Dear Bishop Spong,
I’ve been a big fan of yours for several years. I applaud you for leading people out of the narrow confines of a literal interpretation of the bible, but am writing to voice my growing disenchantment.
You write, “Our experience has rendered the religious answers of yesterday to be inoperative....The God of yesterday dies as we struggle to view the birth of the God of tomorrow.”
“God of tomorrow”? Please, no more God talk! Hasn’t the world had its fill of Gods and the suffering that inevitably accompanies such notions? Isn’t it time we stop speaking of our relation to “God” (which only confuses communication) and instead speak of our relation to reality. Isn’t reality remarkable enough? It seems to me you’ve had one foot out of the atheist-closet for some time. Why not come all of the way out and continue your extraordinary journey unencumbered by the language of theology?
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4 comments:
i just figured out what atheists and right wingers have in common....they literally interpret the bible and refuse to acquiesce to the times and culture when it was written.
Hey Barbara,
Not sure I understand what you are saying here. Atheists don’t interpret the bible literally. If they did they would likely be theists not atheists. They typically interpret it as mythology. Atheists also typically believe it was simply written by men of that time for that ancient culture. Therefore, even the timeless gems of wisdom that can be found must first be extracted from the pile of dung that is the bible and there are much better sources of wisdom that don’t require the mental challenge of sifting through so much nonsense.
Barbs had a little technical difficulty so I am posting her emailed thoughts for her here:
“then why do you have all these quotes from the bible? that to me means you are literally taking what they say and using your critical mind as to say that it is fact and that is what Christians/Jews believe today as fact. it was written thousands of years ago and man at the time was so primitive that his culture jaded him from feeling the spiritual being that is constantly trying to appear to mankind. God, or whatever you want to call him/she/it is there and there is an inner spirit and drive inside man, built in, to find out what this is. so throughout history, as man evolves and develops mentally, spiritually and physically, he writes it down. it's the same all through history in every culture, from the most primitive to the most sophisticated...the inner drive to explain things from the supernatural to the mundane. just because you may have not experienced a supernatural event, that does not mean it has not happened. i have and there is not a doubt in my mind there is another realm other than this earth. there are so many preachers, priests, and churches out there that do not preach literal interpretation of the bible. sponge is one of them. the God that could be is what he is getting at. he is asking us to stop with all the literal interpretation and let this God that is out there reveal truth to us and let it evolve...along with man....as far as Jesus and the new testament, it was written a couple hundred years or more after he died...the influence of Roman mythology completely had taken over the simplicity of Jesus. scribes and literary agents of Rome were paid to write these books, translate the scrolls and embellish. so to take the stories of Jesus and extract quotes and critique is silly. that's what right wing zealots do and it is amusing. i wish you could just stand back and chill out and realize it is a book of record of men who really felt the spirit of God moving through them and recording what they felt while their world fell apart from war and famine. man was trying to figure out why there was suffering. he was wrong but he was trying. the basic premise of the bible to me is that you need to help your neighbor and help the poor and help the widow and help all of mankind. don't be selfish. don't put money and things over love. you will lose and death is what the end is. life is doing the above. you feel better. you don't feel dead and empty. money hungry selfish people who thrive on fighting, killing, gossiping and money are dead inside.
when the bible was written, all there was was war.
i just don't understand why you keep pulling out quotes from the bible. you can't make any sense of it unless you read the entire chapter or book. there was war going on. period.
sponge is awesome -- he really is trying to get people to allow that inner spirit to flourish & reveal the God of what could be.
i mean, think of when the bible says not to have sex while the woman is on her period. she is unclean, or not to eat pork because the pig is unclean. he soaks in mud and feces all day long--blood and fecal matter were seen as unclean and you could die from anything unclean. so anal sex was looked upon as unclean...that is where fecal matter came and they witnessed people dying from fecal matter. DEATH. they put two and two together and said, hey, this is God punishing man for being unclean....do you get at what i am trying to say? we all know this not to be true...well maybe not...poop does kill you...poop in hamburger meat, etc...well never mind. ooops. it's just not God's punishment.
we'll have to talk more in person over a drink about supernatural things. there is another world beyond this little earth. no doubt in my mind. call me crazy, i don't care.”
xoxoxo love you!!
~ barbs
I don’t try to suggest what Christians think because they all interpret the bible a little differently. I try to stick to commenting on the bible itself. In regard to my posting scriptures I am showing how rotten the character of “God” is and so whether or not there is some “God” it certainly must not have anything to do with the bible. How can one progress in the search for truth if they are stuck walking down the wrong path, or worse, think they already possess truth, as many believers do?
You speak of a “spiritual being that is constantly trying to appear to mankind. God, or whatever you want to call him/she/it is there and there is an inner spirit and drive inside man, built in, to find out what this is.”
You sound quite sure of yourself! I think you are confusing natural subjective experiences that we all have with some objective supernatural being we have no evidence of.
I agree with you that some of the bible is a record of man trying to relate to this idea called “God” but the problem is, is that it is just an idea. I also agree that there could be another realm. There no doubt is much to reality we cannot grasp due to our limitations of perception. However, there is no reason to think our consciousness survives the death of our bodies. None. So why must we pretend there is a heaven for us and a hell for our enemies? Seems sort of pathetic to me.
You say, “the basic premise of the bible to me is that you need to help your neighbor and help the poor and help the widow and help all of mankind. don't be selfish. don't put money and things over love. you will lose and death is what the end is. life is doing the above. you feel better. you don't feel dead and empty. money hungry selfish people who thrive on fighting, killing, gossiping and money are dead inside.”
Very nice sentiments. But why is that inspired and the bad stuff not inspired? Isn’t it convenient for you to just take what you like and attribute that to God and reject what you don’t like as the product of primitive men? Jesus said quite plainly that people like me will be tortured in hell forever and ever. Why would you pray to such a fiend?
Gotta go eat dinner!
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