Fundamentalism. No fun, just mental.

     Yesterday, a young father threw his 5 year old daughter off a bridge. A police officer witnessed the scene but was unable to rescue the child. Her body was recovered by divers in the middle of the night.  USA Today report.

Every day we hear unbelievably heart wrenching news.
162 people in the bottom of the ocean.
A baby dead in a dumpster, her parents murdered.
Twelve men gunned down at work.
Stories that make no sense and leave our minds clamoring for answers. We ask, why? Those who believe in the biblical God tell us he has a plan, he knows better than us how things should go, his ways are higher than ours.

You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand. John 13:7

 Now we see things imperfectly as in a cloudy mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely. 

1 Corinthians 13:12

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, said the Lord. Isaiah 55:8

Band aids for amputations.

He is all powerful. All knowing. He has created a divine plan. 

The LORD Almighty has sworn, "Surely, as I have planned, so it will be, and as I have purposed, so it will happen. Isaiah 14:24

All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him: "What have you done?" Daniel 4:35

I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. Roman's 9:15

If we believe the literal words here, it was God's plan that Phoebe should be thrown off a bridge by her dad. God chose not to have mercy on either of them. Not the father's sickened mind nor the daughter's helpless body. He's going to do something great through it though. One day we'll all stand back and say, "Oooohhhh! Now we get it! It's all clear now! Yay God!" At some point, according to the Bible, we are going to understand that the murder of this child was in God's plan for a good purpose. Bullshit.

The one who causes our pain and plans our worst nightmares is also the source of all comfort. An abused child seeking comfort from the abuser is sick. But this is the way we are supposed to believe.  It doesn't make sense.

My problem isn't with God. My problem is with the idea that the Bible is perfect, to be taken literally and not questioned. One of the biggest issues surrounding the fundamentalist evangelical christian's idea of the Bible, is the one of picking and choosing. It's not allowed. One cannot say, "I accept this, but not this." For them the Bible is not a buffet at Piccadilly. It's a plate of comfort food and poison. Next to macaroni and cheese so good it'll make you cry, is something dead, crawling with maggots. And a cup of tea laced with arsenic. You're starving for comfort, but put off by the grotesque. The fundamentalists say if you are to have any of it, you have to swallow it all. Yet, even in the garden, which was perfection, there was picking and choosing. You can eat this fruit, but not that one.

Why, I wonder, is it so far fetched an idea that the Bible could be flawed? It wasn't written until people had inhabited the earth a long time. According to the scriptures, the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve were the first living things God created. It was cozy and pristine. Except for that serpent God allowed in there. If God would allow deceit in the garden, why not the Bible? We are even warned biblically, to be careful of doctrine influenced by men. Is not the Bible influenced by men?

...having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude. See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, Colossians 2:7-9 

Jesus, the Bible says, is the Word made flesh. We can read the Bible in it's harshness, or we can follow the bodily form of a man who never hurt anyone. A man who did not love one more than another, a man who loved his enemies, who healed the sick, who cried in pain because we hurt. A man who would never throw a 5 year old off a bridge or allow another to do so. That is not part of his plan. We are fools to think so. The God of the Bible and Biblical Jesus are said to be the same. They are not and anyone can see it is so. Jesus said that God is love. Jesus was love in the flesh. The way God and Jesus are unified is in Love. Which is in all of us. How do we know this? Because the spirit of love tells us so. "For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God." Romans 8:14

The Bible says God is Love. It also tells us what Love is and isn't. In doing so, it tells us what God is and isn't. God is patient. God is kind. God is not jealous. He does not brag and is not boastful. He is not easily provoked. He keeps no record of evil. God rejoices in the truth. He endures all things. God never fails. 

There are verses in the Bible that contradict the above sentiments. 
God is VERY jealous, and says so. He is arrogant and boastful quite often. He is exceptionally easily provoked and he has a great big book listing the good the bad and the ugly.

How can both of these ideas be true? They can't be. Play all the brain games you want to. God can't be both jealous and not jealous, patient and peaceful, but also short-tempered and violent, a braggart who is also humble. We have to pick and choose.  If we are rational thinkers using the faculties of our powers of reasoning, we have no choice. Some like to say, it's a mystery. But it isn't. They pretend to understand. Most would never share their doubts. The naked emperor has fancy clothes on. You see them, don't you? 

Fundamentalism is causing pain and suffering all around. The literal adherence to scriptural texts combined with a spirit wishing to please God, gain his rewards and escape his punishment, is destructive. It destroys the freedom to choose good over evil. It hardens the heart, making mankind's differences reasons for division instead of unity. It fools people into choosing law over love. It is time for us to  be brave enough to ask  hard questions and to stop pretending that the answers we've  settled for are good enough.