Having been educated in the Roman church, I was taught theology right alongside philosophy; it was very troubling to discover, day by day, assignment by assignment, that the philosophy I learned showed the theology to be in error. 50 / 50 is the formula of this world; 50% of it is always illuminated by the Sun and 50% of it is always in the darkness. We rotate upon an axis that keeps us constantly being exposed to both. 50% of us all is good; illuminated by the light, striving for the good, and struggling against the darkness of evil. 50% of us ALL is evil; clouded by the darkness, lashing out against the light, and confusing our behavior toward both ourselves and others by walking a gray line in between what we see as good and what we see as evil. So it is with scripture; actually, with anything written in this swirling world. To accept scripture at it's face value and not to conceptualize, contextualize, and search out its 50 / 50 value is hard to do when our hearts are troubled. We want to grasp at straws, as it were, and discount that its context has anything to do with its value. The clearest way that I have found to allow the good in scripture to penetrate my heart, is to first recognize the evil in it; those things that are negative, those things that are harmful to either the body or the psyche, those things that are or could be harmful to others, to their understanding of good, to their confusion of good and evil; these things must be left in the darkness and not brought to light. The Bible is the same as everything else in this world; half good and half evil. To strive toward the good means to expose the evil for what it is: a corruption of the message of good. Woven in and among the words of every chapter of every book, evil attempts to distort the good; you must take the bad thread from the weave to more clearly see the silken thread of good, and God is good!
Scripture cannot be the sole source of Christianity; it is laden with contradictions. It ascribes evil attributes unto God such as wrathfulness, vengefulness, retribution, jealousy, contempt, war-mongering, threatening His children with illness and death, destroying cities, and imposing suffering. It encourages harmful psychological self-torture such as guilt, self-denial, and repression; it encourages slavery, racism, genocide, merciless execution, imprisonment, shunning, polygamy, and even cruelty to animals. Discover the difference between good and evil! Positive, affirming, loving, caring, mercy, forgiveness, acceptance, inclusion; these are good things. The aforementioned behaviors may all be called negative; things that are detrimental to good can therefore only be identified as evil. The Devil's greatest plan of influence is to get the children of God to believe that He is capable of evil. Let the light shine upon your Bible; notice that it appears in black and white; understand that is was written by men; indeed, good AND evil attributes may be ascribed to humankind, since we live in the temporal plain where light and darkness meet, where matter, space, time, good, and evil exist in a vacuum. Find the true love of God as revealed in Christ's salvific mission. "For the former world has passed away..." The growth from one attitude to another is evidence of a divine plan. "Amen, amen; I say to you: whoever believes has eternal life..." I'm here ta tell ya: Jesus WAS a hippie and a rebel; that's why He was singled out by the religious establishment, tortured, murdered, and silenced.
For anyone who takes the Bible literally, why are they not routinely stoning people to death or killing them in the other ways described as proper for the crimes they commit? The Israelites trained their men and boys for forty years in the desert and planned to make war; they needed soldiers to invade and conquer their Promised Land. When they invaded Canaan, in some cases, God told them to leave none of those conquered alive; not their children, not their slaves, and not even their animals. If anyone truly believes that God told the Israelites to go into the land of Canaan, destroy, kill, pillage, and take over, I pity their relationship with Him. War, murder, willful destruction, thievery, and genocide are all evil things; therefore, they come from the evil one, not from He who is all-good.
The Bible is not an accurate source for anything... Even the Gospels included in most canons were not written until 60 - 90 years after Christ walked the Earth and, I'm sure, would've included direct instruction on sex and sexual relations had it been a priority for Jesus and His disciples. Don't use ancient Jewish myth to tell others that they are sinful. Let them come before their God in prayer and discern His will for them; "God is gonna get ya" is a terribly superstitious imposition of man's own fear and insecurity upon others. When I come before the throne, I plan to mete out the blood of Christ shed on the cross upon the balance against my sin; I'm not only sure it will far outweigh my sin upon the scale, but also sure that it will wash away even my darkest hours. God help those who do not have enough faith to believe His love for us is greater than His disgust at our behavior. His love was strong enough for him to become one of us, preach that we should love and forgive one another, and then sacrifice His own earthly body for our failures; it was even strong enough to survive the grave! Let that love in, let it flow through you to others, and don't use ancient Jewish myth to accuse others of sin! "Remove the plank from your own eye before you tell your brother about the sliver in his!"
