Ch.1 God
There is a God whose dimensions cannot be easily fathomed. God should not be diminished as male or female; God exhibits characteristics of both genders in Scripture. God is both male and female yet neither. God is both loving and just, personal and impersonal. God is ineffable.
Nevertheless, we know important things about God. She responds to prayer but in subtle ways. He respects one’s free will. She never coerces but only invites. He forgives as we forgive others. She is loving and not “wrathful.”
"Wrathful" is a description that comes from the troubles that the Chosen People experienced in history when tragedy struck them, such as the conquest of the Northern Kingdom by the Assyrians, or the conquest of Judah by the Babylonians. Today we interpret these as typical experiences suffered by small states surrounded by larger, more powerful states.
God can also seem wrathful when one experiences tragedies that visit all people by chance, such as disease or ordinary misfortunes. These, too, are not God’s wrath.
God does allow us to feel the consequences of our errors, the sins of others on us, and the tragedies that everyone experiences. See Ch. 17, Theodicy, that discusses the important question of why bad things happen to good people.
God reveals Her presence in unpredictable ways and through the subtle response to prayer that accords to His plan for you. God’s plan for everyone is to experience life as a blessing and to live in a sense of deep contentment and happiness.
Ch.2 Jesus Christ
Jesus was the Messiah, the perfect, sinless man who God sent to speak for Him as a prophet.
He came to be understood to be a celestial being (Christ) after the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. There, at the request of Emperor Constantine, who wanted to define the beliefs of Christianity so he could adopt it as his religion, the greatest contradiction in the Christian Testament was discussed and hotly argued. The contradiction was between the followers of the Gospel of John, led by Athanasius, who described Jesus as God Himself—“… and the Word was God…” (Jn 1:1) and the followers of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), led by Arius, who believed that Jesus was the human Messiah. The followers of John won, elevating Jesus to celestial heights.
Only recently has scholarship brought Jesus, the real-world Jewish rabbi, back down to earth as God’s teacher. The words and actions of Jesus should be venerated (not worshiped). Christians should "walk in his footsteps."
Jesus spoke truth to power when he cleansed the Temple, becoming an enemy to both the Jewish Sanhedrin and the Roman Empire. He was crucified by the Roman governor but appeared after death to hundreds.
Ch.4 The Creeds
We recognize a danger in creeds. While supposedly describing eternal truth, we believe that creeds inevitably express the truth that humans believe at a point in time, while God continues to reveal Her truth and will through time. That means that creeds are period pieces and harder to understand the more time that elapses between the writing and the reading.
The Apostles Creed, begun around 150 AD, is centered on the death of Jesus. It ignores his life and teachings, which are reduced to a mere comma! (“… conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, [comma] suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried…”)
We believe that the actions and teachings of Jesus—the coma—describe “what He was all about” and is the more proper study than his birth, death, and resurrection, which are all about Jesus’ central role in the still-infant salvation story centered on substitutionary blood atonement (see Ch.7).
The Council of Nicaea, 325 AD, produced the Nicaean Creed that decreed the divine nature of Jesus as a manifestation of God Himself (“...begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father”), as found in the gospel of John. This creed later led to the theology of the Trinity.
Ch.7 Substitutionary Atonement
About 1,000 years ago, a Benedictine priest named Anselm took from the writings of Paul the Apostle the idea that Jesus’ blood from his death on the cross paid for all human sins if the sinner would “appropriate” that “work” which atones for his/her own sins. If so, those sins would be forgiven. This is "vicarious substitutionary atonement."
This belief was amplified by both Martin Luther and John Calvin and is now orthodox belief in the Western Church, both Catholic and Protestant.
We do not agree with substitutionary atonement.
God revealed in the Prophets that blood sacrifice does not please Her, but acting right does. Paul, Anselm, Luther, Calvin, and most others ignored this simple fact.
Here is Isaiah 1:11:
“The multitude of your sacrifices—
What are they to me?” says the LORD.
“I have more than enough of burnt offerings,
of rams and the fat of fattened animals;
I have no pleasure
in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats…”
Isaiah1:15:
“Your hands are full of blood!
16 Wash and make yourselves clean.
Take your evil deeds out of my sight;
Stop doing wrong.
17 Learn to do right; seek justice.
Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
Plead the case of the widow.”
Micah 6:7:
“Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousand rivers of olive oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression,
The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
8 He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.”
And Jesus in Matt. 9:23:
“But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice….’”
Yet Paul saw the ultimate significance of Jesus’ death and shed blood on the cross as absolution of human sin and eternal life. How did Paul, someone who never offered a blood sacrifice, return to blood atonement as a requirement?
Here is the key overlooked fact. Paul was “the apostle to the Gentiles” (non-Jews), that is, Greeks and Romans. Those cultures were still deeply involved in blood sacrifice. So Paul adapted his theology to speak to them. His pitch went something like this:
“Stop worshiping Zeus, Jupiter, and the rest of them. They’re false gods. Stop blood sacrifice; it’s meaningless. (All true.)
And then his addition: “The blood and death of Jesus The Anointed, the Messiah of God's holy people, God's Son was the perfect sacrifice that covers all human sin. Believe that Jesus’ blood when he was crucified saves you from Hell.
“If you don’t believe that Jesus was a perfect, sinless man, God’s son with power, go to Jerusalem and talk to people. He rose from the dead and talked to hundreds of people there.”
The historic record shows that this interpretation worked. Christianity spread.
But by the 21st century, this interpretation of salvation, that Jesus died for your sins and his blood washes you clean, has declined sharply in persuasiveness. Blood sacrifice has long disappeared from all societies. No one today believes in magic blood. To be “washed in the blood of Jesus” is even off-putting. This is one reason why the church is so irrelevant to many people. Let’s reinterpret Jesus’ death for modern people.
Returning to Scripture, it’s easy to discover why Jesus was crucified. He entered Jerusalem, and people cried out, “The King of the Jews.” Both Pontius Pilate and the temple Sanhedrin would have taken notice. Pilate would have thought, “The king of the Jews is sitting in Rome, and I am his representative here. Is this man going to lead a revolt?” Jewish leaders, recalling previous disastrous revolts against the Greek occupation, would have wondered the same thing and been horrified. The Romans would prevail in a revolt and could destroy Jerusalem (which they later did).
So they joined together to get rid of Jesus.
When Jesus overturned the money changers in the temple, these two forces came together.
The Sanhedrin arrested him, gave him a quick, illegal trial, and sentenced him to death, an action that only Romans could perform. Pilate had no trouble carrying out the sentence.
Jesus died speaking truth to power and proving that many human structures are corrupt—lessons for today. He died for you only metaphorically. He probably suspected that his godly path would provoke “human” justice.
It’s past time to end belief in Jesus’ magic blood and the belief that Jesus’ blood atones for human sin. A single human sin is removed by confession. Sinful living is removed by righteous living.
Ch.8 Paul the Apostle
Paul was a contemporary of Jesus. He did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah. After the Crucifixion, he violently persecuted the followers of Jesus in Jerusalem. Traveling to Damascus with credentials to persecute them there, he was struck to the ground by a blinding light. The voice of the Risen Jesus told him to stop persecuting his followers and (unreported but inferred) that he was appointed by God to be the apostle to the Gentiles, a fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham that God’s religion would spread to “the nations,” all the people on earth. Often called the “Conversion of Paul,” it is now understood that Paul remained a Jewish apostle to pagans and Jews with God’s new message (see Philippians 3:5).
Paul is discussed in many Christian churches as much as Jesus, but Paul is typically much more difficult to understand. Much of his writing shows an ancient worldview. But three of his clearest writings are found in the second and twelfth chapters of the letter to the Romans and in the love passage in the first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13.
Many of his other writings require learned interpretation. Especially objectionable to us is Ch. 3 of Romans that lists five references to various Psalms and proverbs, each in the original offering a choice between good and evil. Paul quoted only the evil in human nature, and as a result cast a dark shadow over Christian teaching for 2,000 years.
Also outdated and erroneous is the claim, found in Romans 8:29-20 and in Chapter 9., of God’s inscrutable predestined election for salvation of only a few individuals, condemning everybody else to damnation. Here, Paul gives the example of, “I have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau” (Malachi 1:23). Paul assigned to God’s “inscrutable” will a condemnation of the descendants of Esau found in the writings of the minor prophet Malachi but missed the fact that Malachi lived 600 years after Esau’s sale of his birthright to Jacob. At that later time, Esau’s legendary descendants in the city of Edom had assisted Nebuchadnezzar in the destruction of Jerusalem; God’s “hatred” was not so “inscrutable” at all!
Paul’s belief in the predestined salvation to heaven of only an unknown few caused much confusion and anguish for centuries. It is false. A few people speak of it even today.
Paul, Writing His Epistles
Ch.17 The Book of Revelation
This book has struck fear into humans for 2,000 years. It is a prime example of Jewish apocalypticism that developed during the Greek and Roman occupations. It is the belief that God will intervene in Israel’s history, restore Israel as God’s Chosen People, and that they will be in His Promised Land, a place of peace and justice. Daniel is also an example of Jewish apocalypticism.
Jewish apocalypticism led to the rise of the Zealots during Jesus’ time. That led to the Jewish Revolt in AD 66, the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, and the forced dispersion (the “Diaspora”) of all the Jews that Rome could get its hands on to distant lands as far away from Israel as Spain. Another revolt in AD 134 resulted in another defeat and the dispersion of the rest of the Jews from Israel. Only a very few remained.
Christians adopted apocalypticism to God’s intervention at the end of time. John of Patmos (not John the Apostle or John the Evangelist) wrote a Christian apocalypse that is heavily taken from the Hebrew Testament. It shows a false, vengeful, and heartless god, not a God of mercy.
Both Martin Luther and John Calvin disliked the book and believed that its inclusion in the canon was questionable. We believe it has caused much harm over time and was detrimental to understanding God and His will. We believe that it should be ignored or deleted from the canon.
Today, we believe that it is probable that John was a Jewish follower of Jesus who saw Jerusalem burn and fled in the Diaspora to today’s Turkey. There he became, like Jesus, an itinerant preacher tending to the seven churches he describes in the book. Because of the oppressive rule of Rome and its destruction of Jerusalem, he wrote his angry prediction that God would destroy “Babylon,” the stand-in for Rome, which he couldn’t write due to the punishment he would receive.
His writing was vivid and compelling, much of it taken from the Hebrew Testament. But it made Christianity a religion of fear rather than hope. Even though it ends well, it is a misinterpretation of God’s will.
Memling: The Last Judgement
Ch.22 Life After Death
We generally subscribe to new, non-scriptural revelations that come from near-death experiences that have occurred as modern science has revived some apparently recently dead people. We believe that this confirms some typically accepted beliefs.
- Our souls are eternal and represent the “real” person.
- “Heaven” is wonderful. People who feel the effects of operating room procedures and are being pulled back to earthly life want to stay.
- There is a loving judgment of one’s life by a “being of light.”
Death does not come from sin (as Paul thought) and is therefore unnatural. Death is a natural part of all life.
Ch.23 The Chosen People: The Promised Land
Based on Abraham’s willingness to do what God actually asked him to do, God chose Abraham and the Hebrew people as Her vehicle to bring a true religion to the Mediterranean world and to end the worship of false gods and blood sacrifice.
He created a religion of law and mercy. The Law came from Moses' commandments, and mercy was revealed later by the prophets. How do these apparent opposites work together? God promised a Messiah whose life and words would illustrate how.
After Jesus (a Jew, recall) came, Judaism needed only one more correction, the elimination of blood sacrifice at the Temple. In the failed Jewish Revolt from 66 to 73 AD, the beautiful Jewish Temple was destroyed and the Jewish people were dispersed to “the world,” bringing to “the nations” an excellent religion—rabbinic Judaism. Christianity was also spread as an exceptional religion. Soon, monotheism prevailed, and blood sacrifice was eliminated.
Ch.24 The Old and New Covenants
The Old Covenant was given to the Hebrew/Jewish people as a free-will agreement (God does not coerce): “I will be your God if you will be my people” (that is, “if you follow me”).
When God had perfected His religion that was given to Jews (the Law, the Prophets, and a just and peaceful Messiah), She ended the Old Covenant that was exclusive to Jews and brought the New Covenant, universalizing Her promise to anyone who would adopt the same terms: “I will be your God if you will follow me.”
Make no mistake; God loves Jews today just as He loves all humankind. There is no room for anti-Semitism; it’s just a fact that the mission to which the Hebrews were called has been accomplished.
Ch.25 Hebrew (Old) Testament stories
Garden of Eden
The Garden of Eden Story
This should be emphasized—these often-told stories are not the Christian message. They are the folk tales of an ancient people, the Hebrews.
The Garden of Eden story is found in Genesis 2. The story is a myth; that is, from a modern scientific point of view, it is not a true history but does contain timeless truths. We take four major lessons from the story of Adam and Eve. First, humans, told what to do, will often do the opposite, a special observation in raising a child. Second, humans want to shift blame to others for their errors. “The woman, she told me to eat the fruit” (Gen. 3:12). Third, all humans “ate the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil,” meaning we all have consciences.The most hardened criminal in prison feels aggrieved when someone steals a personal belonging from him. He knows someone did wrong. We believe that all people have consciences, but conscience is a weak force, one that can be easily overwhelmed. That is why regular moral instruction is required.
Finally, we are commanded to “tend the garden” of the earth. “Tending” implies careful care, today perhaps meaning attention to the threat of earth-warming gases.
Associated with the Garden of Eden story is the theory of Original Sin, described by the Apostle Paul as inherited by everyone. We understand that this is one way to understand how sin affects everything, but the literal interpretation is destructive. More modern is the understanding that we evolved from the animal world and its instincts of flight and fight. It is God’s will that we advance from that destructive world and live in peace and harmony, which we can do if we walk in the footsteps of Jesus.
We also reject the belief that Eve was the cause of our sin. God reveals Herself progressively over time, such as the imposition of the Law and later the mercy of the Prophets. In the last century , it was revealed that women are equal to men. Another recent revelation is that slavery, allowed in the Bible, is wrong. War, the pastime of all human societies, is finally getting pushback.
The Deluge
The Flood Story
Interpreted in modern times this story matches many flood stories from other cultures. Why not? Global warming began 10,000 years ago at the conclusion of the last Ice Age. Glaciers covered the Alps, the Andes, the Himalayas, Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada Mountain ranges. Consider that the famous Half Dome in the Yosemite Valley was covered over by an ice sheet. Ocean levels were therefore low; one could walk from Siberia to Alaska (and some did!)
Oceans rose as ice melted, finally flooding over the Bosporus Strait into the fresh water Black Sea. Humans certainly saw this. Humans probably saw one of the floods of the San Francisco Bay.
But floods could also have occurred locally. They would have wreaked havoc on early agricultural societies.
Noah lived in the southern Plain of Shinar, this is in today’s southern Iraq. As clouds from the Mediterranean blew eastward and hit the Zagros Mountains that rise to the uplands of Persia (today’s Iran) they would have dumped their moisture on the plains, creating floods. Dykes were built to control these floods.
We can envision that Noah worked on the dikes that controlled such flooding. He might have worried that others from his region shirked the necessary duty of filling the summertime cracks in the dykes. If a crack goes deep enough, water could flow through the dike and quickly carry away the dirt, creating a flood.
Noah could have heard a voice of warning. Or he could have dimply understood the danger that loomed when others ignored the danger. He could have prepared a straw raft just in case.
One day, the dike could have begun to breach. He could have run home, gathered his family and hog-tied several animals, climbed aboard his raft, which rose above the flooding waters. A large flood would have killed everyone and every animal in its path. Hours or days later the flood would have abated landing his family far to the south, but alive. What an experience!
The story of his survival would certainly have been repeated for many generations, embellishing the story to include a great wooden ark and waters so deep as to cover Mt. Ararat (6,140M; 16,800’). However, modern people know that if all glaciers on earth were to melt, the oceans would only rise approximately 350 feet.
In this case a famous Bible story came from an actual historic event, much enhanced over time.
Many people conduct discussions of Christianity that include Biblical stories such as these. We would point out that these stories are not the Christian message, interesting as they are. They are the folk tales of a very ancient people, the Hebrews. The Christian message is found in the Gospels.