence beyond that of mere survival or personal whim. But just as we are prone when hungry to
settle for artificial foods which do not nourish the body, so we are inclined
to accept superficial answers lacking in spiritual nutrition.
Furthermore we would really prefer
that there would be some sort of tangible final authority which we can touch
and see rather than have to rely on subtle internal promptings from a Spirit
whose very existence rests on a foundation of faith. “Please God,” we pray, “just give us
something to hold in our hand, give us an owner’s manual for life.”
There are those who believe that
this prayer has in fact been answered in the form of the book we call the
Bible. This book they profess not only contains God’s words, but that it is God’s
Word. In fact it is the only place where
His Word is to be found
and we need no other source. It is perfect as is the living God and to
challenge its voracity in any way is equivalent to challenging God himself.
While I certainly sympathize with
the desire for such a perfect representation of the Almighty in written form, I
am convinced that not only is this assessment of the Good Book’s nature and
function in error, but that it is just such a blind adherence to the letter that Jesus was referring to when
he railed on the Pharisees for their neglect of the weightier matters of love
and mercy. And once again these same
folks were likewise accused by the Master of diligently searching the
Scriptures yet rejecting the one of whom they speak. (John 5:38-40)
In this manner, people throughout
the ages have been all too easily led away from the true message of the Bible,
as well as from a belief in their own senses, particularly their “common” sense. Intimidating accounts of God’s mandates as
represented by those in authority or by those otherwise considered to be
“experts” in the field become formidable obstacles to our own inner guidance. Anyone honest enough to claim in protest that
the Emperor has no clothes is immediately laughed off the stage thus allowing the
charade to continue as the rest of the obedient subjects drift comfortably back
into lock step.
A similar situation exists today
within the hallowed halls of modern science.
Time and again we are told to ignore literally mountains of evidence to
the contrary when it comes to believing in such highly questionable theories as
the evolution of slime to man, or in the random
explosion known as the Big Bang being the source of the immense order in the universe, or in man-made
“global warming” just to name a few on very long list. Science itself has become more of a closed
minded religion here in the 21st century than any distorted form of
Christianity in the Dark Ages ever hoped to be, complete with its own set of sacred
dogmas. The white robed PHD toting humanistic
“priests” are forever spewing their “consensus” based doctrine down the throats
of the unsuspecting public laity all the while blocking any dissenting, but
equally qualified (heretical) scientists’ work from gaining serious
consideration by barring their publication in the canonized “peer reviewed”
journals.
When it comes to religion, it is
the clergy who are naturally supposed to have the inside track with the Deity either
through a purported personal encounter or more commonly as a result of their
devoted study of some ancient text(s) thought to be infused with God’s
supernatural words. For the purposes of
the present discussion, my frame of reference in this paper will focus
solely on the ancient text of Christianity known as the Bible, however the principles
discussed here may be applied equally to the pursuit of truth in all religious
arenas and even to other areas of human endeavor prone to monopolistic control by
the “experts” such as science, politics, medicine or economics to name a few.
From my earliest memories of
Sunday School and on through my adult participation in various Christian
churches, I remember being told that I must accept the Book as written, by
faith, and not to “lean unto my own understanding”, as “God’s ways are higher
than our ways”. Nowhere was this more
impacting on my spiritual journey than in regards to the long cherished dogma of
eternal Hell. Even momentarily
entertaining a slight doubt of this doctrine’s validity could be enough, or so
it seemed, to send you there.
It’s really hard to oppose such intimidation
tactics when you are just a small child being dangled over the fires of Hell on
but a thin thread of highly conditional mercy so grudgingly offered by the
raging preacher behind that imposing pulpit.
Feeling totally out-gunned at such a fragile age, the Emperor’s new suit
starts looking real fine. After all, the
entourage of dreadful sermons on this subject were obviously condoned by God, as
their caustic message was firmly based in direct quotes from the Good Book itself,
that bastion of undiluted heavenly wisdom with not so much as a punctuation
mark out of place.
Of course, not all denominations
hold so rigidly to such a statement of its unvarnished purity, some allowing for
perhaps a pinch of human bias in the original writings or for some translation or
copying error to have crept in over the centuries of manual reproduction. And judging by the all the variation to be
found, minor or otherwise, within the numerous versions available today, it would
seem completely reasonable to allow for some such latitude in interpretation.
Be that as it may, most groups
within modern Christendom do agree on the vast majority of the major doctrines
not the least of which being that covering the eternal nature of Hell -- this
in spite of numerous references to the Gospel message that all mankind will
eventually be reconciled to God. Why is
it that so many believe in such a horrific description of the behavior of a God
known in essence to be pure love? Why
would we be so easily swayed into believing such a gross distortion of His character when at the same time we
would find it most difficult indeed to believe that such an impenetrable heart
of stone could be found even within the most cruel of human monsters?
Why do we subvert our honest
reactions to such a crime against humanity, one which remains unintelligible to
our brain (it makes no sense… eternal punishment for temporal crimes), which is
abhorrent to our heart (it fills us with fear of a maniacal deity who would
implement such a grossly inordinate punishment), and reprehensible to our soul
(we want to cry out in despair if there be no other God to turn to for
consolation)?
I could speculate here on that
seemingly inexplicable capitulation of our normally stubborn wills, but for
now, please clear your mind of any bias on the subject and come with me on a
hypothetical journey to another land where a volcano god once ruled the lives
of a remotely isolated island population.
Picture yourself raised from a
child on this island where the life of your people has for untold centuries been
guided by the “Holy Book of the Volcano God”.
In this book are written his many decrees that the people of the island
must obey, one of which being particularly disturbing to most of the population
though no one dared challenge its authority.
You see, the Volcano God declared that every mother must bring each of
her children upon their first birthday to the base of the sacred mountain for a
family “cleansing” ceremony. If at any
time during the sacred ritual, black smoke was issued from the mouth of the volcano
then the evil child must be placed upon the molten altar to be consumed in the
fire.
Now imagine that for many years
life had been good for you on the island, at least as long as you could avoid
getting within earshot of the sacred altar where the wailing of the young victims
and their emotionally devastated parents could be heard both day and night
whenever the volcano was active. The
only consolation to be had was in the knowledge that the suffering of the
sacrificial children would end quickly upon their death. However there was no hope of ever seeing them again for their dark soul had been annihilated, according to the teaching of the “Holy
Book”. For the parents who
had participated in this sacrificial murder of their “evil” child, that unbearable
sound of their precious baby’s intense wailing would haunt them the rest of
their lives as would the ache in their heart and the guilt in their conscience.
Then one terrible day, seemingly without
warning, it happened. The gruesome
reality of the cleansing ritual was brought close to home, even to your
doorstep. That much loathed birthday had
arrived when your beautiful baby girl would turn one. As you were attending the mandatory religious
ceremonies, the dreaded realization hit you suddenly like a ton of bricks and nothing
could ease the terror which now gripped your heart. The mountain roared with an explosive rumble
as black smoke belched high into the air.
It left no question as to what God’s will was for your family… for your precious
little princess... what do you do?...
what should you do?
Before you grab your family and
run for your lives, engulfed in righteous indignation, remember that the
Volcano God is believed by all to be the one and only true God of the universe
and He alone is the author of the Book in which the sacred ritual is described. In the infallible text it states that He is a
God of Love and therefore any action taken by Him must ultimately be the most
loving thing that could be done for you and for your wicked daughter. Besides, everyone else in the community has
always been in agreement, yourself included at least up until this moment, that
the Doctrine of the Sacred Altar was indeed correctly understood and properly
executed.
So do you follow your God-given
common sense, your intellect, and your piqued emotions which all line up with
that “still small voice” inside, the one that is currently anything but still or small, all screaming in unison….STOP!!, this is WRONG!! ? Or, do you follow the clergy’s interpretation
of the inanimate words printed in a book which, while certainly bearing the
fingerprint of the true God, was unquestionably penned by the hands of men, a
fact never made more apparent to you than at this moment?
Now, before you make your final
decision, perhaps you should pause for a moment to ask yourself: …on the Judgment Day when you must give
account to God of all of your actions as well as your failure to act, will you
feebly attempt to claim in defense of the ignoble sacrifice of your beautiful
little girl that you were irresistibly compelled to do so by the supposed written
decree of that same God to whom you now plead your case, even though those
words were flatly opposed by all of your God-given human sensibilities, not to
mention every parental impulse to the contrary? At what point in the chain of abusive doctrinal
absurdities will you finally throw caution to the wind and stand up for what
you know is right instead?
To remain silent under such a circumstance
in passive capitulation could in no way be pleasing to any true God who would desire to have his children to grow in stature
as they respond to him with boldness and honesty. He would certainly require that his eternal
companions act with full integrity rather than as hollow “yes men” who at the
drop of a hat could be frightened into throwing away their sacred human dignity
and bending their knee to the idle ranting of some imaginary false god.
Well, for myself I have long ago made
the choice to rest the fate of my
soul on the incorruptible voice of the Living God speaking subtly within. That’s not to say that the Bible, or rather the
Spirit of The Bible (and perhaps even the entire text when properly parsed), is
in any way opposed to that inner guidance, because I do not believe that it is. It’s just that when and if a conflict between
the two exists, or more likely only seems to exist, then I know which voice I
must follow. For in practice this has
led me on a path of ever increasing love and trust and spontaneous worship
towards my Creator as opposed to the blind faith I had previously been taught to
uphold which led only to fear, frustration and eventually utter disdain for
Him.
The Bible does contain the message of life itself, the eternal truths about the
nature of God and his intentions for his children as well as for his whole
creation. And it does so in a more
comprehensive manner than in any other collection of writings I know. Therefore I regard it to be the most
important book in the world… but that does NOT make it equivalent to the living
breathing God. If there be disagreement
between the two, I must always go to the Source.
Who was it anyway that told you
that The Bible is infallible, and please don’t tell me that the claim for
infallibility of The Bible is in The Bible itself, for that testimony is
patently disqualified on the face of it, being nothing more than circular
logic? Perhaps instead you may argue as
many have before that surely a just God would or MUST provide a book of
instruction free from error, and that anything short of that would be grossly
unfair and hopelessly deceptive on his part.
Okay, but please pause here for a
moment to take note that in asserting this restriction on God’s behavior, you
are attempting to use your human reasoning ability, a practice supposedly
forbidden by these same Scriptures in matters of theology. After all, who are you, the clay, to tell the
Potter what he must or must not do with His clay?
Nevertheless, if you would be so
bold as to thus affirm your status as a child of God having an intellect intended
for use, then great, let’s follow
this line of reasoning to its conclusion.
The contention that God must provide for us a reliable written manual
would seem to qualify as a given if this life on earth is rightly considered
to be basically a test of our free will, where failure to exercise it properly yields
certain damnation to a state of eternal torment. I would absolutely agree that any God worthy
of our consideration, not to mention our worship, would at least provide an
unambiguous error free copy of the owner’s manual for every participant in this
infinitely important test called life.
If however our earthly experience
is actually to be regarded as a God-directed process whereby all of his children will ultimately and
collectively be raised up together as a cherished body and bride of his Son,
then any intermediate testing along the way no matter how “tricky” is
completely justifiable. (See blog post: "Life on Earth"... Test vs Process") It would
therefore be quite easy to see how a loving Father may in fact resort to the use
of a tainted book or any other sleight of hand for that matter to temporarily
“consign all to disobedience that He may have mercy upon them all” (NIV Romans 11:32).
Now switch gears with me back to
the present concern over the proper use of Biblical guidance. Why is it so easy to oppose the hypothetical cruelty mandated by the "Book of the Volcano God" which would “only” end the life your beloved daughter while sparing her from further pain, and yet so hard to confront the utterly
reprehensible real life “Word of God” when it supposedly describes a deity who will allow her to grow up to the
“age of accountability” after having been “consigned to disobedience”, and then
when his mercy for her proves
insufficient to win her back in repentance, will throw not only her earthly
body into the grave but her eternal soul into Hell… forever! Why does this supposed god get all the credit
for salvation from disobedience but
none of the responsibility for the consignment to disobedience in the first place? (See blog post: "Good vs Evil... or God uses Devil")
But here I speak as though I
believe in the commonly accepted meaning of the Bible on this point as would be
ascribed to it by most of Christendom. What
I actually do believe though, is that
a proper discerning of the Spirit of the Bible yields the understanding that
when Paul says that ALL will be consigned to disobedience, it’s the same ALL to
whom he immediately thereafter says will be shown mercy, that is, completely
effective mercy according to God’s sovereign will, thus allowing Christ to
triumphantly proclaim on the cross, “It is Finished!”.
It is abundantly clear that God has
chosen not to deliver to us an original pristine inscription of his Gospel
message having been set in stone by his very hands, but rather a collection of
writings independently produced from the start through numerous human channels
only then to be subsequently collated, copied and translated repeatedly over a
period of several millennia. I can only
assume that any resulting product imperfections must bear his stamp of approval
as well for he truly does nothing in vain.
Therefore the ensuing mass misunderstanding of the Bible message and disagreement
among his body of believers must have a God-ordained purpose. As the story of Job clearly conveys, even
chaos (Behemoth or Leviathan) is not capable of thwarting his plans.
As a case in point, consider once
again the Biblical concept of eternal torment in Hell, this time from the
standpoint of its usefulness to His overall purpose in spite of its grave
misrepresentation of the same. Whether this
distorted doctrine springs from a proper understanding of the original text or whether
through mistranslation, I care not, the God-ordained effect of its diabolical
message remains the same. This commonly
accepted corruption of God’s intentions could easily have been permitted for a
time in order to lure all those with such an inclination to follow it, to comfortably
if not smugly accept their own “personal salvation” from that same Hellish demise where some or even most of the rest of their fellow earth travelers will end up spending eternity.
Later on when it is be revealed how the
“first will be made last” and those presumed to have been saved find themselves cast into the fiery pit - for a time, it will all become a fantastic object lesson effectively exposing and then removing this self righteous tendency to comfortably accept (if not demand) one's brother's exclusion from God’s wonderful plan of salvation.
So whether we who “see through a
glass darkly” gain a correct understanding of the original scriptures, or alas a
complete misunderstanding of one of the many translated versions, either way
God works all things out according to his good plan (NIV Ephesians 1:11). Even
though the Gospel message in the Bible may be marred and partially obscured, it
is provided there nonetheless with sufficient clarity for those who have eyes
to see and ears to hear. Besides, our
salvation does not depend on our ability to figure out what is true about God. We’re all in deep trouble if knowing the truth
is what is required to get us into Heaven.
What matters first and
foremost is that He knows us… He
“finds” us… He loves us! That’s what counts. Be assured that the rest of the story (our
response to His unconditional Grace) will follow in natural progression. (See blog post: “No Cheap Grace… reaping what you sow”, and
future blog post: “Responsibility and Glory:
GOD’s & ours” for a more complete discussion of what may be required
of the human side of the equation)
Finally, to the extent that the
Bible is true, it will require no externally concocted defense and will
withstand all challenges from whatever source.
When poked, it will either be found to be supported by the real world of
God’s creation and His Spirit within us, or it will not. If we would but listen attentively first and
foremost to that Holy Internal Guide, we are assured to be “led into all truth”
(NIV John 16:13). We must always be wary
of error whatever its source and to refrain from the worship of a book
(Bibliolatry) or any other idol in place of the living God.
As it is written: “Thou shalt have
no other Gods before me!”
Based on hard fought personal
experience, I would strongly encourage everyone to follow Paul’s admonition to
“prove all things; hold fast that which is good” (NIV I Thessalonians 5:21). Acknowledge your doubts and always be true to
that which in your Spirit you know is
right. Your questions will lead you to answers,
real answers that satisfy the longings of your heart, mind, and soul. And when the time is right, and I pray that
to be sooner than later, all questions will cease as you reach out to Him with
the unrestrained expectation of a child, confident in His rock solid love for
you and in His steadfast desire and ability to finish in you that which He has
started. (Philippians 1:6)
