Many people have a resistance to discussing the book called the Bible. There are very strong opinions about that book. Calling it a book even, could be controversial. It is the “word” of God, to many, not just a book. If you understand human nature, the text of the Bible is questionable because humans wrote it. The argument against that is that God told them what to write, so it is 100% true. The hard part about that for me is that I have read it, all of it, more than once. What I read was stories written by men, with influences of women. If an entity called God wrote this book, they need some editorial assistance. Though it was translated from another language, and I have not read it in its original form, and taking that into account, the writing isn’t that good. In some ways, it is actually really awful. I think I would expect more from the one true God. It is also quite beautiful in some places, poetic and artistic. If God wrote it, why isn’t it consistent?
Speaking of inconsistent, the whole thing isn’t. If you believe in a never changing God, one God, that loves us as a father, you will not find that God in the Bible. The God in the Bible is vengeful, resentful, and sometimes spiteful to his children when they “disobey” Him. The way He, the God of the Bible is referred to as He, though I do not subscribe to a gendered God, responds to His people sometimes seems random. He might kill them all, forgive them, allow them penance, trick them and test them, put temptations before them on purpose, lie to them to get them to comply. I know that last one might be challenging for some. God didn’t lie they will say. Look closer. When He sends Satan to lie, He lies. If I send you to kill someone, I am guilty of killing too.
Good news for me. I do not believe that God wrote the Bible. I believe that people did. If you have read my other blog posts, you also know that I do not believe that human memories are reality. They are not real or true, they are made up of the person’s imagination and perceptions of what is real.
Recently, I listened to two books of the Bible again on audio. Much easier than reading the way things were written. What I notice right off was that the two books, Luke and John, seemed to be writing about two different men. John writes of a man, who says he is God, and that he speaks for God. That he is the only one who has ever spoken for God, and that he alone is the way to God. He makes claims that whatever you ask for in his name, God will provide. He believes he is that important. Trouble here is, that people have asked for things in Jesus’ name, and they didn’t get them. The book doesn’t qualify that you have to ask for something that is good for you, that you have a right to, or that is approved by God. It says, whatever you ask for in my name, you will receive. I know, that people say, that God always answers prayer. We just don’t always recognize it. Sorry, if you say whatever, we understand that to me without qualifiers. Since that is not true, the whole things I questionable to me, as most things are.
In Luke, he calls himself the Son of Man. Over and over he calls himself that. Never once said he was God, that he spoke for God, or that he was the only way to get to God. He says that if someone follows him, that he knows the way to God and so that person will also know the way to God, but does not say he knows the only way. While John says that that Jesus is the only son of God, Luke refers to God being the father of all of us, that all of us are sons of God, as He is our Father in heaven. So, here’s my thing with believing the Bible is the one true message from the one true God, why isn’t it consistent then? I have heard that people say, well men altered it when they wrote it, but it is still true where God wrote it. How can you know which are from God and which statements are from man then? I am not attempting to blaspheme the book or God. I just know humans. They believe their own minds before anything else, no matter how enlightened they are to God. God is a construct to all of us.
I do believe in the Bible. I do not believe it is the infallible word of a one true God though. I do believe that God influenced the writers of the Bible, gave them stories to tell, had them witness things that they could learn from, and share with others. I also believe that there isn’t a God. I believe that the thing we call God is more of a collective soul, and that we are all part of that soul.
When we are born to human form, we lose our connection to the collective that is God, that is us. What is the purpose then of our life? It is to return to the presence of God, to the collective that is God, to return to us. Humans do not relate to the concept of being part of an us. We think we are separate from one another, separate from God, separate from the Earth, air, rocks and trees. We and our egos believe that there is an I to believe in. We are not separate. There is no I. Books like the Bible are there to try to inspire us to remember that. We chose before we came to human form what life we would create for us while we were on the Earth. We chose what to set in our path, what trials we would endure, what lessons we wanted to learn, all of which has the one purpose to remember where we came from and to where we go when we do go. God sets us on our path. God is us. God is the collective soul that chose our life path. God is still us, though we are not currently in spirit form, God is still in us. We are not separate from God. We never were. We just forgot.
Because we, as God, set us on our path, we are also there to guide our life and our journey. We simply need to reconnect to that collective soul that we came from. That is part of what I am learning to do, reconnect. Things like the Bible were written to help, by men, who were God, who were also human and fallible in terms of memory of events.
Many stories in the Bible are there to remind us that the perception of separateness is only a perception. It is not real. Jesus asked us to follow him because he knew the way back to the collective. His commandment, love God, love each other, love yourself, and that doing so is all the same thing. Even if he did say there was only one God, and he was the only way to him, he wasn’t wrong. Christians who interpret that to mean that Buddhist are not following the one true God, are the ones who are mistaken. Saying, “I know the one way to God, and it is only through my teachings,” might be right. Here’s the thing, Buddha didn’t send a different message from Jesus. In fact, the basis of most world religions are the same. They are based on the commandments of love God, love each other, love yourself, and all of that is the same thing. If I follow Buddha, I follow Jesus because they taught the same thing. If I follow my own beliefs aside from others, I also follow Jesus, and Buddha, as they are both me, and I am both of them. It can be mind bending. For people needing to believe there is only one right and everything else is wrong is easier than to believe that there might be multiple truths.
Personally, I cannot believe in a God that would truly only make one way for humans to return to the presence of God. That is kind of mean. It would be like setting up rules like in order to be closer to God, you have to be able to sit high in a tree. While some people could do that, many others cannot get up in a tree. In fact, not sure I could at this point in my life. God did not say that. God says, love, that is the way. If you want to believe in love through Jesus, great. If you want to find love through Buddha, awesome. If you want to find true love, unconditional love another way, through no religion, then perfect. God is us. We are God, and we do not care how people find unconditional love. We just hope that people do.
(I am aware that someone might think, that God does create the one way, and says that to believe in Him means we can climb the tree to Him with enough faith to get there. That is not how it works. Being in the presence of God does require faith. It requires the faith to know that God would not make you need to be a monkey to try to climb a tree to reach Him. He would make it easy to reach Him. What purpose would he have to make it hard to get to him? Why would we need to believe a certain thing in a specific way to be close to God? We are never separate from God. There is nothing to do to be close to God except remember we are not separate from God. Jesus came to remind us of that. We twisted that one but good. We made it about having faith in Jesus. It is not about that. Jesus himself said, it is about love, and that is easy. How you find love, well that is the question, and so we, God, set out many paths, and roads to love. Many ways to find our way back to what we came from, because we never left it. We just forgot.
People say that Jesus heals people, and yes, I also believe that he did and does, and that does not change anything else I believe. Buddha also heals people, though he would not say it is him doing the healing, that the person heals themselves. If you believe we are all God, as I think Buddha would agree with, then healing yourself, is God healing you. To be healed, we simply need to believe we are healed. That is what the Bible says, and I agree, though not like you think I might. There is nothing in me that needs to be changed for me to be healed. I am not sick. I am not broken or in need of fixing. I just don’t always remember that. Healing is remembering that we are always well, and then being well. Being well does not mean I do not have physical pain, that I do not think troubling thoughts, feel troubling emotions, or experience the physical effects of a virus or disease.
Reportedly, as Jesus died he stated that, “It is well with my soul.” The dude was dying. He had been tortured, tempted, made fun of, and betrayed and denied by truest friends. None of that was wrong. He knew it was the way of it. He knew that his life and wellness was more than a physical being, a physical life. He knew that he had a purpose beyond human suffering. When we all remember that, there is no suffering on earth. We are well, complete, and need no healing. Physical pain is of this world. None of us are of this world. We only live here temporarily. Pain is the way of a human. There is no way to avoid it completely. Suffering though, is optional. Suffering we choose. It all ends when we die physically, but because we don’t actually cease to exist, there is no death, only transition to the next thing. We go back to where we came from. We all come from and go to the same place.
If you don’t believe that, doesn’t matter to me. I still love you, not in spite of your disbelief. I love you in no relation to what you believe, and so does God. Whether you believe there is a God or not. God, that is me, that is you, that is us, believes in you. All roads lead to Oz. Dorothy just happened to take the yellow brick one.
Namaste (the love in me, loves you)