I grew up Baptist. Not just Baptist either, but Independent, Fundamental, Separated Baptist. I received Jesus Christ as my Saviour at the age of five and was baptized a year later. It was one of the few times I allowed myself to be dunked underwater completely because I had such a fear of putting my head underwater at that age. Growing up like this meant, of course, that I was raised to believe that the Bible is the literal Word of God. All of the stories are true. All of the instruction in the Bible is good for doctrine and practice in the daily life. Nothing was to be questioned, and it contains all of the answers you could possibly ask about life. Who am I? Why am I here? What is my purpose? Where do I go from here? All of these questions are answered in the pages of the Bible.
In later years, I lived a year and a half in Utah and zealously argued with the Mormons, trying to convince them of the error of their ways and to trust in Jesus Christ alone, rather than the Mormon Church and scriptures, for their salvation. I was very good at picking out errors in the Mormon scriptures. I felt sorry for people who grew up brainwashed into believing everything that their church officials told them, and not being allowed to question the Book of Mormon, Pearl of Great Price, or the Doctrine and Covenants.
When I look back now, I realize that I had the same problem that they did, I just didn't see it. I also had a book that I couldn't question, for if I did, that would make me a doubting heretic. I was way better than this. I would cling to the old rugged cross and be rewarded for my faith when I cross the river of death into the heavenly Jerusalem. I never questioned the Bible because I never felt the need to. I had gone to a good Bible college where I was given great arguments to defend the faith and quash any doubt.
Well, imagine my surprise after a spiritual awakening, when I read the Bible over again with new eyes. My illusions all began to deconstruct in and of themselves, and instead of feeling guilty or condemned, I felt free and happy. The veil was gone from my eyes and I could see clearly. Contrary to one might think, it did not destroy my faith in God, but rather it strengthened it. God was not a static character confined within a book. I found Him rather to be Tao, completely undefined and yet easy to know by just being still and realizing He is me and I am Him, and so are you, and everything else. No one is condemned to hell, but all of expressions of this one divine source.
Mormon Scriptures, the Quran, and all other texts that are said to be "Divinely inspired" do indeed contain historical inaccuracies, contradictions, and statements that just don't hold up anymore. Yet, I find that it is still worth reading and studying it. In fact, I finished the letter of 1 John only this morning.
The first thing that stood out to me was in Genesis 1 and 2. To the Fundamentalists, these are two different tellings of the same creation event. I realized as I read them that I was reading two different accounts of creation. As I later learned, Genesis 1 is a later account of creation than Genesis 2, and both were married together by an editor who came in later (or so it has been supposed by higher Bible critics).
In Genesis 1, you have God as a being separate and distinct from His creation. He creates an entire planet out of nothing. I was raised to believe that in this chapter He created the entire universe and all of the planets, but it you read the text carefully, you will notice that there is no mention of the solar system, no mention of the other planets, no mention of galaxies, or anything like that. The earth, the sun, the moon, and the stars are created. Nothing else.
This is because at the time the text was written, the writers had no idea these things existed. They understood the earth to be the center of the universe. They understood it to be flat. And if you read the text, you can see that this is the type of earth that is created. In the text, God creates light and separates it from darkness on the first day (which began at evening according to the calendar used when the writer lived).
Next, God made an expanse between the sky and the earth, and so "separated the waters which were under the firmament [expanse] from the waters which were above the firmament..." (Genesis 1:7). This was because it was understood at that time that all mankind lived under a sort of dome that was called the sky. Our domain was here on earth, which was a flat plain. Underneath the earth was nothing but water. You know this, because if you drill underneath the earth, water will come up out of it. The blue sky above was water, just as blue as the sea. You knew it was water because it would get grey and stormy just like the sea does, and it would rain down water on you. This is exactly the picture you get from reading the creation account in Genesis 1.
On the third day, God brings dry land out of the waters under the earth, and then He creates all the trees, jungles, vegetation, and such. He creates the sun and moon on the fourth day. They are "lights in the firmament" according to Genesis 1:15. There is nothing to suggest that they are in outer space or that the earth is orbiting the sun, or the moon is orbiting the earth. Both the sun and the moon are just floating up above, underneath the canopy of water. They are "in the firmament [expanse] so that places them under the blue sky, not above it. Anything above the waters above the earth would be considered heaven, the domain of God. Man had no business there. From heaven, God would look down upon man and could see all that he was doing, in the same way that, if you have ever flown, you would look down at the earth either just after takeoff or just before landing and you could see everything that was going on below you.
Now on the fifth day, the sea creatures are created, then the land creatures on the sixth, along with a man and a woman. It is interesting that in this story, the two are created separately, whereas in the second chapter, the woman is created out of the man. Finally, on the seventh day (in the beginning of Chapter 2) you have God resting on the seventh, Sabbath day. Then, beginning in verse 4 of chapter 2, you have a completely different creation story.
In Genesis 2:4-6, you have God creating the earth like a sort of garden. God makes man out of dust in verse 7, and "breathed in his face breath of life, and the man was made a living soul." I like this verse because I believe the author understood that there was a mysterious substance within man that makes him live and move. It is source energy, or "Qi" as I like to refer to it. He didn't understand these terms, and so he calls it the breath of life. And it is true that it comes from God, or, as I comprehend it, Qi energy flows from Tao.
God in this story is not a being high up in the sky, but rather an anthropomorphic being, a sort of super-human. He plants this garden and makes the first man the gardener. He lays down the law for Adam with the business of not eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now He decides that the man should have a "help meet" for him. He creates every animal and bird in an attempt to find a mate for the man, and the man amazingly names every one, but none of them are right for him, so God finally puts Adam to sleep and makes a woman out of his side.
It is really interesting how both creation stories give two different pictures of the woman. The woman in Genesis 1 is created separately and is seen as an equal, wherein the woman in Genesis 2 is meant to be the helper of man and is made out of his side. I think there's a little truth to both stories. Women are to be equal to men, but when a man and a woman marry, they find in each other something that they were missing in themselves. It is almost as if they were both formed from the same substance.
When I saw this for the first time in the Bible, it didn't bring my faith crashing to the ground as I thought it would. Now, I consider myself a Taoist more than a Christian these days, but this allowed me to be free from the constraints of a book. It allowed me to see the rest of the Bible in the same light. It is a very beneficial book for mankind. All of Western Civilization is based upon it, so it cannot be discarded. (Try it, you'll be in for a rude awakening!) Seeing the Bible like this allowed me to go past my ego and see that I am not better than others for being "chosen" by God and following the Bible while others reject it. I learned that that's not what life is about at all. And this allowed me to love others instead of sitting in judgment upon them.
It also allowed me to comprehend a the description of creation written in the Tao te Ching:
The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.
The named is the mother of ten thousand things.
Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.
Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations.
These two spring from the same source but differ in name;
this appears as darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gate to all mystery.
In the first chapter of the Tao te Ching, we understand creation to have come from the mysterious female, who proceeds from the Tao. From this female comes the ten thousand things, which is a poetic way of describing all that is. It is not as concrete as the Western mind would want, but there is something very satisfying to me in that. My Christian background still compels me to disbelieve the theory of evolution (It is only a theory after all). But the idea that all creation somehow proceeds from Tao is all that really needs to be accepted. Who care about the why and the how? Just yield and accept. That's all there is to it.
In the following weeks, I hope to write more of this subject, and also to explore Christian history beyond the Bible, in an effort to see the world more clearly and better know our place in it. I hope you will join me. Meanwhile, I would love to hear your thoughts. Love and light to you, dear reader.
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