The parts of the Bible which I read don't at all describe a religion of love and kindness, so I do wonder sometimes why people who describe their Christian religion as such cling to this book as the undeniably TRUE and incontrovertible "Word of God".
Your key is: "The parts of the Bible which I read". You don't say if you ever read the New Testament but Christianity is based on the word of Christ which is all in the New Testament. Additionally, Old Testament prophecy points especially toward its end to a Messiah, which we supposedly got with Jesus in the New Testament. This is what ties the two books together (literally nothing else does).
The Old Testament is a complete horror show so I don't recommend it to anyone who actually wants to like God, or even the idea of God. He's pretty much a monster throughout the entire first book. The only cool thing is that towards the end he finally seems to develop some sort of a conscience about his own behavior and appears to offer Christ as a way to show us he does have a more loving, gentle, and possibly decent side to his personality.
I wrote a post on this topic years ago and lost a friend in Germany over it - and its moral, if you could call it that, was believing is a can't lose bet, which got a lot of people mad at me for my cynicism, but to me that's just my practicality showing through. It literally cannot hurt to hope for something better. And that's all I'm really doing by choosing to believe at all.
Anyway, I haven't looked at your notes yet, but - as I'm always fascinated by this sort of thing - will check them out.
no subject
The parts of the Bible which I read don't at all describe a religion of love and kindness, so I do wonder sometimes why people who describe their Christian religion as such cling to this book as the undeniably TRUE and incontrovertible "Word of God".
Your key is: "The parts of the Bible which I read". You don't say if you ever read the New Testament but Christianity is based on the word of Christ which is all in the New Testament. Additionally, Old Testament prophecy points especially toward its end to a Messiah, which we supposedly got with Jesus in the New Testament. This is what ties the two books together (literally nothing else does).
The Old Testament is a complete horror show so I don't recommend it to anyone who actually wants to like God, or even the idea of God. He's pretty much a monster throughout the entire first book. The only cool thing is that towards the end he finally seems to develop some sort of a conscience about his own behavior and appears to offer Christ as a way to show us he does have a more loving, gentle, and possibly decent side to his personality.
I wrote a post on this topic years ago and lost a friend in Germany over it - and its moral, if you could call it that, was believing is a can't lose bet, which got a lot of people mad at me for my cynicism, but to me that's just my practicality showing through. It literally cannot hurt to hope for something better. And that's all I'm really doing by choosing to believe at all.
Anyway, I haven't looked at your notes yet, but - as I'm always fascinated by this sort of thing - will check them out.