The Bible- Reality
I realized in a bible study I have been a part of for the last three years that I have very different ideas about the Bible. I don’t express these often but they reveal a wide gap I created in my ideas about Christianity from my questions. This is due to the inquisitive nature I developed with processing religion and science. When I started to write about the Bible and science I found it very difficult. The abundance of unanswered questions accented the difficulty in accepting the Bible as the unqualified Word of God. Reason needed to be addressed to validate my assurances and credibility of my own Christian beliefs. I do not accept “blind” faith in myself so I needed to be honest about the questions and process of my reasoning in studying the reality of the Bible. This writing is a revelation in process.
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THE BIBLE TO A CHRISTIAN
The Bible is “the greatest book ever written”. It is the most read, copied, and quoted book ever published. It is the inspiration for Christians and the foundation of their Faith. It is God’s message to Mankind and paves a path to the ultimate fate of each and every person. Life is vain without the Hope that the Bible gives Man’s destiny. The wonder of expression, insight, revelation, and divine narrative is the reflection of the mystery of God. What the Bible says to us is unbelievable and the following is just examples.
The Bible is the means God uses to reveal Himself to Man.
The Bible is God’s message that characterizes God and tells how He revealed a concept of one God to the Israelites.
The Bible describes God as creator, of unlimited knowledge, control, and power over everything.
The Bibles’s scope encompasses the beginning of the cosmos, to the prophecy of the end times of the world.
The Bible describes God’s plan for the world and presents an account of the fulfillment of His plan through a historic journey of the Israelites, His chosen people.
The Bible is a story of God’s relationship to Man and describes a sinful, constantly disobedient humanity.
The Bible is a harsh story of Man’s disobedience to God and our weakness as humans.
The Bible tells us God hates sin and the penalty for sin is death.
The Bible teaches us that perhaps we have a special destiny and purpose and we are not just another more intelligent animal.
The Bible presents each of us with an alternate reality of what life is and what it’s meaning may be.
The Bible exposes a novel reality that we are created for a relationship with God.
The Bible reveals God and Jesus as the Truth.
The Bible reveals a benevolent God who loves us and offers us a means for a redemption of sin through His son, Jesus Christ.
The Bible personifies God and describes Jesus in human terms.
The Bible tells how Jesus was crucified to be payment for our sins and how He was resurrected to exemplify His victory over death.
The Bible clearly states that our salvation and victory over death is contingent on our ability to believe in Jesus as the Son of God.
The Bible tells us our belief is the beginning of our journey with God.
The Bible explains the details of our path to redemption and salvation and how to please God.
The Bible answers questions of “meaning and purpose” for us, the “conscious and sapient life” (Anthropic Principle) on Earth.
The Bible is the “greatest book ever written”, when you believe it.
The Bible is the Word of God, leading us to Christianity and our salvation.
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THE BIBLE AND THE MIND
It is interesting to me of how many Christians have bridged the gap of belief and truth by circumventing or surrendering reason. When the Bible states that human wisdom leads to foolishness, understanding is though the Spirit of God, and fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, it is infers that Man is deficient and God is the guiding influence for truth. Some “blindly” accept this. For myself, not being able to blindly accept anything, and believing that one great asset God gave to humanity is our ability to reason, my journey to God involves my mind for exploring and trying to understand. My curiosity, asking abundant questions, drive to study and learn, need to try to be open and honest with myself, and constant pursuit for a reasonableness of my beliefs, are part of my nature. Even though my intellect creates hard questions, contradictions, and conceptual and interpretive problems in my Christian belief, I accept the challenge and feel God will help me.
The Bible says "seek and ye shall find". It takes a curious mind to seek, discern, and to believe. There is a philosophical sense to our intellect for me. I have always reflected on the superiority of the human mind. We love and hate, imagine and speculate, create and destroy, and do many other special things with our mind. Our mind gives us the ability to be curious. Curiosity is just one special function Man has from his superior brain. The brain allows humans unique talents like, being able to memorize events and data, process complex ideas, have wild imagination and speculations, reading and writing, building and creating, and communicating with each other, among many other things. I emphasize curiosity to highlight it's importance. It is innate in Man, sort of a predisposition, like a compelling need to climb a mountain. If we were not curious, and could not visually "see" creation with our eyes and invented technology, we would not discover the wonders of God.
The ability to reason is a gift from God, but it is also a burden. Our God-given superior human intellect allows us to be reasonable, rational, and hopefully as openminded as possible. Reasonableness makes it hard to find Truth. Our mind is filled with unresolved questions, irrational theories, unfounded speculations, unsupported conclusions, and unprovable data. Answers are seldom fulfilling or complete. Truth is often unsupported by facts and data. The “Truth” is elusive, undefined, abstract, subjective, and hardly recognizable “absolute”. Our reason as a tool for belief may be the closest way to find a credible Truth, of sorts. With our mind comes the curiosity that compels a search for the elusive Truth.
Beliefs are hard to justify because it is hard to ignore things that make no sense to you. When the Bible “makes no sense” an explanation or understanding is warranted. With the abundance of questions, the rarity of answers, and the pursuit of reasonableness, comes the difficulty in forming beliefs. Though questions may not be answered, the credibility of your belief lets you put explanations and understanding on hold. The Bible ask us to “lean not on our own understanding”, to surrender our will to God, and to acknowledge the authority of God. Using intellect to “chose” a path to God (perhaps led by God) and defy, or surrender, your reasoning is indeed humbling to arrogant Man. A believing Christian will never seem rational to an unbeliever. The span of not believing in God runs from the committed atheist to the agnostic that does not want to totally say no. The span of believing Christians is also diversified, as exemplified by the amount of time and effort they put into practicing their belief, as seen by the degree of priority they put in God in the face of the many distractions throughout life. Belief is by no means easy. Our inherited, or evolved, or given intellect is the essence of our search for the credibility of our beliefs. The path is not only “narrow”, but difficult for most, and impossible for some. With the reality of Christianity comes the realization that “all things are possible for the Lord” and “the Lord sure do work in mysterious ways” (movie- Sargent York).
There is always doubt in belief. It is that incredible mind of Man that makes decisions and discernment so hard, and feeds the seeds of doubts. The Bible says to study and to trust. The very complexity, difficulties of understanding, and commitments demanded by God in the Bible require presence of mind. Surely we are not given a mind to acquiesce to mindlessness. Perhaps, only the assurances received after death will alleviate doubts?
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THE BIBLE AND THE SECULAR WORLD
To say the Bible is difficult to believe has always been understated by Christians. While it is hard for Christians, it is almost impossible for the secular world to accept the authority of the Bible as the Word of God. The Bible makes this really clear, stating about how hard it is and how few people will accept God’s Word over the temptations of a carnal, secular world. The secular world becomes especially disenfranchised when Christian explanations seem to be mostly quotes from the Bible. It becomes easier to understand the polarization this causes when stated differently. The unanswered questions that arise for Christians require them to trust their reasoning to God. The secular world trust their intellect (“In Reason We Trust”). They use reason to intellectually challenge the credibility of Christians, pointing out the contradictions and their incredulous claims of Biblical truths. Christians respond with the Bible and spiritual inspiration for answers. The secular world wants you to believe in the power of human intellect and the Christian wants you to believe in God’s Holy Spirit for understanding. Neither side offers definitive proofs that can give convincing resolution to critical questions. Both sides claim the reasonableness of their claims.
It should not be too hard for the Christian to understand the skepticism of the secular world for the Bible because we do not surrender our sinful human nature when we become a Christian. We are Christian because of a “change of heart” and a willingness to surrender our will to God. As such, we can understand the mentality of the secular world because surrender of our “will” does not mean we are surrendering our human nature. That human nature is still present to tempt us to sin. The Bible says we are in the world of the “flesh”, but as Christians we are “reborn” into a “spiritual” world. We can understand the secular world because we still live in the world of flesh until death.
The Bible states that Man is given dominion over all animals on the Earth, but also that Satan has dominion over the evil, carnal, hedonistic world. The intensity of a Christian’s battle with sin is seen in our efforts to believe and serve God against the forces of Satan. The Bible makes Satan real. The secular world, and even some Christians, tend to look at Satan as a symbolic figure of evil. Many Christians don’t easily acknowledge demons, possession, and the devil. Jesus did not face evil in the desert as temptations of fame, wealth and power. He was presented these temptation through Satan, an evil entity. Satan is not a cartoon character or Halloween costume. How can the secular world recognize a Christian’s battle with sin if they are skeptical of the existence of a Devil. How can they understand the sinfulness of worldly temptations? Before the Bible, Christians did not accept sinfulness as disobedience to God’s Laws. The Bible makes realization and confession of your sinful disobedience a necessary step for becoming a Christian.
The secular mind boldly and arrogantly acknowledges the wonder and scope of it’s discoveries of the cosmos. It proclaims that their superior intellect can unlock the mysteries of existence. Their trust in human reason allows them to declare there is no God. They allow themselves to maintain the credibility of their declaration of no God without proof. It is not stated as a theory, but an inferred fact. The secular philosophy is that the intellect of Man, not God, is the source of higher abstract ideas and moral purpose. They teach their children that the highest purpose of Humanity is to serve Humanity. They teach that survival is the goal of human’s brief, finite life ("dust to dust"). Life is short, so it is best to make the most out of it and have fun.
The secular world tells their innocent, vulnerable child about the foolishness to have Faith and the Hope of a life after death, because there is no life after death. Some state that they do not fear death. The secular world bravely attempts to be be honest with themselves, even unto death. Death is an inevitable conclusion to life. The secular world not believing God gave them life, why should they think God can give them eternal life?
However, if the secular world wants to honestly portray reality and facts, they should not forget to tell their kids that Humanity isn't all that great. They should confess how Man is in the process of killing off most other species of animals (Anthropocene extinction), and maybe ourselves. They could also mention how we use our intellect to create weapons of mass destruction to dominate, conquer, and destroy. How our greed, vanity, and competitive nature (envy, jealousy,and ambition), are maliciously used to get fame and fortune. How we use our ability to be cruel to punish and kill our enemies. How we manipulate nature and create technology to greedily pursue our own human interest over the welfare of the world. They should also confess they do not intellectually know what life is, much less death. Their conclusions are suppositions.
The question for the secular world is do they have the Truth? Humanity chooses between the Bible and the reality they live in. In fact, most don’t choose. Reality often ignores the question of belief in God or Jesus. A world without God is before our eyes. Satan has dominion. Life is hard enough as it is. Survival and distractions are the tools of the devil. We are brainwashed by the secular world. It does not matter what Truth is if you don’t seek it. If you don’t seek God it is hard to find Him. That is the major strength the secular world has, apathy. The secular world easily teaches the lessons of false religions, atheist, and agnostics, and the world listens.
The Bible tells us to live a spiritual life with God and to not be part of the secular world. Jesus says “I am the Way, the Life, and the Truth”. It is the victory of the Bible to find God in a Godless world. The value of the Bible is to teach humanity the Truth.
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THE BIBLE AS THE WORD OF GOD
I am not sure when we started to call the Bible the “Word of God”. Was it before Revelations was written, or after? How does calling Jesus the “Word” compare with calling the Bible the Word of God? I’m not sure that what we call the Scriptures is exactly what Jesus or the apostles called the Scriptures. I wish I knew for sure who wrote Genesis because it doesn’t sound the same as the other books of the Pentateuch. It is hard to discern if the stories in the Bible are a bunch of fables and myths because, frankly, they sound like them. The Bible is not clear on many things. If you ever hear a man say believe me because I’m perfect, or a scientist say believe me because I’m smart, beware. If the Bible says every word in the Bible is true, are you so conditioned as to believe it just because that’s what it says about itself?
The credibility of the Bible makes more sense because it is so real. The Bible certainly doesn’t try to sugarcoat itself. It is written to get a message out and doesn’t edit or protect itself. It could be less controversial and easier to understand. In the Old Testament, God is portrayed as a vindictive, jealous, harsh deity, to be feared, and demanding worship. God destroyed most of Man with a flood and destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah with fire. With stark reality the Bible predicts and tells of wars, famine, and disease. It is not a message we want to hear. God’s actions are painful and hard to take. God makes no excuses, demands strict obedience, punishes, and ask Man to go against his nature. God teaches a very hard lesson to Man. It’s message is written and given to Man as an honest and stark reality.
The Bible could be easier on itself. For one it could write of it’s heroes without exposing their innate sins and weaknesses. Most or maybe all of the humans in the Bible were very flawed. Moses killed a man and rejected God at first. Adam and Eve both disobeyed God directly. Abraham “took” his handmaiden and gave his wife to a king. David, Solomon, Jonas, and Sampson were all very flawed. It could also tell more credible stories that are easier to believe. Thinking of God using the rib of Adam for the formation of woman, or the Tower of Babel as the source of the confusion of languages, or Sampson’s long hair as the source of his strength, is troubling. It could eliminate the pages and pages of repetitious, mundane, details of Israelite history, culture and genealogy. It could eliminate the intricate laws, hierarchy, and minute instructions of many things, like the building of Noah’s ark, or the arc of the covenant structure. Even some of the poems and songs seem repetitious and strange. However, given the centuries of study and dialogue the Bible creates, these mundane things may be part of it’s credibility and design. It seems God message to Man is not for credibility, but Truth.
I am not a total advocate of the idea that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God. At least not the Bible we have. This may make me a bad Christian, but I have studied the Bible hard enough, and argued about interpretations frequently enough, to feel there are valid contradictions. Many of these are product of flaws in translations, or maybe flaws in my interpretations. However, I think it is very naive to think that the canonization of the Bible was flawless or totally inspired by God, or that transcription errors were not made. I think what makes me a good Christian is that I believe the Bible reveals who God is and what His plan of salvation is through Jesus. What “makes sense” to me is I know of God and Jesus through the Bible, and believe. I do not require the Bible to answer all questions for me. I can live with unanswered questions, even those I that make no sense and I don’t understand. I don’t know if parts of the Bible are in error. The Words of God are clearly stated in the Bible but human error may play a part of faulty interpretations. This may be God’s intent and I am left to trust God.
There are many conflicts and questions that will never be fully answered but I am now fully resolved. If we all had the same understanding of the Bible, or believed alike, then maybe things could be clearer. But it is hard to know the truth, even if the words are in the Bible. I don’t really think about them because the Bible is an amazing book of God, definitely inspired by God, not necessarily written by God, and one source God uses to reveal Himself to humanity. I do believe God reveals Himself in many other ways, one of which is science. If I were to say I am a Christian because I believe Jesus is the Son of God as revealed in the gospels, is that not enough? Do I also have to say, without a doubt, I believe every word in the Bible?
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THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE
I spend my life studying and writing about the controversies of science and belief in God. The realization that this is very different than studying the Bible in respects to science was driven home last month (May, 2019) when I ran into a video by Dr. Hugh Ross. I read his book “The Creator and the Cosmos” many years ago and remember it as one of the foundations of my personal passion with science and the Bible. Now, my past of not reading works of experts, trying to form ideas without being over invested in controversies and debates, and not trying to memorize everything, seems exposed. Wanting to form my own thoughts without undo biases left me very naive and uninformed about the depth and scope of scholarly discord. Again Dr. Ross is foundational to this epiphany. I cannot go back through over 50 years of study to try to read books, remember names, data, and references, and follow any person or institutions specific ideas on various topics. I wanted to be a fairly educated, well-studied layperson on science and the Bible. Thinking I could create my own understanding, without too many outside influences, is arrogant. I have a broad understanding of science from journals, TV, internet articles, and some books. I have read the Bible all my life but am far from being a Bible scholar. After exposure to the intellectual scientific assessment of the Bible and science by a scientist, Dr. Ross, and seeing some responses by true Bible scholars, I realize how simple my layperson perspective is.
The idea of experts gets lost in science by the real fact of the specialization of sciences,, hence, Dr. Ross, a astrophysicist, references a staff member of his foundation “Reasons to Believe, as a biochemist, in his talks. Additionally, the Bible scholars usually have little formal science background. Even so, unlike my mentality, they use experts and many prominent people to empathize their points of view. Although I have not yet taken advantage, their lectures, books, articles, and TV dialogues are readily available. As such, my ideas about this section of writing is now deferred to the opinions of experts.
Experts in science and the Bible are very intellectual and comprehensive about how the Bible confirms science. They discuss how the Bible addresses the cosmos, nature, life and the human species. The topics are similar to a discussion of the credibility of God’s hand in the design and complexity of creation. It is enlightening to find how the Bible can be used to address things like the Big Bang Theory, Inflation and the expansion of the cosmos, Abiogenesis, Evolution, Particle Physics, and even areas like extinctions, plate tectonics, and genetics. It is a little disturbing how these experts disagree about so much. If these are looked at in the same vein as the many different kinds of Christian Churches that exist, then perhaps, they reflect Man’s confusion, not the Bible.
I actually have many writings on why I write. Mostly, in the past, it was to just write my thoughts and ideas for myself (nobody has, or will read most of these). Later I typed and started putting things on the internet in various forms (Author’s Den, a blog, and a video series) with my wife’s help. It was started to just put some of my writing in a savable form. It became much more as I wrote more and thought maybe God made my life as it is with a purpose. My awkward strangeness is partly explained by the reality, “I never had a cell phone in my life”. That exemplifies, by today’s modern standards, how backwards and isolated I am. I never joined an organization, corresponded with anyone, or shared my independent thoughts. I think the internet may be me trying to reach out to society. Since this is not supposed to be an autobiography, I’ll just say I pray that God will somehow use me, and my strangeness, for His glory.
AuthorsDen.com - Gordon H. Hisayasu
Blog- scienceofgodscreation.blogspot.com
Video series- How Science Reveals God’s Creation....YouTube- Gordon Hisayasu
Turning “theories to facts” in science, is like the Biblical concept of turning “Words into belief”. The Bible is not written as a science book, or science proposed as a theological discourse on God. Scientist use reason and evidence to support theories, and theologians use inspiration and revelation to support belief. In a sense the Bible addresses the meaning and purpose of Man as revealed by God, while science is the accumulation of empirical data to try to explain the mysteries of existence. There may be little overlap of the two.
I heard a biblical scholar describe how science is a source of doubting the Scriptures for children. My youth was bombarded with questions of God, evolution and the origins of life. Likewise, the religious scholarly community responded with “Intelligent Design” and a very defensive posture. The predicament for a realistic assessment is to try to look at data and be reasonable, open-minded, and honest. There is much we may never know or understand, but even in confusion we can try. God’s gift of intellect leaves some with no alternative but to try to figure out who God is.
The state of the world and mankind makes it hard to understand the relation of science to the Bible. We do not know how things are made or why things are as they are. Science leaves many mysteries unanswered and gaps in knowledge, especially origins. The Bible describes why God lets things happen, what His motives are, what God’s lessons in the Bible and life mean, but still God is clouded in mystery. If we all had the same understanding of the Bible, or believed alike, then maybe things could be clearer. It is not hard to imagine nature, or the Naturalistic Model of the cosmos, is the product of God’s creativity. What we see and discover (science) can reasonably lead to belief in God. Relating the Bible to science is different. The days described in Genesis, the “stretching” of the universe, the Flood, the history of Species and Humans, and many other things are not clear or are ambiguous. Believing in the abundance of scientific evidence to prove God as “Creator” is easy when compared to using the Word of God to scientifically prove God “created”.
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THE BIBLE AND WORDS
The Bible says, “There exist FAITH, HOPE, and LOVE, and the greatest of these is LOVE”.
The Bible says about JESUS, “. Whosoever BELIEVETH in me shall not perish but have EVERLASTING LIFE”.
The Bible says, “The HEAVENS proclaim the GLORY of GOD”.
And the words continue. SATAN tempts. All have SINNED. None are RIGHTEOUS. By God’s GRACE we are SAVED. God is HOLY. God gave His COMMANDMENTS and established a COVENANT with His CHOSEN PEOPLE. Jesus is our SALVATION. The HOLY SPIRIT is with us.
The words in the Bible do something few books can. They present a separate reality outside the apparent circumstance and environment that surrounds us. The words reveal concepts that stimulate a lethargic, worldly mind to think about what life is really about. They are words that reveal the Holiness, Character and Will of God. They reveal God’s plan of salvation from sin and death for Man. They teach us of God’s divinity and grace. They help us make difficult decisions that can change our lives. The words are outside words of daily conversation and train of thought. The words are strange, or used strangely, that present innovative ideas about the meaning and purpose of life. These are the words the Bible uses to tell us we can have a relationship with God.
Words are why Humanity does not live in caves today. The ability to communicate makes us collectively and individually who we are. The words of the Bible are a good reflection of how differently we “hear” words. To those who “hear” the words of God, their lives are changed. When words of the Bible becomes “The Word of God” the Bible becomes a revelation and inspiration leading to Christianity.
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