Q1 How much of the Bible is fact? Short answer: nobody knows. Long answer: In my opinion, the Bible has evolved like Chinese Whispers, with the authors and each subsequent writer interpreting significant events as they experienced them or as they remembered them, or to make a point in support of an argument they wanted to make. How important is ‘fact’ anyway? I don’t worry too much about the ‘facts’ in the Bible. There are many things wrong with the Bible, so I just take from it what works for me and leave the rest. I suppose I’m not a strict Catholic like Grandpa, but then what does that matter? I see the Bible as I would a piece of literature, carrying a bias however crude or subtle, to be enjoyed (or not) with the author’s intention (or in this case, authors’ intentions) in mind. I like the mind games that one can play with the stories and the language used too.
Q2 Why did God flood the earth, send a plague of insects etc? Short answer: to make you fear Him. Long answer: God didn’t write these things down. Scribes did. We need to ask what their motives were in the times they lived. These stories are in the Old Testament, aren’t they? The New Testament shows a much more loving God.
Q3 How much impact does God have on the world today? Enormous impact. ‘God’s’ influence permeates all of us, even as an Atheist one takes a stance in relation to God. God personifies religion, but he/she/it permeates all cultures as every single culture in the world has a deep-seated spiritual layer that underpins humanity. Humans are spiritual, and while they are spiritual and ask questions about life after death or the meaning of our existence, we will always want answers which are usually so elusive and unsatisfying that for many of us having ‘God’ around allows us to take a rest from all the questioning and lack of answers!
Q4 Why does God endorse punishment? Historically, ‘God’ came across in the scriptures as an angry force to be feared in order to ensure that people behaved in the way ‘He’ wanted. All I can say is that humans weren’t always so civil as today but rather brutal and wild, and God needed to be portrayed as gruesome in order to herd the untamed during the course of centuries. Many people today dismiss this version of God and the interpretation of God this way as now in the 20th & 21st centuries we have the luxury of being able to sit around and think and talk and philosophise.
Q5 Does God accept and love everyone of all religions? Supposedly, yes.
Q6 Why are non-believers damned for eternity? See Q4, herding the untamed. The notion of being ‘damned’ is irrelevant in our day and age.
Q7 Is life meaningless? Ie what is heaven? Monty Python came to the conclusion that the meaning of life is ‘42’! I suppose the meaning of life is what you make of it, what your conclusions are about your specific life. Mother Teresa’s work - helping those in need – gave her her meaning, as indeed the work of volunteer medicos or students and countless others who travel to communities affected by a tsunami or earth-quake gives meaning to them. My life’s work as a parent is similar to those of all parents – to nurture, take care of, guide and love my children. The many other facets of my life including being a partner to Dad, a daughter, a friend, an educator, a business person, a writer, a renovator etc all give me meaning and a reason to get up out of bed every day. What is heaven, you ask? This was a concept I struggled with when I first thought about becoming a Catholic. I grew up questioning that place called ‘heaven’ which many of my school friends and family members believe is the place you go to when you die. ‘You can’t prove that this so-called ‘heaven’ exists after you die because you’re dead!’, I always said. No one gave me an answer that was satisfactory until a priest later suggested to me that I view heaven in the present, as a state of mind or an experience that we aspire to and experience daily, ie ‘heaven’ is the happiness we feel every day, and Its flipside ‘hell’ is the sadness, fear or suffering we feel on a regular basis. I much prefer this explanation of what heaven is.
Q8 What is consecration and why does it occur? At Mass the consecration happens the moment when the offering of bread and wine becomes the ‘body & blood of Jesus’. This sounds rather cannibalistic to me. So I just see swallowing the host as spiritual nourishment (and don’t take ‘body & blood’ literally), a way to feel nurtured like I do when I have the image of Jesus sitting beside me at Mass or anywhere else I choose. Why does the consecration occur? Because it’s the tradition for a priest to do this at Mass. I think whoever came up with the consecration believed that the audience he/she/they faced at the time were rather crude in their thinking (unlike us sophicates today!) and needed strong almost over-the-top imagery to get the point. In those times, butchering animals, blood and gore in the market-place and probably in the home, seemed to be much more prevalent in daily living. I could be pontificating here, and blaspheming terribly! My main point is that the consecration reminds me of the spiritual nourishment that I feel when I see and swallow the host during Mass.
Q9 Is Jesus going to come back? Jesus in the flesh as himself isn’t coming back, I’m sure of that. Again, I take what I want from Catholicism, and leave alone what doesn’t work for me. Looking at Jesus on the cross reminds me that whenever I go through a struggle or find something hard to endure, I will come out alive and on top again soon (like His resurrection), and invariably I do! For me in this sense, Jesus comes back just about every day. Sometimes when I sit in Mass I imagine Jesus’ presence next to me (or all of us if we’re together), and I find that image enormously comforting. When I feel alone, I imagine Jesus sitting near me, and I don’t feel so alone. Like any imaginary friend, I talk to him. As for coming back in the form of another Messiah, maybe he will come back, but not as himself in the flesh but in a reincarnation of another amazing human being. But I have no way of knowing this…
Q9 Why does a select generation get more evidence than ours? Good question. In my view the generations that take the time to write out what they think and what they think they know, APPEAR to have more evidence or appear to know more, appear to have authority on the topic or appear to be the privileged, ones. I think the Bible is due for a big shake-up and should definitely be rewritten and updated to suit our language, our understanding of the world from a scientific-based point of view, and what is relevant and important to how we live our lives today. The tone of the Bible is quite damning in many ways, as you have already picked up, and no wonder it has little impact or a negative impact on so many people to the point where they turn away.
Q10 The notion of original sin is ridiculous, yet it is a central thread of Catholicism. I agree entirely, as I find it insulting. I always go back to the story of the original sin as a mythical story not to be believed and that is not meant to be interpreted literally; not even figuratively! I dismiss it as irrelevant to my life, and view it as an interesting piece of imaginative work that is outdated as far as women’s experience is concerned.
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