Same Ol'

Today at work e-conversation of religion stirred up what had been my passion not more than a few years ago. Although I don't have the original document to cut and paste, I'm sure you can infer from my answers what was said (or, at least, where I myself stand).






Firstly, I'm quite interested in the statistic that only 6% of all wars were started because of religion. (And that half of those were started by Muslims? I think the mulitple Crusades put the Christians way ahead on the number of wars-started...) Where did that statistic originate? What sets of data were compiled to form it? What definition of "war" is it using? What definition of "religion"? Perhaps more to the point, the issue is less about how many wars were started by religion, but rather how many people have been killed because of religion. Even if the statistic is accurate and unbiased (unlikely, given amount of unrecorded history that exists), if 6% of all wars resulted in 70% of all deaths due to war, than the statistic is misleading.

I think that highlights a crucial point: You can't blindly accept as truth the things you read, you hear, or are told, no matter the source. Although Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all tell essentially the same story, there is no question that variances, and even different editorial themes, occur between them. This is because each was speaking to a different audience, and each had slightly different aims. You have to consider where the information originated from; you must consider the circumstances around it. And in a document as old as the bible, you must consider editor changes, mistranslations, and the goals of the authors. What harm is there in probing deeper and asking questions? If the thing in which you believe is really "true," then you will have affirmed your belief. But if it is not…? Blind faith can only make a person succeptible to untruth.

The commonly-quoted phrase is actually (depending on your translation): "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man can come to the father but through me." There's two interesting tidbits about that sentence that most people using it tend to overlook. The first is that the word "belief" is absent. The sentence, taken at face value, says that it is through Jesus' grace, not the belief therein, that saves us. Perhaps more importantly, think closely about the first half of the sentence. "Am" is a form of the verb "to be," which has several meanings. Feel free to look them up, but it's fairly obvious that only one makes sense in the way Jesus uses the term: Equivocation. Jesus is not a member of a group of "ways", nor is "truth" the name his friends called him. He is the way, truth, and life. But in that regard, the way, truth, and life likewise are Jesus; if this understanding is not what he mean, he could've simply said the second half of the sentence. The fact that he said both puts a new spin on the quote, whereby it means that no one can get to God except by means of the way, the truth, and the life. And if you compare the various major religions of the world, I think you'll find that they all offer common insight into what exactly that entails.

An analogy was posed with the assertion that knowing a painter exists upon seeing a painting means we should know that a creator of the universe exists, but that is an inaccurate comparison. Many of us have seen a painter in action, if not done the painting ourselves. But, to date, no one I know has witnessed the universe being created, nor are there any who can comment on the complexities of what happened "before" time. As such, we have no logical basis to believe that something outside of existence created existence. But even if we presume that the painting/painter analogy is applicable, there is a massive difference between knowing there is a painter, and knowing the painter. Even if creation implies a creator, it speaks nothing concrete of his personality, his agenda, his desires, or any other facet of his existence. Those who claim otherwise often quote texts that they assert, perhaps comically, speak the truth because the text itself dictates that it speaks the truth. (A brief side note about feeling wrong inside when you break the tend commandments: when was the last time you felt bad because you thought someone had a nice car? That's number 10, desiring another's posessions, but I feel no remorse for something like that.)

The fact is that God's existence, like the love we have for the special people in our lives, cannot be proved, nor can it be disproved. It exists for those who experience it, and those who do not can choose to seek it or choose to ignore it. Likewise, one religion cannot be proven "right" above the others; any evidence thus is derived from a book that self-claims to be accurate. Now, I know that God exists just as I know my mother loves me. It is not faith; it's knowledge. But I do not presume to think that knowing his existence means I can even begin to understand him. He is so far beyond human ken that simply to speak of him is to place limits upon his nature; to claim that he is something means that there is something he is not. God is not limited to how he can affect people, nor to whom he may appear. If he wants to reach someone, he doesn't need a book to do it, and if someone doesn't want to be reached, they can read the same book all they want and accomplish nothing. I am loosely Christian because I believe that God's nature is forgiving, but that is more a matter of intuition than something that an "infallible text" has taught me.