Last year I wanted to read the Bible to see what Jesus actually said and did, and now I've started to do so. This was around the time I stopped believing in Christianity, in Jesus as the Savior of the World. I'd been hearing people say they pattern their lives after Jesus and that his life was a model to follow. I remember thinking, "Wait a minute, we know hardly anything about his life."
I will admit that I've never read the whole Bible before, and not even the entire New Testament. The majority of Mormons haven't. This, I believe, is for a couple of reasons. First, there's the Church's Article of Faith #8 which says: "We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God." In Mormons' minds, the Book of Mormon is most certainly correct because Joseph Smith translated it himself from reformed Egyptian into [16th century] English, with no in-between translations. The Bible has been through so many translations that it's impossible to know which one is correct (the Church has said the King James version is the closest to being accurate, and their copies of the KJ version have Joseph Smith's translation of some of its verses in the footnotes), so it's always open to interpretation and incorrect text and can't be counted on to be 100% the true word of God. And second, the introduction page of the Book of Mormon says, "Concerning this record the Prophet Joseph Smith said: “I told the
brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on
earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to
God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book.”" So Mormons spend their time reading and "gaining a testimony" of the Book of Mormon while treating the Bible as supplemental scripture.
Well, if I recall correctly from Church and Seminary lessons, what we know of Jesus from the Bible are second-hand accounts of his birth, of when he was twelve years old talking with the elders near the temple, and then when he was in his 30s and began actively preaching. From the Bible we know almost nothing about his entire life. We don't know how he lived, how he treated people, or what he did.
In the LDS Church there's a song the Primary children sing called "Jesus Once Was a Little Child"; here are the lyrics:
Jesus once was a little child,
A little child like me;
And he was pure and meek and mild,
As a little child should be.
[Chorus]
So, little children,
Let's you and I
Try to be like him
Try, try, try.
He played as little children play
The pleasant games of youth;
But he never got vexed if the game went wrong,
And he always spoke the truth.
[Chorus]
This song is clearly teaching little kids how to behave. And yeah, being truthful is always very important. But for this song to be true, we have to start with the assumption that Jesus was in fact a half-god and that he was perfect in every way. Countless General Conference talks mention that Jesus led a perfect life. But there is absolutely no proof that he did. It's an assumption based on the idea that he was perfect, that he had to be perfect in order to atone for our sins, which he had to have done.
Last year as I was considering if Christianity in general was for me and just not the branch of Mormonism, I realized that in the scriptures there's always a bad guy. In the Book of Mormon, the first bad guys were Laman and Lemuel, two of Nephi's older brothers. If you start with the assumption that Lehi was really being led by the Lord, then Laman and Lemuel are in the wrong. But if you look at it from Laman and Lemuel's point of view—and if you start with the assumption that Lehi was not being led by God but that he just had a really vivid dream that freaked him out—then Laman and Lemuel are justified in their feelings, words, and actions (all except attempted murder). The outlook of the story changes a lot when you look at it from a different point of view.
In the New Testament, it's the Pharisees. I realized that this group of people was considered the bad guys, but why? Their actions have made the Jews scapegoats around the world for centuries, but were their actions justified? Were their suspicions of Jesus valid? So that got me thinking about it. I searched the internet for "What do the Jews think of Jesus?" There were many results but I found a brief summary on this page: http://www.beingjewish.com/toshuv/whynotbrief.html Here is also a Wikipedia article that I liked, which goes into more detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaism's_view_of_Jesus
Based on what the Jews understood about a coming Messiah, and based on what Jesus did and didn't do to fulfill those prophesies, I came to the conclusion that Jesus was a false Messiah, that he was not who he claimed to be. The articles I linked explain why the Jews think that way, and I'll explain my reasoning for believing the same.
We can't start with the assumption that Jesus led a perfect life because there simply is no proof of it. He must have been charismatic because so many people followed him and listened to him. But what did he do with the rest of his life? He performed what looked like miracles, but street performers and magicians can perform similar illusions. Who's to say Jesus didn't spend a few years learning to be a street magician, to fool gullible people? When you think about it, the idea isn't that far-fetched. And what if he really did have a special ability to heal people? It's possible, I suppose (then again, there's also the placebo effect to consider). But does that in itself mean he's a half-god, that he's the savior of the world? No, it doesn't.
I thought of all this last year, and this is what led me away from Christianity. Fast-forward to a few months ago with the LDS policies on homosexuality and its gay members. On the one hand you have Christians saying, "Love one another! Treat others the way you would want to be treated! That's what Jesus would do!" And yet all of a sudden you have Christians saying, "Jesus was against homosexuality! He doesn't accept it, he didn't tolerate it! It's the sin that got Sodom and Gomorrah destroyed! It's a sin that must not be tolerated now!" But did Jesus really say those things? Did those words, did the intent to prevent loving monogamous homosexual relationships from being allowed, actually come from the mouth of Jesus or God? Now I don't think they did. Christians on both sides are using the Bible to defend their position on the issue, but which side is right?
So this brings me to my two Bible projects. I am going to read the Bible—the Old and New Testaments—in their entirety. And while I read, here is what I'm going to do:
Project 1: Find out the nature of God/Jesus
I will go with the LDS theology that the God/Lord of the Old Testament was Jesus Christ. I am going to underline every passage of scripture where God (Jesus) says or does something, as well as what is being attributed to him by other people (i.e. in Genesis 5:29 when Lemech said the Lord cursed the ground, and in Genesis 16:2 when Sarai said "The Lord hath restrained me from bearing [children]"). Then on a separate piece of paper I will write in my own words what these things say about Jesus' character, of who he is.
Project 2: "Is the Bible a viable model of morality and a way to govern society in today's modern era?"
Twice recently I've watched the debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham. It's a really good one, I'll link it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6kgvhG3AkI Their topic was, "Is Creation a viable model for origins in today's modern, scientific era?" (my opinion is that no, it isn't), and I've decided to model the title of my project after that debate's topic. For modern moral issues, Christians will turn to the Bible for guidance. But then others will point out laws in books like Leviticus and Deuteronomy and say, "Would these laws ever be acceptable in today's society? No way! You can't take some parts of the Bible as doctrine from Jesus and ignore the parts you don't like." I am not a scholar in early Christian history; I don't know which laws and points of view were acceptable back then and which ones were actually the guy being a jerk, like Paul in 1 Timothy 2:11 when he said, "Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection". Although context is important and very interesting to me, for this project of mine I am not taking into consideration the context of the times they were written. I am looking at the Bible as a book that modern Christians use to live by and tout as the Word of God, and I'm going to determine if that book, which is around 2,000 years old, should be used as a model of morality or a way to govern society in today's modern era. My prediction is that the Old Testament should absolutely not be used as a model for today, and that the New Testament will be about half viable and half better-left-in-the-past.
This will take me a few months to do since I plan to work on it every day (if I read a chapter a day it would take me over 3 years to finish). I'm excited for these projects on an intellectual level! I've never read the whole Bible before, and I'm sure I'll be in for many surprises.
Thursday, January 21, 2016
Tuesday, January 12, 2016
Dealing With Death
Everyone dies. What happens to us after we die is one of the questions humans have sought to know probably for as long as we've been on the Earth, and different groups of people have come up with their own theories.
All religions believe in a soul. Christians and Muslims believe that when we die, our spirit or our soul will either go to Heaven to be with God or we'll go to Hell to be ruled by the Devil. Catholics further believe in Purgatory, which is "an intermediate state after physical death in which those destined for heaven undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven." (quoted from Wikipedia). Mormons believe in something similar: they believe that after we die, our spirit goes either to Spirit Paradise or to Spirit Prison (also known as Hell, where people have a chance to repent of their sins and go to Paradise), based on how you lived your life. Once Christ comes back and the Millennium starts and everyone can be resurrected, then our spirits will be taken out of Paradise or Prison and reunited with our bodies and then assigned to one of the Three Kingdoms of Glory or to Outer Darkness for the really really bad people.
Buddhists believe that the spirit goes into another body, and which body that is depends on how good they were in their previous life: if you were good, then you came back as a healthy human again, but if you were bad, then you came back as a crippled or diseased person, or even an animal.
There are many other religions that I don't know enough about, or don't know about at all. These I've listed are the main ones around the world right now. But what all religions have in common is the belief in the soul, that we are more than our physical bodies.
I've been thinking about death for the past couple of days. Yesterday David Bowie died. Also yesterday I found out that the grandmother of one of my good friends died this past Sunday.
When you're not religious, or when you were but you don't believe in a God anymore, you look at death differently than a religious person does. I'll take Christianity as an example since that's what I grew up with and that's the most widespread religion right now.
Christians will look at David Bowie and say, "He's probably in Heaven because he was a good person." My friend's family will look at their grandmother and they'll be sad but they'll think, "She was a good person, and I know we'll see her again and be together forever, because we've been sealed in the temple to each other." They have hope because they believe in an afterlife and in a just and fair God who will reward good deeds and good people with Heaven.
Then there are those of us who either never were religious or we've left our religions and/or our belief in a God. When we look at death, we don't know what happens. Some of these people are terrified of death because they don't know what happens to us. Do we cease to exist? Do we have a soul that goes up to Heaven or down to Hell? Does our soul remain on Earth, walking around invisible where only a few people with the gift to see spirits can see us? (think the movies "Ghost" and "Heart and Souls"). Are we indeed reborn, our spirits put into a new body?
And finally, there are people who look at the physiology of the body and the brain, and they firmly believe that there is no soul, there is no spirit, that our brain is who we are. We have a body, we have a brain, and that's it. So when our brain stops working, when our brain dies, we're dead. We're gone. We cease to exist.
I am now an atheist, and until just recently I was in the second category. I'm not scared of death because in my mind, when I die then I'll finally be able to know which of all the world's religious beliefs got it right. I held on to the hope that I do have a spirit, that I will continue to exist after I die, and that I will get to see the spirits of my loved ones again. But now after looking a little more into the sciences, I'm coming to grips with the ideas of the third category: that we are our brain. Our memories, our thoughts, our senses, our feelings, and even our spiritual experiences—they are all the work of our brain. And once our brain dies, we're gone.
I look at David Bowie. According to my new line of thinking, he's gone forever. But his influence will remain here because of his music and his movies. People of my generation will always remember him as the Goblin King in "Labyrinth" with those suave mannerisms and those tight pants. ;) Others will remember him more for his music. While he's not on my list of favorite musicians, I recognize that many people liked him and they will remember him and what he did.
Now I'm looking at my own life, wondering what I will leave behind. When I die, my existence will only be missed by a few handfuls of people; what we've shared together will mean something to them, and I'm not dismissing that as unimportant. But as far as society as a whole, I haven't done anything noteworthy. I haven't written any great books like Tolkien or Carl Sagan or Darwin or Shakespeare did that are read and enjoyed by millions of people. I am not a great singer like Whitney Houston or Mariah Carey, or a great musician like Mozart or Vivaldi. I am not a great actress like Elizabeth Taylor or Katherine Hepburn whose names and legacies will live on in cinema history. I am not a great philosopher like Aristotle or Confucius whose ideas will span the centuries. I haven't written any papers in scholarly journals that others will read and cite for their research. I am not a selfless person who is spending my life or a career serving the poor and needy and the sick. I'm not someone who has inspired my society to greatness in any way. I am an average person, a wife and a stay-at-home mother of two kids who's doing her best to raise them and not go crazy in the meantime. ;) I have my own interests and hobbies outside of being a mom, and I make a conscious effort to remember those things about myself so I don't lose who I am. But those hobbies are pleasures of mine, they're not for the betterment of society. My sphere of influence is so small that it is insignificant to all but a few people, those closest to me.
I've thought about it, and what I do have is this blog. This is something I've written that anyone who comes across it can read and hopefully get something out of it for their own lives. Perhaps some readers are LDS members who are struggling with issues in the Church, and here they can find someone who had the same issues they did. Perhaps there are those who feel they aren't strong enough to leave the Church, or even to examine it with critical thinking.
I'm here to tell those people that you are strong enough.
Looking at the Church with critical thinking wasn't easy. Developing critical thinking skills in the first place wasn't easy, since what is stressed in the Church is faith, obedience, to "first doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith" (Pres. Uchtdorf, Oct. 2013) and to "lean not unto thine own understanding" (Proverbs 3:5). Coming to my conclusions about the Church was hard for me because I was raised in it and I really believed it was true. It influenced how I saw the world, how I saw the purpose of life, how I saw people's behavior and its consequences, and my definition of morality. And to look at the Church honestly and factually with critical thinking wasn't something I'd ever done before. Not only that, but all of my immediate family members are LDS, as are all the immediate family members of my husband's family. Most of the friends I made in school were LDS because of the strong community the Church offers, so leaving the Church was to leave my circle of friends and the possibility of easily meeting new friends whenever we moved.
Leaving was mostly liberating, because I finally felt validated in the thoughts and doubts about the Church that had troubled me for years; everything suddenly fits together when you realize "the Church isn't true".
I will be honest: the hardest thing of all was looking at scientific evidence and realizing that in all likelihood there is no God. It's hard because it feels like starting from scratch, and you have to look at the world differently and to look at morality differently.
But it gets easier. Human brains are incredible organs, and through mine I've been able to adjust pretty well. And you know what? Life isn't so bad without a belief in God. At first it was rough, but I don't feel a sense of hopelessness anymore. I'm looking at death as final, and that life on this Earth is my one shot at existence, and it's helped me want to put forth more effort to make the most of it. Not for the sake of a reward in Heaven, but for my own sake.
Sometimes there are things in life that really suck, and sometimes we're not sure how we can make it through the day or the week or the year. But our brains are capable of incredible things, and we don't give ourselves enough credit. I have a saying up on my wall that says, "She Believed She Could, So She Did." We have as much inner strength as we allow ourselves to have. Our bodies might fail us, or it might seem like our circumstances are too much for us to handle. Sometimes we're right. But our life and our existence have as much value as we decide they have, and it's up to us to decide what we do with them.
I'm hoping I don't die any time soon, because I have young children. That's one of the reasons why I haven't bought a motorcycle yet, even though I got my license about six months ago. Although going places on a motorcycle is something I would love to do and that would be very fulfilling for me, the chances of getting into a crash and being seriously injured or killed are high, and my kids are still very young and they need a mother around who loves and can care for them and who has taken on the job of raising them. My job is to keep them healthy and to prepare them to survive in this world, and I still have a lot of work to do. In the meantime I'm going to continue with my (safe) hobbies that give me pleasure and that make me feel fulfilled, and I'm going to continue to learn as much as I can about things that interest me. Critical thinking is a skill we need to learn (and that we are NOT taught or encouraged to develop in the LDS church), and I'm hoping to continue to cultivate mine and to teach my kids critical thinking when they're old enough.
I'm still not afraid of death, even though I'm now thinking that death is the end of my existence. I really hope my last days or minutes aren't filled with pain, but death is inevitable and probably final, and I'm still adjusting to that new line of thinking. And I'm doing alright. I'm not blissfully happy, but I'm not miserable either. I'm accepting. It feels good to face reality head-on.
All religions believe in a soul. Christians and Muslims believe that when we die, our spirit or our soul will either go to Heaven to be with God or we'll go to Hell to be ruled by the Devil. Catholics further believe in Purgatory, which is "an intermediate state after physical death in which those destined for heaven undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven." (quoted from Wikipedia). Mormons believe in something similar: they believe that after we die, our spirit goes either to Spirit Paradise or to Spirit Prison (also known as Hell, where people have a chance to repent of their sins and go to Paradise), based on how you lived your life. Once Christ comes back and the Millennium starts and everyone can be resurrected, then our spirits will be taken out of Paradise or Prison and reunited with our bodies and then assigned to one of the Three Kingdoms of Glory or to Outer Darkness for the really really bad people.
Buddhists believe that the spirit goes into another body, and which body that is depends on how good they were in their previous life: if you were good, then you came back as a healthy human again, but if you were bad, then you came back as a crippled or diseased person, or even an animal.
There are many other religions that I don't know enough about, or don't know about at all. These I've listed are the main ones around the world right now. But what all religions have in common is the belief in the soul, that we are more than our physical bodies.
I've been thinking about death for the past couple of days. Yesterday David Bowie died. Also yesterday I found out that the grandmother of one of my good friends died this past Sunday.
When you're not religious, or when you were but you don't believe in a God anymore, you look at death differently than a religious person does. I'll take Christianity as an example since that's what I grew up with and that's the most widespread religion right now.
Christians will look at David Bowie and say, "He's probably in Heaven because he was a good person." My friend's family will look at their grandmother and they'll be sad but they'll think, "She was a good person, and I know we'll see her again and be together forever, because we've been sealed in the temple to each other." They have hope because they believe in an afterlife and in a just and fair God who will reward good deeds and good people with Heaven.
Then there are those of us who either never were religious or we've left our religions and/or our belief in a God. When we look at death, we don't know what happens. Some of these people are terrified of death because they don't know what happens to us. Do we cease to exist? Do we have a soul that goes up to Heaven or down to Hell? Does our soul remain on Earth, walking around invisible where only a few people with the gift to see spirits can see us? (think the movies "Ghost" and "Heart and Souls"). Are we indeed reborn, our spirits put into a new body?
And finally, there are people who look at the physiology of the body and the brain, and they firmly believe that there is no soul, there is no spirit, that our brain is who we are. We have a body, we have a brain, and that's it. So when our brain stops working, when our brain dies, we're dead. We're gone. We cease to exist.
I am now an atheist, and until just recently I was in the second category. I'm not scared of death because in my mind, when I die then I'll finally be able to know which of all the world's religious beliefs got it right. I held on to the hope that I do have a spirit, that I will continue to exist after I die, and that I will get to see the spirits of my loved ones again. But now after looking a little more into the sciences, I'm coming to grips with the ideas of the third category: that we are our brain. Our memories, our thoughts, our senses, our feelings, and even our spiritual experiences—they are all the work of our brain. And once our brain dies, we're gone.
I look at David Bowie. According to my new line of thinking, he's gone forever. But his influence will remain here because of his music and his movies. People of my generation will always remember him as the Goblin King in "Labyrinth" with those suave mannerisms and those tight pants. ;) Others will remember him more for his music. While he's not on my list of favorite musicians, I recognize that many people liked him and they will remember him and what he did.
Now I'm looking at my own life, wondering what I will leave behind. When I die, my existence will only be missed by a few handfuls of people; what we've shared together will mean something to them, and I'm not dismissing that as unimportant. But as far as society as a whole, I haven't done anything noteworthy. I haven't written any great books like Tolkien or Carl Sagan or Darwin or Shakespeare did that are read and enjoyed by millions of people. I am not a great singer like Whitney Houston or Mariah Carey, or a great musician like Mozart or Vivaldi. I am not a great actress like Elizabeth Taylor or Katherine Hepburn whose names and legacies will live on in cinema history. I am not a great philosopher like Aristotle or Confucius whose ideas will span the centuries. I haven't written any papers in scholarly journals that others will read and cite for their research. I am not a selfless person who is spending my life or a career serving the poor and needy and the sick. I'm not someone who has inspired my society to greatness in any way. I am an average person, a wife and a stay-at-home mother of two kids who's doing her best to raise them and not go crazy in the meantime. ;) I have my own interests and hobbies outside of being a mom, and I make a conscious effort to remember those things about myself so I don't lose who I am. But those hobbies are pleasures of mine, they're not for the betterment of society. My sphere of influence is so small that it is insignificant to all but a few people, those closest to me.
I've thought about it, and what I do have is this blog. This is something I've written that anyone who comes across it can read and hopefully get something out of it for their own lives. Perhaps some readers are LDS members who are struggling with issues in the Church, and here they can find someone who had the same issues they did. Perhaps there are those who feel they aren't strong enough to leave the Church, or even to examine it with critical thinking.
I'm here to tell those people that you are strong enough.
Looking at the Church with critical thinking wasn't easy. Developing critical thinking skills in the first place wasn't easy, since what is stressed in the Church is faith, obedience, to "first doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith" (Pres. Uchtdorf, Oct. 2013) and to "lean not unto thine own understanding" (Proverbs 3:5). Coming to my conclusions about the Church was hard for me because I was raised in it and I really believed it was true. It influenced how I saw the world, how I saw the purpose of life, how I saw people's behavior and its consequences, and my definition of morality. And to look at the Church honestly and factually with critical thinking wasn't something I'd ever done before. Not only that, but all of my immediate family members are LDS, as are all the immediate family members of my husband's family. Most of the friends I made in school were LDS because of the strong community the Church offers, so leaving the Church was to leave my circle of friends and the possibility of easily meeting new friends whenever we moved.
Leaving was mostly liberating, because I finally felt validated in the thoughts and doubts about the Church that had troubled me for years; everything suddenly fits together when you realize "the Church isn't true".
I will be honest: the hardest thing of all was looking at scientific evidence and realizing that in all likelihood there is no God. It's hard because it feels like starting from scratch, and you have to look at the world differently and to look at morality differently.
But it gets easier. Human brains are incredible organs, and through mine I've been able to adjust pretty well. And you know what? Life isn't so bad without a belief in God. At first it was rough, but I don't feel a sense of hopelessness anymore. I'm looking at death as final, and that life on this Earth is my one shot at existence, and it's helped me want to put forth more effort to make the most of it. Not for the sake of a reward in Heaven, but for my own sake.
Sometimes there are things in life that really suck, and sometimes we're not sure how we can make it through the day or the week or the year. But our brains are capable of incredible things, and we don't give ourselves enough credit. I have a saying up on my wall that says, "She Believed She Could, So She Did." We have as much inner strength as we allow ourselves to have. Our bodies might fail us, or it might seem like our circumstances are too much for us to handle. Sometimes we're right. But our life and our existence have as much value as we decide they have, and it's up to us to decide what we do with them.
I'm hoping I don't die any time soon, because I have young children. That's one of the reasons why I haven't bought a motorcycle yet, even though I got my license about six months ago. Although going places on a motorcycle is something I would love to do and that would be very fulfilling for me, the chances of getting into a crash and being seriously injured or killed are high, and my kids are still very young and they need a mother around who loves and can care for them and who has taken on the job of raising them. My job is to keep them healthy and to prepare them to survive in this world, and I still have a lot of work to do. In the meantime I'm going to continue with my (safe) hobbies that give me pleasure and that make me feel fulfilled, and I'm going to continue to learn as much as I can about things that interest me. Critical thinking is a skill we need to learn (and that we are NOT taught or encouraged to develop in the LDS church), and I'm hoping to continue to cultivate mine and to teach my kids critical thinking when they're old enough.
I'm still not afraid of death, even though I'm now thinking that death is the end of my existence. I really hope my last days or minutes aren't filled with pain, but death is inevitable and probably final, and I'm still adjusting to that new line of thinking. And I'm doing alright. I'm not blissfully happy, but I'm not miserable either. I'm accepting. It feels good to face reality head-on.
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