Understanding the Bible.
Many of you post about how the content of the Bible is true/false etc. To me, it's just a book that can give you guidelines, tell how to live. As Im a pretty scientific guy, the Bible feels to me like a problem, an equation, the solution of which gives you the proper way to live. There were various attempts to solve it, the most popular solution (catholic), others like the protestant, or some bizarre ones like the mormon one. Each one is different, one makes people knock to doors preaching the word, other makes them go to Palestine and kill people just because they don't share their religious beliefs. However, no one can deny that the Bible tells you to be a good man, help others, be positive, etc. We can assume that THIS is the ultimate solution of the Bible equation.
Now let's see. Some Bible interpretations are more direct, some are less. The most direct interpretation by far is the Jehova Witness one, which is completely absurd. Other ones, like the catholic, are less direct and thus, more sensible even though they still bear some ill logic. As we have claimed what the final outcome of my interpretation is, it's way easier to do the actual interpretation, it's like solving an equation that we know the result of, it's just about finding the way connecting them.
As we can notice, we can see that the less direct the interpretation is, the more sensible it becomes. Therefore:
The bible should be understood not 70% directly or 50% directly, but 5% DIRECTLY. Everything has to be interpreted as a symbol of something that may guide us in our lifes.
For example:
Virgin Mary Joseph as an example of devotion and sacrifice (even though Jesus is the major one).
Jesus as a general role model
'Eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Christ' is not about going to church and eating a piece of bread and wine. It's about becoming a bit of Jesus by yourself, being like him.
Basically every story told in the Bible has a moral content in it.
Only this way we can go all the way from the Bible to the meaning of life, which is, in my opinion, what Monty Python stated at the end of their eponymous movie:
Monty Python said:
Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try to be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try to live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.
Yet I also believe we can live wonderful lives and grasp the meaning of life
without the Bible, however, if I must say anything about the Bible, I would say we should read it the same way we read Aesop's fables or something of that sort. That is, not taking it as fact, but trying to see the big image and gain some sort of morals from it. I feel the Bible isn't too adequate of a moral guide, especially with how it is used by the Religious Conservatives to justify any cause they are standing behind, even in cases of war. I do believe that the Bible should be in the fiction section in bookstores, because that's merely what it is.
