krazie45 wrote:
Not sure where the Dan Brown reference comes from, I didn't mention Mary Magdalene or anything like that.
The Dan Brown reference is a reference to "conspiracy theory" approaches to Christianity, as though the "church" as some institution on its own conspired to block certain books from the canon.
Personally I don't use the Bible or the gospels as a historical document as much as a guide to life since they were written many years after the events they describe and many stories were passed by oral tradition and therefore could've changed. Therefore I include the readings of the gnostic gospels as examples of good moral teachings much like the traditional bible, without caring whether the church included them in their Bible.
They weren't written "many years" after the events they describe. Most were certainly written within a generation. E.g., Mark was written before the destruction of the temple, so we're certainly looking at sometime in the 60s. Most people can remember significant events that happened twenty or thirty years ago (Will you remember 9/11? Pearl Harbor? JFK assassination?) With an oral culture and significantly better memories, there's good reason to assume that they're pretty solid on the major details, even if there are discrepancies over immaterial points. That's only an issue for people who are strict Biblical literalists, which most Christians aren't.
As for the verse I quoted, that is my interpretation of it and that's what I shared. You shared your interpretation of it, congratulations. Neither of us are really right or wrong since we didn't write it, nor do we know what the message intended.
Right--your interepration appears to lead to individualistic pantheism. If that doesn't strike you as a bit odd, that's kind of your call. You can say that neither of us can conclusively determine whether we're right or wrong, but it's factually inaccurate to say that neither of us are right or wrong. We didn't write Romeo and Juliet, either, but that doesn't mean that we can't get an idea of what Shakespeare was trying to say, nor does it mean that all interpretations of Shakespeare are equally valid. Though there are some differences of opinion, most experts--people who spend their life studying Shakespeare--come out, in large part, on the same ground.
Similarly with Biblical interpretation--while we can't conclusively prove exactly what someone intended by their writing, it doesn't follow from that that all interpretations are equally valid. Some are prima facie bad interpretations, like individualistic pantheism. You're welcome to believe whatever you want, but I'd at least recommend revisiting your conclusion.
My point of view at this time in my life is that I don't know, so I'm not going to pretend that I know.
I'm not pretending that I know, either. I am noting that some things seem more reasonable than others, and my lack of certainty doesn't mean that I should accept all propositions equally. Some things make a lot more sense than other things, and as rational beings, we have an obligation to treat the reasonable and the unreasonable differently.
