The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible's Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love

I've said for the past few years that I believe fundamental evangelical Christianity has made an idol out of the Bible--Spong makes the same case. Nice to know I'm in good company. I'll try and post a longer review later. Only about a quarter way through this now.Here is my complete view, more a synopsis of the gist of the book, not so much a review:My position is that the Holy Bible is not holy, nor inerrant, nor consistent, nor is it God’s purpose that we view it as if it were an idol, as if it were perfect. It is the greatest work of literature ever written down, but is similar to how the Greeks viewed Homer’s epics, how the Romans viewed the Aeneid, or the Mesopotamian epic Gilgamesh or the Hindu Vedas. It is how a people came to view their history and how they answered certain ontological and epistemological questions. To put it in that company does not degrade the Bible; it elevates it. It is how humans have recorded our search for meaning and truth, for God.It is not history (except in the sense of a mythic history). There was no Eden, no flood, there may not have been even a captivity in Egypt (there is virtually no evidence for it). To pretend that we should believe the Bible instead of science is ridiculous, and does much harm. No one should be pointing to Genesis as our model for creation and belittling evolution.The Bible contains much that is not holy: slavery, anti-homosexuality, violence toward women and babies and even animals, and a patriarchy that is still with us to this day. These need to be spoken against, not pointed to with holy fervor.Inconsistencies abound but we pretend they are not there. Inconsistencies have been noticed since the early church Fathers (Origen for instance). Some get around this by pretending that the Bible is inerrant only as far as salvation is concerned. I put myself more in that camp, but I don’t pretend that this isn’t a very large loophole. Some use the term “inspired” but carefully avoid defining the term. I can use the term too; have used it in the past. And to me the Bible is very much inspired, but I doubt that I mean what others might mean.The Bible--including the New Testament--show a people’s experience of God translated into language, a language that can only employ metaphor (that is all a language can do), and when we try and turn that language back into experiencing God we err if we train our ears literally. This is a great error for it misses the experience of God in humanity: this is what the Bible is for, this is its purpose (other than showing a people’s mythic history). To see the Bible as a box holding God is to limit God, and to substitute an answer where there should only be a question. Biblical inerrancy is more about power and doctrine and dogma. When belief in the Holy Bible as inerrant keeps people from Christ/God, then it is time to cast aside that belief.Literalists and other fundamentalists create a barrier, a wall, to knowing the experience of Christ. They create this wall of words that show magic miracles, that portrays a world totally unknown to us (prayers that heal, heavens that open up to angels singing, hellfire), an experience that is walled off to us because of an ignorance of language and of how humans tell stories to convey truth. Only when you see how the story is made, and ask what happened to cause a people to create such stories, do you begin to see the truth. Christ can only be known when you experience him; belief in a literal language masks this experience. It is time to cast it off.Christ was so unusual to people they needed to create a myth to surround him; this does not reduce his godliness; it enhances it! Why did they need to reach to such lengths? Because Jesus was so holy and good as to need this epic language, this form of literature that only the rare individuals of history get to have wrapped around them. It means he was truly different, truly of God. The proof of Jesus’ holiness is in the fiction of the mythology! Calling that fiction a literal truth is akin to labeling Jesus merely a man needing propping up, needing a mask of pretense. Call him holy by rejecting the literal lie.

In late Latin, propaganda meant "things to be propagated." In 1622, shortly after the start of the Thirty Years' War, Pope Gregory XV founded the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide ("Congregation for Propagating the Faith"), a committee of Cardinals to oversee the propagation of Christianity by missionaries sent to non-Christian countries. Therefore, term itself originates with this Roman Catholic Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (sacra congregatio christiano nomini propagando or, briefly, propaganda fide), the department of the pontifical administration charged with the spread of Catholicism and with the regulation of ecclesiastical affairs in non-Catholic countries (mission territory). The actual Latin stem propagand- conveys a sense of "that which ought to be spread."The attacks on Spong in this series have a right wing and fundamentalist ring, but let us not forget the Catholics who have long mastered the snear, smear and calumny in great and studied detail when it suits them, as it did in the "Roman Question" as the Popes sulked through the second half of the 1800s and first part of the 1900s, using American Catholics to attempt to regain temporal princedom for their Pope through whatever means necessary. While we today are all to familiar with the mean and lying right wing Protestants and their meddling in our lives we are less familiar with the 150 year old Papacy attacks on American values and liberal democracy, which continue to this day. They still think that American values are the work of Satan and would undo democracy if they can. The Vatican does in fact have the definitive "propaganda machine" which operates 365X24, every day and night, not just spreading the faith but coercing, influencing, threatening, cursing, blesssing and manipulating as much human conduct as they can reach. No wonder our grandparents totally feared Roman influence here in America - they were and are now more of a threat since everyone has relaxed and humming Kumbayah around the campfire. Look at the bishops who persecuted Kerry, I think at the instruction of Ratzinger. They are a threat to your democracy! The American fundmentalist evangelicals areabsolute amateurs and idiots compared to the Curia. I think that dropping the inherent anti-papacy kick in the US in the 1950s may well have been a colossal mistake. JFK misled us.So, while we have a silly, ignorant and simpering bunch of inerrantists of the Protestant description, we have the most sophisticated propaganda machine in the history of man also lurking in the entries on this book. And they mean not to provide criticism but bodily harm to Spong if at all possible. They want to turn back the Reformation. And, they have long tentacles and even longer memories -- their timelines are hundreds of years where tasks of oppression and inquisition are passed from generation to generation of these pedophile clerics, all intended to glorify Rome and not the people it has entrapped. The Catholic people are good people, if naive. It is the collection of false prophets in Rome which has them in their grasp that is the greatest threat to humanity writ large. Their grasp is still great and their ambition to enslave the world again clear as a bell.Spong's book simply tells it like it is - those among us without the wit to see past their eyebrows misuse the scriptures to attempt to compel others to see things their way, or be damned.I always find it amusing when I can "out bible" the fundamentalists of whatever stripe. It simply enrages and infuriates them. I owe this to my fundamentalist, hell, fire and brimstone upbringing, from which I have since recovered.So, beware of the "one star" nitwits, many of whom seem to spouting a line which could likely have Jesuit or Benedictine origins.

This is a great book, I didn't agree with absolutely everything Bishop Spong has to say, but it is certainly a book to make you think about the effect certain passages in the Bible have on the way we view things and respond. On the down-side I felt that the first few chapters seemed to be re-hashing the same point, but actually there are subtleties which it is worth persevering to get to. As with all the books by Spong, which I've read, I would advise caution about who you recommend reads this, it is challenging and could possibly damage someone's faith if it is shaky, or if they're in a vulnerable place faith-wise, but if you're up for really thinking and moving your stance, read it!

The Hebrew prophet Ezekiel in Babylon and the Christian Church during the last 17 centuries have certainly not assisted us to be tolerant and generous, humble and sociable. The great author of this book tries to give us the lesson to learn how mankind can live in peace and with love. If we don't listen to him, our civilization will collapse.

Great!

This is the book I have been waiting for all my life and I regret that it was not available 50 years ago.It ties up all those lose ends about theology that have plagued my mind for too long now. It is life-affirming and gives hope for a brighter future.

A little wandering in some parts, but a real mind-blower ... the way Spong tends to be. Highly recommended for those who have already started to see the bible as the composite composition it is. Definitely too much for fundamentalists, who really should read it.