does it matter who wrote the Bible?

On my Facebook page this morning I saw this article referenced. Last week my husband and I went to hear Bart Ehrman speak at a local university. He was invited by the Religious Studies group on campus. For about an hour, followed by a half hour of Q&A, we heard his explanations of why many of the New Testament writers were probably not who they indicated they were. It was a fascinating evening. The topic is not one of which I am unfamiliar. For several years now I have been looking into what it is we can really know about the Bible. Because I had isolated myself from the more liberal theologians' opinions, due to my lifelong evangelical bent, I had no idea of the controversies that existed regarding the Bible and its origins. Truth is important. How much I can really know about this subject seems to be more and more sketchy.

why bad beliefs don't die

This article stood out to me because it explains why I believed the way I did for so long. I understand better now how I was able to rearrange my belief system despite overwhelming odds against change. The particular set of circumstances I was forced to face allowed me a rare human opportunity to examine much of my life and then decide to change things around a bit. For this I am grateful.

love is hard

we are not all the same

The world we live in is not equal... this story shows how true that statement is.

religion fails again

Another example of why religions fail humanity. It matters not which religion we talk about. All are filled with people who can't live up to their preachers' admonitions to be submissive (turn your cheek), to love, and be at peace with all. You'd think that if one of them was right we would know about it by now.

Oh, yeah, I do know that the opposite can be quoted from their holy books also, war and destruction to the infidel and heretic. History shows us that war and religion have had a consistent partnership going for a long time. It's not likely to change, I surmise, unless cooler heads prevail, that means thinking people.

clarification

My name along with my husband's was brought up recently on a Facebook thread, much to my astonishment, mentioning how we were "chewed up and spit out" of a local church some five years ago. I thought at the time that it was an amazing analysis, especially since I never spoke about the subject to the person writing the statement. Thinking I should weigh-in on statements referring to us, I wrote this:

"To clarify a bit, we weren't literally "chewed up and spit out". It felt more like passive aggressive shunning. Despite the roller coaster of emotions which I experienced during that time in my life, I look back now and can understand better what happened. Most people get hurt to some degree when they buy into the idea of the church as a body of believers that care and then find out from personal experience that it's not true. The safety net that I thought existed had many holes in it. The church is simply a group of human beings who purport to believe pretty much the same thing, thus "group think" is at work. If a person breaks one of the important rules of behavior, they must be disciplined, shunned, or "spit out". To a degree we felt disciplined and shunned, but we were not forced to leave. We left on our own free will and today are pleased that we did.

One thing that I've learned from the experience is that I will never again be open and honest with any "group" of people about my personal life. We were too honest and open with too many people. If I could do it over, I would have talked to people I knew and trusted. But even knowing who to trust would have been a bit of a conundrum. Most people are not equipped to handle difficult life situations in other people's lives. By nature we humans feel threatened when faced with other people's failures. "What if that happened to me?" "I'm not going to get too close to those people. There's some sort of 'disease' going on there." I don't blame anyone for thinking these thoughts. I'm sure that many people at (name of church) thought these things about us because I know I thought them about other people through the years. I'm learning that we all are simple human beings with lots and lots of inadequacies. Our shortcomings are not helped though if we refuse to recognize and admit to our human frailties and instead attempt to be super-human and ignore them. IMO, the church excels in encouraging people to become something they are not. In one sense that's good. But there is one thing we will always be on this planet. We will always be human. I think that if we deny that we tread on dangerous ground.

specks