Yeah, I know. That probably sounds a little bit odd, but it's the truth. My parents raised me Roman Catholic and both sides of the family (Mom's: predominantly Irish and German; Dad's: predominantly Polish and Franco-British mutt) are in the Church to varying degrees. Mom is on and off serious about it, Dad is an organized religion-hating spiritualist, Sister is an aggressive atheist, and I really don't know what I am. I like reading first-person mystical testimonies from all faiths (though I'm best read in Jewish and Christian mysticism), and I'm a big fan of off-the-beaten-path trends like Gnosticism and Kabbalah.
I haven't read the Koran in full yet, though I've started it; the biggest problem I encounter there is that it makes me want to scream at all the people who want to burn it (more than I did before, on human rights and Constitutional law-based grounds) because, seriously? It is not that different than the Bible. I'm sure that, given what biological statistics and logic say about the infinitesimal likelihood of life existing let alone each specific person, there's probably a God-like Being or at least some superhuman force that helped set things in motion.
(On which note: I understand the urge to anthropomorphize God, but I don't think it's at all a sound way of doing things; I think it's entirely possible for intelligent design and evolution to exist side-by-side because the seven days of Genesis, to God, might be eons and eons from human perception. One thing that's going to influence the way I write all of my commentaries is this notion of the non-anthropomorphic God. The main defense I see for the anthropomorphic God comes down to us being made "in God's image" in Genesis — and some people want to take that literally, which is fine. But, as far as I see it? If God is meant to be infinite, then the constraints of a physical form would only inhibit Xyr ability to be so. If we're made in God's image, then I'm going to interpret this statement metaphorically.
Keeping with this line of thought, I'm going to use gender-neutral pronouns for God because: a. there is a long tradition of God being both mother and father, starting in the Book of Exodus; and b. I think that God is beyond human concepts like gender, existing in such a way that is simultaneously male, female, intersex, entirely off the gender binary, and all possible permutations thereof — and that Xe* only got stuck with the male pronouns because that was the social convention of the times. If you want to comment, you don't have to use gender-neutral pronouns, but I'm going to do so in the posts.)
God's honest truth, because full disclosure is the only way I see to go about this: When I came to Sarah Lawrence for freshman year, I identified as an apathetic agnostic, and I didn't really give two shits about the Bible until I had to read it for class. I spent a lot of time in my adolescence hating God, the Bible, and a lot of other trappings because the first of the priestly sex abuse scandals (when I was about ten, eleven) shook my faith that badly. I doubt I'll ever go back to organized religion, because I think there's too much potential for fundamentally good ideas to get corrupted, one way or another, but the Bible gets called "The Good Book" for a reason. And I'm kind of sick of seeing people call themselves "true believers" or some variant thereof apparently without having read the Bible, beyond the parts of it that they want to use, or having read it without trying to consider anything but what they want to see in the text, regardless of whether or not it's there.
A note for everyone who wants to keep reading: I DO NOT HATE CHRISTIANITY, JUDAISM, ISLAM, MORMONISM BUDDHISM, HINDUISM, SIKHISM, JAINISM, SHINTOISM, OR ANYBODY ELSE'S RELIGIOUS/SPIRITUAL BELIEFS. I ALSO DO NOT HATE MEN, WOMEN, RACIAL AND ETHNIC MINORITIES, GAY PEOPLE, BISEXUALS, TRANS PEOPLE, OR ANYONE. I AM NOT TRYING TO PICK ON ANYBODY. I don't hate violent supremacist reactionaries (Nazis, the KKK, etc.) or aforementioned cults of personality (Westboro Baptist Church, I'm looking right at you). Or, I should say: I don't hate the people in those groups.
I don't hate them because hating them just adds fuel to a fire that's destroyed enough already and is probably going to keep destroying people, lives, groups, global society, and so on until mass hatred stops seeming like such a viable option. I don't agree with anything aforementioned people do** and they themselves can make me very angry, but one thing that I believe in pretty strongly? Well, I'm going to quote 1 Corinthians, 13:4—13 (NIV, with the KJV rendering of verse 12):
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. … For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
I believe in love. I believe in learning about each other and seeing things on each other's terms. What I hate, simply put, is hypocrisy. I hate that people take their particular reading of a book whose fundamental message is about faith and understanding, and use that to say that all other readings are wrong, that all other ways of being are wrong, that other people are wrong for being born how they are when, really? If you take the Bible at face value, then we're all fallen creatures and none of us are inherently better than anyone else.
I believe that, whether or not Divine Inspiration was involved, the Bible has a lot in it that is amazing, and I believe that it's definitely helped a lot of people — myself included. I also believe that it's a historical document, one that's suffered and lost much in its various translations, and that in order to properly understand it, one must examine it in its original context. I don't know Hebrew, Greek, or Aramaic (yet***), so, unfortunately, I'm stuck working on these issues in translation, with all the problems that that causes. What I'm here to do is address readings of the Bible or behaviors of so-called "religious" people that I think miss the mark by varying degrees, and in so doing, I'm going to be as sensitive as I can to the problems of translation.
This blog isn't meant to be some call to arms for anybody, whether they agree with me or not. I'm also not trying to write any manifestos for one belief system or another, and I'm going to try to avoid telling you what to think because, hey. It's a free world. I can think what I want, you can think what you want, and as long as we're not oppressing, hurting, killing, traumatizing, etc.-ing each other, then I'm down with that. Moreover, I WANT YOU TO THINK FOR YOURSELF. …But I want your decisions to be informed ones.
So, let's get started with the fun then, shall we?
And if you've found your way by accident, then that's cool, too. Welcome, etc etc. Feel free to hang around a spell. Seeing as I'll probably end up teaching this stuff for a living sooner or later, I'm pretty chill with you perusing what I think about the Bible.
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*: Generally, I'm going to try to use xe/xyr/xem vis a vis God, because my personal favorite (based on how my OCD handles the aesthetics of spelling and how it sounds) gender-neutral pronoun (zie/hir or zir) gets into complicated thickets when one considers that "zie" is German for "she" and "hir" is a portmanteau of "his" and "her," thus could be read as not acknowledging non-binary gender expression. I might slip up, just because I usually use zie/hir, but I'm going to try to use xe/xyr/xem. If I'm in a particularly shitty mood while writing a post, I might just use shklee/shkler/shklim from the Futurama flick The Beast With A Billion Backs because it cheers me up.
For more on xe and other options, check out the Gender Neutral Pronoun Blog, U of Illinois's list of epicene pronouns, and everyone's old pal, Wikipedia.
**: My one exception to this was that time when the KKK publicly disavowed the Westboro Baptists. KKK, I still don't like what you do in general, but your press release on the subject was pretty great.
***: Or most of the original languages of any post-Biblical or Deuterocanonical works I might cite. So... Hebrew and Greek (again), German, Spanish (which I took in high school but mostly know on a conversational/basic level), French, or anything else that might come up. I obviously know English, and I know enough Latin to piece some things together, but again: we're mostly working in translation, with all the problems that causes.
