I don't believe in Bible chronology. I believe in love.

by under_believer 3 Replies latest jw friends

  • under_believer
    under_believer

    I think so-called "Bible Chronology" is ridiculous. I think that the concept that God left all these hidden messages that require all kinds of mathematics, symbolic time periods, coded references, antitypicals, classes of people, lesser and greater fulfillments, and so forth, really stretches credibility.
    Why would God do that? Why would he make it so complicated and confusing to serve him in true worship? Why would these things be so squishy, so interpretive, so fragile, that his own "spirit-directed organization" would interpret them incorrectly and have to reexamine them so many times in a row? Why would repeated tests of faith be necessary?
    Does any of that seem logical? Make sense? Or, alternatively, why can't we just adopt Occam's Razor for Bible interpretation?
    There is this perennial tendency to argue 607 this, 587 that, 1914 this, 1919 that, and every time I crack one of those arguments open, I get halfway through the post (whether for or against) and my brain just starts to boggle. Perhaps I'm just not in tune with the "deep things of God," but I simply can't imagine that God really wanted people to try and apply every single word in that Bible of his to themselves, everyone they know, and the current political climate of whenever they lived. I mean, isn't the Bible iconic enough, and full of enough archetypes, that it really could probably apply to any given time period?
    If the Bible means anything (something I'm still trying to decide,) I think it probably most likely means what was neatly summarized by Jesus at Matthew 22:34-40 (NIV):

    Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
  • serendipity
    serendipity

    Hi under believer,

    I believe it's enough of challenge for most people to BE Christians, living by Christian principles, that God doesn't expect us to know the 'deep' things and they don't really matter. As 1 Cor. 13:2 states, a person can have all the knowledge and all the faith, but if he doesn't have love, he is nothing.


    And I believe in love too.

  • garybuss
    garybuss

    That's not Bible chronology, that's numerology.

  • cognizant dissident
    cognizant dissident

    Yes, if there was a god, why would he only reveal himself to an exclusive little group and make much of his word cryptic and undecipherable? Does he want us to understand him and be saved or doesn't he? Wouldn't it just be so much more efficient to open the heavens and shout out, Stop Killing One Another and Raping One Another and Stealing From One Another, or I'll toast you all in a burning hell forever (or at Armageddon)! Those of you who Stop doing all that bad stuff get to come and live with me in Heaven! (or in paradise). Insert the punishment and reward of your choice. Since he's God he could shout out simultaneously in all languages so the whole world would get the message at once. No fuss. No muss.

    Think about it. When we love our children and want them to do something or not to do something for their own good, do we write down little books of symbolic messages for them to decipher that are way over their head? Do we give the messages secretly to one child (our favorite) and tell them they have to write it in their own handwriting and then convince the rest of the kids it's really from dad? Then beat the hell out of them when they don't have a clue what we were talking about? Of course not! That would be silly and ridiculous (not to mention extremely poor parenting)! Yet, that is exactly what most people in the world believe that God has done.

    Cog

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