spiker said

teresa said

Hi Spiker,

. . . I found the bible to be quite a depressing book, on the one hand I could find scriptures which made me feel secure and others plainli contradicted what I had just read.

It helps to know that the Bible(specifically the NT) is just a bunch of books by different authors with different opinions.

Craig Keener made a great point 

The first readers of Mark could not flip over to Revelation to help them understand Mark; Revelation had not been written yet.  The first readers of Galatians did not have a copy of the letter Paul wrote to Rome to help them understand it. 

** you do not have permission to see this link **

But the overall idea that the bible is the proper context to evaluate its teachings: In the sense that one should look to a different book for for the appropriate meaning is just wrong. You want to let the authors speak for themselves.   

The bible is filled with “contradictions.” I admit, for nearly 40-years, I didn’t understand most of what I read within the pages. I went along with someone’s interpretation, mainly because it made more sense than my own translation.

I was never happy as a Christian, and projected a phony happiness. I questioned nearly everything, like: Why did God look for Adam and Eve, after Eve ate the forbidden fruit. Doesn’t God know everything? He looked for Abel, in the field, and had to ask Cain what happened. Here is a divine entity that knows everything about us, but our whereabouts or behavior.

A few years ago, I began to look at the bible differently. I stopped taking it literally and began reading it as a spiritual book, which has nothing to do with the physical, but everything to do with the spiritual. The physical part of us is “dead.” The living are those who enter within themselves through meditation to seek God’s wisdom, which is “within you.”

These are stories of raising our carnal minds to a higher consciousness to achieve peace. That’s it. It’s the same story told a thousand different ways, but the subject remains the same: “Obtain peace of mind through meditation.” When you begin to meditate, you will develop your own understanding, about yourself, which make sense to you, and you won’t need to rely on other people explaining its meaning. (Romans 12:2) I’d be happy to discuss this further with you in PM.