When we are looking for God and want to find Him are there certain books in which we should belief and follow?
Many people create themselves gods. We can see that in how people have idols and sometimes go so far to worship those human beings. There are also people who take elements from nature as their god and they speak or pray to trees, sun, stars or look for a god behind everything that happens in nature, and as such have a god for the rain, wind, thunder, sky, or even for each day of the week.
But when we look how those gods respond or what they can do we see that something is lacking. It is always questionable what those gods can do and what they really provide.
Though there is One God Who is superior to all those gods and can do much more than they. About Him is a lot written down throughout the years. But one particular library is very trustworthy and should be best referred to. When we consult that library of Books of books we can find the Word of that God of gods, Who is most reliable.
White-collar criminal defense lawyer Joel Cohen questions if the Bible’s factuality is essential to faith.
Many people wonder if one can trust what religious people say about the Bible. Is there reason to believe in the factuality of the Bible’s contents, and that the Almighty God Himself was its Author?
Cohen writes:
Indeed, to worship God as religion demands, must one believe that God actually performed the acts attributed to Him; must we accept as authentic His purported interactions – His Creation of the universe and mankind, the plagues that He visited on Egypt, His splitting of the Red Sea and His conversations with mankind, Moses, Abraham and David. More to the point, must we obdurately accept them in the particular and peculiar ways described in the Bible? {Is the Bible’s factuality essential to faith?}
It all depends how you want to look at that Book of books. In which way do we have to look at those different writings, and take them as stories or real reviews of what happened at the earlier times? Several people do find that we have to take those Biblical accounts as morality plays or anecdotal narratives, created by human beings without God’s help or involvement.
When you take a closer look at them, you will find strange things, which would shed a light on those writers, they normally would hide for others.
We may choose to believe that God dictated nothing whatsoever to Moses, and merely instructed a spiritually inspired Moses to write of the Creation.
writes Cohen and continues
We may choose to believe that all that God really wants from mankind is for it to live a conventionally moral life based on civility, charity and love of one’s fellow man. That a moral life is not only the sine qua non to a life of faith, but is also its sole prerequisite. We may believe that all of the meticulous laws of animal sacrifice (morphed, upon the Temple’s destruction, into communal prayer), the Sabbath’s sanctity and kashrut were fashioned by man himself in order to nationalistically (if you will) create a “culture.” Perhaps even, a culture that designated this particular Society as having been chosen, while others were not. {Is the Bible’s factuality essential to faith?}
Today we have different media and we always can pick up what is written or filmed before. At the old times there were no sources people could consult and not all where so literate they could read the stones or scrolls. For that reason passing the word form one generation to the next mostly was done in the aural way and history had to be so compressed or said in such manner people could easily remember it.
Orality,
the first and still most widespread mode of human communication. Far more than “just talking,” oral tradition refers to a dynamic and highly diverse oral-aural medium for evolving, storing, and transmitting knowledge, art, and ideas. It is typically contrasted with literacy, with which it can and does interact in myriad ways, and also with literature, which it dwarfs in size, diversity, and social function. {Encyclopaedia Britannica}
What is so special about that aural tradition, that not likewise other aural stories, these stories kept the same over centuries.
Even Voltaire, who wanted to destroy the Bible and distributed pamphlets against that book, had to confess that he could not imagine that when there would be a watch that there would not be a watchmaker. Looking at mankind and the plants and animals around us, and when you get to know how wonderfully they are made it would be very strange to believe there would be not a Master Inventor or Maker behind them, providing this life. When those people grew up and multiplied from one generation to an other, they carried with them the stories of their families. To their next of kin they brought stories from kings (Solomon) herdsman (David), man who could tell about things which happened many years later and as such were visionaries (Isaiah, Zacharia), fisherman (John) doctor (Luke), publican (Matthew), scholar (Paul) etc..
That collection of stories written on 3 continents: Africa, Asia and Europe, under different circumstances: in desserts, humble homes, palaces, prisons, etc., written in three languages, Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, became the first translated Great Book, and became the most translated and reprinted book in the world, a best-seller of all times.
Voltaire is death. His house and the printing machines became again used, this time to print bibles.
Interesting to note is that those writers also told not such nice things about themselves. Proud being inherited by man you would expect their visions would be contributed to themselves. But more than 3800 times the writers do say that their words do not come form them but from the Higher Power God, the Adonai Elohim Hashem Jehovah.
Every time we read:
Jehovah, god, said to me
or
The word of the Most High, Jehovah God, came to me
Naturally you could assume they were telling lies; But how could they tell about things which had not happened yet and could use names which did not mean anything yet at the time they lived?
Would such liars than be able to produce such special writings which can inspire so many people and can bring forth so much goodness? Bitter sources cannot bring forth sweet waters.
The 40 different writers of the assembly of books, written over a period of more than 1500 years, also never contradict each other. This whilst they wrote about one of the most sensitive subjects on earth: God.
Though many rabbis as well as priests and ministers say it does not matter if the Bible is written under the guidance of God or if their congregants want to read the Bible with skepticism, or see it as somewhat of a work of historical/Biblical fiction.
In the monotheist religions we have seen several groups which started to put more accent on human writings and gave preference to keep to human doctrines instead of holding to the clarity of the simple words written in the books of the Bible. This created many schisms in those religious groups and even made it possible that certain people came to consider themselves still monotheist though they started worshipping what they call a tri-une god, three gods in one.
The man of justice correctly looks at the real question
what do the rabbis themselves believe? Do they say aloud “it doesn’t matter” because they recognize that defending the Bible’s stories to moderns simply won’t (or can’t) be effective, leaving congregants to turn elsewhere or pay less attention to what observant Jews tend to believe? Or is it because they, themselves don’t believe in their authenticity? {Is the Bible’s factuality essential to faith?}
In the Catholic Church we can find many examples of people who call themselves “theologian” and do not believe in God. For them being part of an institution which pays for their living is very handy. Also for the other priests we can ask the same question as for the Jewish rabbe or the Muslim imam when they utter either in their sermon or tete a tete that a Holy Scripture account’s authenticity “doesn’t matter,”
do they immediately then mutter to themselves: “But yet it happened”? And, really, does it and should it matter if an observant rabbi/teacher doesn’t himself believe in exacting fashion that the Bible is God’s literal Word transmitted by God to Moses at Sinai? {Is the Bible’s factuality essential to faith?}
If you want to get to know the only real God, in a way it does not matter if you believe it or not that the Bible is God’s Word. But it is essential to come to see and understand what happened to mankind and to get to know Who is behind it all.
Do you want to take it as an allegory or metaphor, that is your good right, but then also dare to take the words written in it to take for what they (literally) say. For example when there is written “the son of God“, do not think in your head “god the son” because that is not at all what is written there. Only by accepting the words like they are written down, saying what they are saying and not what some theologians may want you to believe what should be implemented by that saying.
God is a god of order and clarity who does not tell lies. When those writers claim to have written down what God ordered them to write down, we may expect that they did not write down lies but wrote what was meant to be said. Then we also should not fix our eyes on one phrase but look at all the phases being connected with each other and in unison with each other. As such we should always look at the text in contexts with the sayings at other places in that Holy or put or set apart Book of books.
Joel Cohen asks
Can we, ourselves, determine what the Bible truly means to us? While it may be controversial or provocative to articulate it that way, that’s exactly what’s at stake. And, lest it go unsaid, this decision, dilemma if you will, is not limited to Judaism. How different is it that the Fathers of the Church, years after Jesus’s time, dictated that Jesus is actually part of the Holy Trinity (part of God Himself) , even though the Christian Bible never said that. Yet, would a modern Christian remain in good standing, if he doesn’t believe (or, at least state he believes) in a Triune God? {Is the Bible’s factuality essential to faith?}
Real lovers of God should come to see how certain people prefer to be off this world, instead of being of God, following God His advice and wise Words.
When you shall take the historical books and the Bible, you shall come to see that the idea of a three-headed god does not come from Jesus, nor from somewhere in the bible but from those people who wanted to live in peace with the Roman leaders and came to an agreement with emperor Constantine the Great.
You also than come to understand what it means to be from the world or of the world, to belong to the world and what it is to be living in this world being of God or to belong to God.
Those people whose lives are steeped in faith – split so that approximately 50% said they accepted the Bible’s account; the other 50% did not, will have it more difficult to see the light and come to the truth.
Then, after everyone had opened their eyes, the moment of truth arrived: I asked those who had only “confidentially” acknowledged that they didn’t believe the Bible’s account to raise their hands in full view of the now eyes-wide-open congregation. Only a handful raised their hands. How does one explain this? For me at least, the overwhelming majority of those “non-believers” of the Red Sea story who sat on their hands were comfortable in their belief, but only privately. They apparently didn’t want their community to know; essentially, they didn’t want their neighbors to think “less” of them. {Is the Bible’s factuality essential to faith?}
Lots of people are afraid to talk openly about what they really believe. Lots are convinced that one’s faith is a very personal thing, and should remain so.
People might believe in only certain things their religion places before them, irrespective of whether the Author is divine. But even if they don’t believe in all of it, they remain believers in God, as well as believers in the importance of faith in their lives. {Is the Bible’s factuality essential to faith?}
says Joel Cohen.
We do believe that in case you are wiling to read and study the Bible as a book to come to enlightenment and to learn about the Most High Divine Creator of all things, it shall offer you enough insight to come to understand that it is really the Word of God, and that there is really only One True God of gods, Who is One, and that we do have a sent one from God who is one mediator between God and man.
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Preceding article: All about love, not needing disasters
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Please find additional reading:
- Looking for Answers
- Words to inspire and to give wisdom
- Wisdom not hard to find nor hiding in remote places
- Coming to understanding from sayings written long ago
- From the very early beginning of the universe
- Possibility to live
- People Seeking for God 1 Looking for answers
- People Seeking for God 3 Laws and directions
- Did the Inspirator exist
- Necessary to be known all over the earth
- Do you believe in One god
- God is one
- God of gods
- Only one God
- A God between many gods
- Seeing or not seeing and willingness to find God
- The Trinity – the Truth
- Christianity without the Trinity
- For those who believe Jesus is God
- Believing what Jesus says
- Jesus Christ Waiting For An Invitation
- Bible, sword of the Spirit to come into the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man
- Jehovah God Almighty greater than all gods
- The Almighty Lord God of gods King above all gods
- God giving signs and producing wonders
- Jewish and Christian traditions of elders
- An uncovering book to explore
- The Need to Understand Genre
- Genre – Playing by the Rules
- Why think that (4) … God would reveal himself in words
- Why think that (5) … the Bible is the word of God
- The Word of God in print
- A way to look for Christ, the Bible, Word of God
- An unbridgeable gap
- Inspired Word
- Book of books and great masterpiece
- Bible, God speaking words profitable for doctrine, for reproof and for correction
- Challenging claim
- Challenging claim 1 Whose word
- Challenging claim 2 Inspired by God 1 Simple words
- Challenging claim 3 Inspired by God 2 Inerrant Word of God
- Challenging claim 4 Inspired by God 3 Self-consistent Word of God
- the Bible – God’s guide for life #1 Introduction
- the Bible – God’s guide for life #2 Needs in life
- the Bible – God’s guide for life #3 Fast food or staple diet
- the Bible – God’s guide for life #4 Not to get the best from our diet– or from ourselves
- the Bible – God’s guide for life #5 What is God like
- the Bible – God’s guide for life #6 Case example – King Josiah #1
- the Bible – God’s guide for life #7 Case example – King Josiah #2 Lessons from Josiah’s experience
- the Bible – God’s guide for life #8 Looking to Jesus #1 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus
- Authority of the Bible
- No other god besides Jehovah who gives all explanation
- Creator and Blogger God 8 A Blog of a Book 2 Holy One making Scriptures Holy
- Bible, best Book of books to get to know the truth
- Unread bestseller
- Written down in God’s Name
- Bible, God’s Word to edify (ERV)
- Written to whom it is about to be reckoned
- Absolute Basics to Reading the Bible
- Reading of contrasts
- Colour-blindness and road code
- Who Gets to Say What the Bible Says?
- Vision And Mission By The Word Of God
- Theologians and a promised Spirit to enlighten us
- Background to look at things
- Gone astray, away from God
- The very very beginning 2 The Word and words
- Necessity of a revelation of creation 3 Getting understanding by Word of God 1
- Necessity of a revelation of creation 6 Getting understanding by Word of God 4
- Necessity of a revelation of creation 7 Getting understanding by Word of God 5
- Necessity of a revelation of creation 8 By no means unintelligible or mysterious to people
- Necessity of a revelation of creation 9 Searching the Scriptures
- Necessity of a revelation of creation 10 Instructions for insight and wisdom
- Necessity of a revelation of creation 11 Believing and obeying the gospel of the Kingdom of God
- Necessity of a revelation of creation 12 Words assembled for wisdom and instruction
- Necessity of a revelation of creation 13 Getting wisdom
- Necessity of a revelation of creation 14 Searching the scriptures
- Focussing on oneness with Jesus like Jesus is one with God
- God’s forgotten Word 2 Lost Lawbook 1 Who has still interest
- God’s forgotten Word 3 Lost Lawbook 2 Modern scepticism
- God’s forgotten Word 4 Lost Lawbook 3 Early digressions and Constantinic revolution
- God’s forgotten Word 5 Lost Lawbook 4 The ‘Catholic’ church
- Looking on what is going on and not being of it
- Trusting, Faith, calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #3 Voice of God #4 Words in Scripture
- I can’t believe that … (4) God’s word would be so violent
- To find ways of Godly understanding
- Engagement in an actual two-way conversation with your deities
- Luther on Being a Theologian: Oratio, Meditatio and Tentatio
- Are Science and the Bible Compatible?
- Bible containing scientific information
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Relating to God 