"... Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

Isn't that one of the commandments? Basically, if you don't accept everyone as you would yourself, you are a hypocrite.

Another example: Leviticus states that adulterers must be put to death. That basically says go ahead and break the 5th commandment to prove the 6th holds water.

*shakes head* This is why I am not religious.

Z: "in reading the gospels, there are times that it is (to me) obvious that his views were very much rooted in the times he lived in. If I don't apply a filter to that..."

OFJ: "fundamentalist Christians will never accept the idea of the Bible as a fallible document..."

Damn me and my paid teaching gigs! When I first read the "Leviticus" post by ZombyBoy I was reminded of the stark difference in the way that fundamentalists and Catholics view the bible. I have been (mentally) preparing a post detailing this because it touches on most of the points expressed in the comments section (as well as touching on dissent and why I dissent from the Catholic church on homosexuality). If I had not been teaching the past couple of nights I would have had it done by now. I'll have to add this to my weekend agenda. To foreshadow, let me leave everyone with this bit of Catholic wisdom (which I will expand on later):

Everything in the Bible is true, and some if it is even based on fact.

Now that sounds interesting. The tough part for me is that I really don't have a church in which I can still feel welcome.

I can't be a Catholic, as I don't believe certain things necessary for membership in the church. I consider myself a baptist, but membership in every baptist church that I know of requires me to state that I believe the bible to be the absolute word of God--infallible and perfect. I can't do that--and if I did, it would lead me to beliefs that I can't stomach.

This is one of the reasons I don't much talk about religion, too; it leads me to an unhappy place.

Trust me, I understand. My well-known and well-documented libertarian beliefs (such as equality for gays) are often in direct opposition to current Catholic teachings. This was something that I struggled with when I returned to Catholicism. One of the most influential books for me at the time was "Why You Can Disagree and Remain a Faithful Catholic" (http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=2TS42S736B&isbn=0824514726&itm=1). There is actually a lot more "wiggle room" within the Catholic faith than most people, even many Catholics, realize, so long as dissent is approached properly. It is one of the things that appeals to me about the Catholic church. Of course, there are certain faith issues in which there is no wiggle room at all, and I suspect that your problems with that Catholic church fall more in this area. We may have to discuss that at length some day (not because I want to change your opinion, simply because it is something that we rarely talk about).

Z, I see now why the entire topic of religion and differences of opinion have caused you... distress(?).

Having read you a long while, I know you to be a free thinker, hardly restricted by party lines. It is even harder to be so, and be restricted by religious lines.

I think that there is no faith system that will fully fit in to how we believe things. Somewhere along the way, we have to give in to some issues, or, like me, end up reconciling one's spirituality with his personal God, and go about life knowing that you are doing what God wills.

I joke about the soccer-ball goddess, but the truth is, it has been a long time since I have felt the need to be in a group of people who commonly share beliefs about God, and what lies beyond rationality. I am at peace with the knowledge that the God we believe in is real. The God that each of us individually believes in, and if the first characteristic of a benevolent God is to be a loving God, then there is no exclusivity: no one will go to Hell for simply following the "wrong" God.

I have considered Jesus Christ as an excellent moral model, and his is perhaps the most simple of all the basic moral laws.

The Bible is the inspired word of God, and such is infallible and every word in it is true.
I believe this fully and completely.
But then, I believe that the globe on my desk is accurate and true, but I won't use it as a navigation device when I go sailing.
I believe my chemistry book is accurate and true as well, but am I going to pull it out when I want to bake a loaf of bread? No.
A dictionary will tell me the meaning of "ramjet" and give a brief description, but an encyclopedia is a better choice to understand that, and a "The Way Things Work" book might be better still.

My point? The Bible is not God. We still have to understand it through limited human perception and wisdom. If God wanted us to understand His will completely and totally through reading, he could have and would have inspired a million books to be written about Him...and even then, they would still fail to encompass the reality that is our God.

So the Bible is a tool with a specific purpose. Use it incorrectly, and you are trying to drive a screw with a table saw: it ain't gonna work.

So what is the Bible for? It is the roadmap to find God. If you ignore what it says about God because you find it inconvenient in light of your desires, you won't find Him. But if you read, pray, meditate on His Word, you have started on a life-long relationship, and your understanding of Him and His Will will most certainly deepen over time.

You need to know how to read the Bible to get the best effect. Reading the Bible to find ways to condemn other people isn't correct or helpful. Taking everything absolutely literally is also not advisable, because if you do, you're going to be checking every sheep pasture in the world trying find God's sheep to start feeding them. Hint: it's an analogy. Armed with that understanding, and applying it in your reading, you will soon be able to move mountains.

About faith, one of the funniest people I listen to is David Sedaris, a writer who appears on this american life on NPR. His latest book "me talk pretty one day" includes a piece about faith - "Jesus Shaves." It recalls when he was in france learning to speak french, and tried to explain easter to a morrocan. The piece rolls along to a conclusion that draws in the elements of faith: if I believe I can get better at french, i can believe that there's an omniscient being. Very good stuff. And then there's a hilarious punch-line that you'll just have to read.

OFJay - Jesus was either a liar, a mad-man or God Made Man. If he was not God Made Man then, to paraphrase Flannery O'Connor, to hell with all of it.