My friend, Steve, who does wonderful construction work for us, stopped his truck to talk with me while I walked yesterday. Somehow it came up how disappointed he was in the way our society was developing and how dismayed he was that gays were being allowed to marry. I said, that doesn’t bother me. And he said, “The Bible says …” and I lost it and said some bad things about the Bible. He was thunderstruck – probably thought God was going to reach down at that minute and smite me. Our conversation went on a little longer and we parted as friends, but I do think his view of me has been radically altered. It is what it is and maybe he’ll keep talking to me and maybe not. I am not worrying about that.

I am truly disappointed that Steve has turned out to be so very incredibly ignorant in everything but how to live his life and build and repair things beautifully. Bottom line, he is a rigid “moralist,” a position that usually denies others their rights, as in his remark about gays.

Our chat got me to thinking about the specifics of the origins of the Bible and I Googled it. The old Testament was begun by Moses in 1445 B.C. (that’s before Christ in case you didn’t know). There were at least 20 contributing authors, some writing more than one book, not necessarily in sequence. The last of the Old Testament was written in 450 B.C. The years count down from Moses to the birth of Jesus, the inference being that time worth counting ought start NOW.

The New Testament covers the first 100 years following the birth of Christ. The list, not in sequence, begins with Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in the 60’s and later in the list, you will see contributions by other authors in the 40s, etc.

Moreover, stories of Jesus and the Crucifixion and what he meant when he uttered certain words while on the Cross, or even different words, vary widely in the stories by various authors and change the entire meaning of what he meant, some being directly contradictory. So if you are going to invoke meanings from the Bible, you’ll have to cherry pick the one that meets your bias. They’re all there.

I don’t know about you, but it would seem to me that these uninformed wonders of the early world had as much knowledge of basic human nature, equality of being, and healthy morality as anyone else without a frame of reference. The authors were as much prisoners of their own misconceptions as anyone writing today and don’t think there wasn’t competition to outdo each other as in “Oh yeah?!! Well, wait till you hear MY version.” In addition all accounts of the Crucifixion were written roughly 60 to 100 years after the event. These guys weren’t even there. I think a tattooed revenuer living in the back woods of Georgia would do as well.

So I am not inclined to believe or monitor my life according to anything I read in the Bible except as some of its moral lessons have relevance that I already acknowledge. Like it’s a bad thing to kill someone – (oh, wait … the Bible says it’s okay if it’s your wife and she strayed, or your daughter who has a boyfriend).

We are beginning to see how our Constitution might need tweaking here and there because the framers could not foresee some of the developments of our society. But the faithful today refuse to consider that a book written by humans just up from the cave, with a barely formed sense of morality, might be flawed. Moreover these writers from different eras, were relying on oral accounts about events that happened before their lifetime. Might this Book that so many are basing their lives on (and actually, again, only when it’s convenient and suits their bias of the moment) need more than a bit of tweaking? Dare I say it needs a major overhaul?

xx, Teal