Tag: bible

The Bible promises an unending covenant between God and man, God’s commitment never to leave humankind alone. That original covenant is symbolized by the rainbow: “I set my rainbow in the cloud, and it shall be for the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.” The succession of God’s prophets over millennia fulfills that promise. God’s message is “updated” periodically through “Manifestations of God.” Abraham and Moses appear in the Old Testament, Christ in the New Testament and all within Muhammad’s Quran. Baha’is believe other manifestations include Krishna, Zoroaster and Buddha.

I think it’s pretty obvious I regard the Bible as my sacred text. Every column I’ve submitted on this site is in some way a reflection of my Bible-based worldview. As to what tradition my biblical emphasis represents, that’s another story. There simply isn’t one. At the age of thirty, when I first began to read the Bible seriously, I was drawn toward verses that illuminate Jesus’ disdain for tradition.

I read, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” I did not need any prior church or explanation to tell me that this sentence meant something extraordinary: the foundation of all meaning-making was in the beginning … and it “became flesh and dwelt among us”… and this was Jesus.

Catholics believe that the Bible isn't just one book but a collection of unique books. Catholics accept as true that the Bible is the Word of God in human words, and they take both parts of this statement seriously.

Clearly the Bible needs to removed from our schools and libraries lest it corrupt our youth or make them feel guilty or cause them to question traditional American capitalism, individualism and nuclear family values. And of course this is just the beginning of a necessary purge. We need to remove all encyclopedias and histories that give us the low down on the human experience, all art books that depict the human figure and computers that give access to all of the above.

As a Christian and one who believes in the verbal plenary inspiration of the Bible (which means simply that all parts of the Bible in every word are inspired by God and carry the same authority, rightly interpreted), I do not believe the U.S. Constitution is divinely inspired nor do I think any Christian should.

The concept of a heavenly afterlife for the faithful (and a hellish one for their persecutors) seems to have become appealing in Judaism during a time of great persecution: if faithfulness was not rewarded on earth, then it would be later by a just God.