WORD OF GOD? HOW SO? Christians can be downright tiresome with their insistence that the Bible is God's word. Sometimes, I must admit, I grow weary of dealing with this subject. But I have to. It's important. I have to keep reminding them that they have no way of knowing such a thing. They are only repeating what they have heard other human beings say. Christians (or, to be completely fair on the matter, the members of any religious sect) are not exactly famous for doing their own thinking. After all, we're talking about a group of people who sit in pews every Sunday (a group, mind you, that is often referred to as a flock of sheep) and listen to a preacher (a human being) expound upon the word of God as he sees it. After the docile sheep hear what their posturing shepherd has to say, they often make their own comments on the sermon amongst themselves (or to anyone else who will listen). They may sometimes disagree with the shepherd, but never seriously. He is, after all, the "preacher" and supposedly operating under the "anointing" when he is behind the pulpit. It is extremely difficult to believe that so many people in the 21st century still go in for this nonsense. If there really were a God, I find it hard to believe that there would be a single word from Him. Somehow, I think He would have more class than that. I feel the same about the word of God as I do about knowledge - that there is none except for the fact that there isn't any. (The one piece of knowledge that we have is that we do not have any.) In the same way that a certain kind of meaning may be discovered in the complete absence of meaning, the utter silence of God may be viewed as Its most powerful communication, as Its only word, if you will. The only way that God could truly have authority is by remaining silent. Once He opens His mouth, the cat is out of the bag, so to speak. True authority is more wide open, not closed up inside a box of words. Lao Tzu said it best:
The Tao (Way) that may be told of is not the eternal (or real) Tao.
I've taken the liberty to adapt this to suit my feelings about God's so-called word:
The God Who speaks is not the real God.
If there really were a God, His eternality and power would surely be beyond imagining, which means that it would exceed the power of any words to describe. A real God would surely know this, so He would not even bother to speak of Himself. Mortal humans could never begin to comprehend His nature. And if He were to speak, what would be the point? To show off? Surely not a God-like activity. And what would He say? Thou shalt not? Please. And to whom would He speak? Just one dude? Or one particular tribe or clan of people? The very idea is beyond absurd. The eternal God, if nothing else, is surely outside the bounds of petty territorial squabbling. The Jews were unable to come up with any other reasons to justify their ownership of the land, so they came up with the idea that God said it was, as if an eternal Being would sully His hands in a game of ethnic favoritism. And then the Christians come along with the audacity to claim that God loves everybody the same. And they do it by appealing to the Bible, the same book that seems to offer us a God Who (apparently) condones genocide. Go figure. These are ideas that should be laughed at, but millions of people all over the planet take them seriously. Wars have been waged and countless thousands have been killed over them. Yeah, that really sounds like something an eternal God would have wanted, for there to be endless wrangling about the meaning of His word, for constant disputes to be erupting over it, some of them so intense as to lead to bloodshed. The bottom line is very simple. It doesn't matter if human beings claim that the Bible is God's word. It would only matter if God Himself (or Herself) were to make the claim. But how could we ever know that? We would have to first establish that there really was a God before we could even begin to discuss whether or not He/She had issued a memo. In the same way, only God could make the legitimate claim that He/She was God. When you think about it, it seems rather silly for a mere human being to assert that a particular Being is God. Wouldn't the human being have to be God Himself to know that? The Bible: Why God Had Nothing To Do With It
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