Divine Doubts - Rev. Jarrod Cochran

 

As I removed myself from the busy-ness of the world today and focused on my centrist prayers, I began to think about my faith, the Bible, and the ”fuzzy math” we have created to make the Bible “the inerrant word of God.”For those of you who do not know, I’m somewhat of a biblical scholar, taking the time to learn the ancient Greek, Latin, and Hebrew of the biblical scriptures. When I worked out my faith regarding what the Bible supposedly says about same-sex eroticism, I set out on a journey that led to me see and decipher some of the rarest of bibilcal antiquities and writings that our modern world has knowledge of. (When you touch books and documents like that, they make you wear a face mask and cotton gloves. By the way, my journey in discovering what the Bible and early Christians actually felt about homosexuality revealed that the biases and detestable views we have on same-sex eroticism are from a modern perspective and not from the original texts. Actually, Jesus might have affirmed and healed a gay man’s partner - but that’s for another post…)

I got to thinking today, during my prayers, “How can we call the Bible the inerrant word of God? The Bible is full of errors! We don’t even have the original copies of the texts; we have the copies of the copies of the copies!”

One quick example, out of many is a passage found in the Gospel of Mark has Jesus being confronted by a group of Pharisees because his disciples decided to pick grain and eat it on the Sabbath. Jesus shares with them the story of what King David had done when he and his men were hungry. Jesus tells the Pharisees that King David went into the Temple “when Abiathar was the high priest” and took the shrew bread for him and his men to eat - even though the shrew bread was specifically for the priests to eat.

Jesus was sharing a story from 1 Samuel 21:1-6. The only problem is that Abiathar was not the high priest at this time. Abiathar’s father, Ahiemelech, was.

Either Jesus made a human error, or the writers of this gospel did.

This calls into question the whole doctrinal idea of divine inspiration. The writers of the Bible were supposed to be inspired directly from God. But an honest look at the many books of the Bible, both the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament) and the Christian New Testament reveal not a linear line of thought about who God is and the little details of morality. These were writings from men and women, who I believe were inspired by their faith in God to write down their ideas of God and God’s relationship with the world, the people, and the events going on around them at the time.

As I stewed over these thoughts, I began to think of my career as a minister.

“What the hell am I doing? What’s the point? If we don’t honestly know if our biblical canon contain the actual words and desire of God, then why am I studying so hard? Why am I preaching and teaching about the Jesus found in the New Testament gospels when we’re not even sure that’s the true Jesus who walked this earth over two-thousand years ago? Am I wasting my time and my energy?”

These are the questions that my family warned me would come if I continued to dig deeper into the actual meaning of Scripture, instead of just accepting what I was taught, without question. “You’re thinking and searching way too much,” I can remember one of my family members saying when I spoke to them on what the Bible actually says in the original Greek and Hebrew.

But I feel that if we never question; if we never seek to dig deeper past the empty religosity that is taught in many churches (”The Bible says it. God inspired it. End of discussion.”) then we never really grow. We never really have an authentic faith - we’re just able to vomit out the ideas, dogma, and theologies that were espoused to us from our childhood or adulthood (as the case may be). Which brings me back to my dilemma during my prayer time:

After I had finished asking these bleak questions, I heard a voice inside my head…it told me to burn things (just kidding!!!!); the voice reminded me of what my friend and minister, Bart Campolo, has shared on many occassions:

“The only God worth believing in is a really good God.”

My heart began to beat again! Does the Bible really have to be inerrant for me to believe in a really good God? No! Do I have to have a one-hundred percent accurate dipiction of Jesus to believe that he, his message, and his example are worthy of following? No! Do I have to know all the right answers and believe all the right things for my faith to be authentic? No! It would not be faith if I had concrete answers and evidence about everything. Am I doing the right thing? Yes! How could loving your with all of your essence and loving your neighbor as you love yourself ever be wrong?

My time, my energy, my work, and my life is not wasted believing, preaching, and teaching the good news of Jesus. “The only God worth believing in is a really good God.” The Jesus I encounter in the biblical canon - and even a great deal of the writings outside of the biblical canon - is a beautiful reflection of a really good God. And therefore, for me, that makes him a God worthy of placing my belief, faith, trust, and devotion in.”