We experience two kinds of evil: human-to-human (or man-made), and God-to-human (or “natural”).
Human-to-human evil is a matter of exercised will: one person, or a group of persons, decides to visit evil upon another. The question we Christians find ourselves asking, of course, is why a benevolent God who is supposed to love and protect us ever allows that sort of evil to occur, why he doesn’t stop the hand of the evil-doer.
The reason God doesn’t stop any of us from doing whatever we’re determined to is because God gave us free will. What we do with that free will is entirely up to us. But God loves us too much to violate or eradicate the very thing that defines us—and that’s our free will.
As I said at the end of my post Why Does God Allow Evil to Exist?, that evil exists doesn’t prove that God is not benevolent. It rather proves just how benevolent he is.
As to “natural” evil—disease and earthquakes and tsunamis and so forth. We ask ourselves why God allows those things to happen, why he visits upon us such terrible tragedies.
My answer for that is that in asking God to relieve us of the suffering caused by “natural” causes, we are neglecting to take into account what we humans might very well be able to do ourselves to mitigate or eradicate the suffering caused by such calamities. We have not, as a race, chosen to pool and channel our energies and resources toward making that discovery. We spend some of our money and energy on trying to eliminate disease and poverty, and on trying to predict and control storms and earthquakes and so on. But, percentage-wise, we don’t spend much of it at all on those sorts of concerns. Certainly not as much of it as we spend on, say, killing each other in wars.
We have no idea to what extent we can control or mitigate the effects of disease, famine, earthquakes, floods and so on. What we do know is that we’ve never come together as a race and dedicated our attention and resources to finding that out. Until we do that, I think we should be embarrassed to ask God to come do for us what we’re clearly too lazy and mean to do for ourselves.
No fair reaching up to heaven before we’ve reached out to one another.
![John Shore on The Huffington Post](http://johnshore.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/huffpost.jpg?w=120 "John Shore on The Huffington Post\")
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Well, first sorry, I was in out.
Yes, as you say: "If you can describe God it’s not God". Even is called a mistery: "And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifested in the flesh,…" But yes, He is God, He can do whatever. In fact He said: ""Or do you think that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He will provide Me with more than twelve legions of angels?" But then He added: "How then could the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must happen thus?" There was a purpose, to fulfilled the Scriptures, so important they are.
About the question: "Is God so narrow that he would only work through Jesus of Nazareth?"
Jesus said: ""I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me." That's the importance to the Adversary to discredit God as the Author and Creator. because if He is the Creator He has the right to establish the way, the law. And it shows Himself a superior intelligence, and our flesh can't stand that. So we need a conversion, that's the calling of the Lord
"Let the wicked forsake his way, And the unrighteous man his thoughts; Let him return to the LORD, And He will have mercy on him; And to our God, For He will abundantly pardon. "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways," says the LORD. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts."
Life is plentiful, better in His ways.
Hug
Interesting! I am pretty sure we are done here.
I think Leonardo is absolutely correct when he says: “The holy books, well named by you, never intended to teach us microbiology, rather to show us that the problem of man is a spiritual problem and then teach us the way to go back to God. While we can enjoy the Creation and all its blessings so we can be grateful to the Creator using it to well doing.”
But I think the following line needs a little unpacking: ” because Jesus said that His Word is true we can expect to be correct when is talking about Creation. So you can believe the statements of the Son of God or the suppositions of men”
To a non-Christian, just because Jesus said his words are true is hardly sufficient evidence that they actually were. For someone such as myself, when Jesus is talking about the truth he is talking about his teachings – that we no longer need to be held in bondage to ourselves but can encounter God and enter his ‘kingdom’ both here and now. If we believe that Jesus, prior to his resurrection, was omniscient then we can no longer see Jesus as a man, because a man cannot know everything about the universe. So as a Jewish first century man, Jesus certainly held to the conventional wisdom of his time, which put forth a six day creation. (He probably thought the world was flat, too.) On the other hand, being the ‘son’ of God ( a Jewish term used for others in scriptures) he understood that certain elements of his tradition no longer served God (if they ever did) such as the priestly and sacrificial systems.
But should these little bones of contention have that much impact upon our faith? Personally, I never felt it was important one way or another whether Jesus was born from a virgin, in Bethlehem, actually walked on water etc. etc. I see the value in these stories – I can even understand the truth contained in most of them. So, if Jesus took Genesis literally and was ‘wrong’ about the events of Creation – how does that damage the truth of his Good News, which is discovered only through experience, practice and faith?
Whether or not every event described in the Bible actually took place should in no way obscure the overarching truth contained within. Both sides in this debate (not just Leonardo and Mike) should step back from scriptures and look at the overall picture (the meta-narrative ) and stop looking so intently at individual scripture as if they were ‘clues’ that support their positions.
Cool. That's not precisely how I see it, but I believe that Jesus was, or became (or always was -eternally- it depends upon how we think of 'time') much more than human. I actually think that Jesus is one persona of God, since God is beyond conception, or imagining or knowing this is one way he encounters us. To me Jesus is God. But I can't tell you what that means. If you can describe God it's not God.
But the superhuman thing – there are a lot of problems with that. Like Jesus is Clark Kent who could turn into God with the snap of his fingers. He was holding himself back on the cross – could've called down angels and wiped out the Roman garrison. Returning on a white charger, robe dipped in blood, brandishing a sword. Right. This kind of stuff is pretty much what many people have developed as their theology. And it misses the point of his life, his death and especially his teachings.
Jesus is the most important person in history. To me. To a Jew it might be Moses or Elisha. A buddhist it is the Buddha so on and so forth. Is God so narrow that he would only work through Jesus of Nazareth?
Well, Jesus affirmed: "your Word is truth". For Him there's no doubt about what the Word says. He couldn't believe that the world was flat because the Word of His Father says:"When He prepared the heavens, I was there, When He drew a circle on the face of the deep," in Proverbs; or "It is He who sits above the circle of the earth,…" in Isaiah.
The problem of the man started (better is showed) in Genesis. And Jesus cites it in different moments as other parts of Scripture, to give foundation to His answers and prophecies and thus show the way of salvation. It was a need that our Saviour must be made according to the image of God, according to His likeness; in other words a man, never a kind of ape or proto-man.
"Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men.
And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name"
He was in the earth Emmanuel, God with us. He called himself the Son of Man.. Man with all failures deserves respect, because is made to the image of God, and it was that image that Jesus took and even sacrificed for humanity. What a mistake and what ugly consequences is just to look a human being as a kind of higher evolved animal.
"For You (God) have made him (man) a little lower than the angels, And You have crowned him with glory and honor. You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands (Creation); You have put all things under his feet (development of science)"
By 'Son Of God' I meant (in the general sense) that he was something more than human or 'of the supernatural'. It seems to my feeble mind that if you dismiss all the supernatural/divinity, then Jesus merely a really nice guy. It's all cool to do so, I just don't see how one can elevate a really nice guy above every other person in history.
It's not that I've diluted my beliefs (you sound like a fundamentalist) but that you are trying to distill my beliefs into some sort of one line slogan or motto. I can understand why – this is what many religious people insist upon doing. That's why they have the creeds. But if you ask, I mean really ask believers who recite the same creed what the creed really means to them you will come up with many different answers. You yourself say things like: "You seem to care not at all whether Jesus was the son of God" What do you mean by "the son of God"? What do you think this means? Because there are almost as many meanings for this as there are Christians. (Even though biblical historians understand the first century Jewish definition of this phrase – it means someone who has the character and the spiritual nature of God. Someone like Jesus and yes perhaps others.)
Most Christians see this in terms of the theory of Penal Substitution – that the "Son of God" is somehow God himself, in the flesh, presented as a perfect (sinless, unblemished etc ) loving sacrifice necessary to satisfy God's perfect sense of justice. And in some sense this is 'right'. But it is not the only way Christians have come to see Jesus (check with the Orthodox church in your neighborhood) and it not universally held among the mainline Protestant traditions (or with many Catholics) who have all been accused of diluting their faith.
Just because a person cannot reduce their faith into a soundbite does not mean that they are watering down their faith.
Not every other compassionate person of that time or any other has come close to the teacher that Jesus was. His life was the lesson. Others have done this, yes. And they have often said that Jesus was their inspiration. And their have been others who have spread a very similar message and are still doing so, and they are not Christian. Christians do not have the patent on the Way. But , like I said before, I encountered this Way through Christ. Why switch?
The way you describe 'truth', it could have just as well been the 'truth' espoused by Jesus' next door neighbor. The 'overarching truth' of Jesus would not be materially different than the 'overarching truth' of any thinking person at the time. Indeed the same stuff was espoused myriad times in history with merely a different cast of characters. There is no appreciable difference between anything Jesus said and what any compassionate thinking person would say.
You seem to care not at all whether Jesus was the son of God, but rather that his teachings were compelling. Lots of teaching were compelling, yet you bestow some very special reverence on Jesus to the exclusion of any other compassionate, thinking person of that time or this time. I am either missing some important nuance in your missive or you have so diluted you beliefs as to be utterly arbitrary.
Mr. Shore demands that Jesus was born of a virgin to warrant reverence and I am sure others here require some minimum 'miracle points' to distinguish him from all the other desert preachers. Unless I missed something; you require nothing but a name and a narrative to hang onto.
Dear Mike
Scripture is effective with a non-believer because it has something that make us believers.
Jesus never lied and He said "Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth".so arguments based on Scriptures are true. And it is important to you and me to know because Jesus, who never lied, said: "He who rejects Me, and does not receive My words, has that which judges him; the word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day.
The holy books, well named by you, never intended to teach us microbiology, rather to show us that the problem of man is a spiritual problem and then teach us the way to go back to God. While we can enjoy the Creation and all its blessings so we can be grateful to the Creator using it to well doing. But because Jesus said that His Word is true we can expect to be correct when is talking about Creation. So you can believe the statements of the Son of God or the suppositions of men.
"He who instructs the nations, shall He not correct, He who teaches man knowledge?"
"The eyes of the LORD preserve knowledge, But He overthrows the words of the faithless."
I won't take the time to go into detail Leo, but the boundary between non-life and life is not as clear as one might hope. I will concede that microbial life is actually quite advanced compared to proto-life (and it was biologists that teased apart their complexity. The holy books never mention their existence despite being 60% of earth's biomass) . Microbial life, though, seems the intuitive transportable form of life that could seed other celestial bodies…which was a point in the discussion.
Re: quoting scripture…
Quoting scripture does not make any argument more true and is worse than ineffective when discussing matters with a non-believer. In important ways, it is the definition of dogmatic.
You need to re-read what I said Leo.
Microbial life is certainly more complex than first life. Unfortunately for the scripture-quoters, every bit of evidence indicates that we are all descended from a single microbe.
For starters, Christian, let me say that I am enjoying the dialogue while Mr. Shore permits us to go on.
Christian said: ”My understanding is that the estimated age of the earth does not allow enough time for organic materials to develop”
I should start by saying that no scientist of any repute could/would make any such statement (as you related it to me). If anyone did make that claim; it is invalid on its face. To claim that there was insufficient time for process ‘A’ to take place, they need to know precisely what process ‘A’ is…and nobody does know what process ‘A’ is (in this case abiogenesis). Abiogenesis is rare, to be sure (at least from our species vanishingly brief time here when compared to the universe as a whole). That said, we have already shown that fundamental compounds of life can spontaneously occur in nature.
Any of the arguments of improbability are just that…improbability…not impossibility. It is improbable that I will win the lottery…but people win lotteries all the time. If the odds are 1 in 1 billion for an event, but there are 1 billion billion opportunities for the event, then it would be almost unavoidable that the event will come to pass.
Obviously life occurred somewhere in the universe at some point. How it got spread around (if it did) is merely an ancillary question and will probably never be answered satisfactorily before our extinction. We (an ‘advanced civilization’) have already sent space probes to planets and comets and beyond. NASA is scrupulous (where appropriate) to be sure space probes are clean so as not to contaminate the subject environment (i.e. Mars), but we could have already sent microorganisms beyond our solar system. Maybe in some many millions of years chance would deliver those microorganisms to a celestial body that would be hospitable for them. If Crick was postulating that life came from another advanced civilization, it is conjecture to be sure, but it has probably already happened once…and we were that ‘advanced civilization’.
Christian said: “That does not prove that God is ultimately a false concept, other than to say that too clear of a concept of God is bound to have many false qualities.”
This is an excellent argument for the deistic stance.
In any case; the two of us are not that far apart at a fundamental level, so it is not worth quibbling on some of these matters. I would like to focus briefly, though, on Crick’s hypothesis, what it really says, and your characterization of it. You use ‘desperate’ and ‘superstition’ when referring to Crick and his hypothesis of life being delivered to earth from some place else, but I fail to see how one can reach such a characterization even if one does not believe it.
For clarity; Crick’s hypothesis suggests that simple life (i.e. microbial life) may have formed elsewhere in our solar system. Given that our early solar system was like a bumper car ride with much debris and many collisions; it is easily arguable that debris from a collision with a neighbor like Mars might have landed on a young earth and, potentially, bringing microbial life with it. He certainly does not postulate that any civilization delivered life (complex or otherwise) to seed our planet. Indeed, Martian debris almost certainly did land here and did Earth’s debris land there. Moreover, the Earth is continually being bombarded with interstellar debris to this day. I also contest the characterization that his hypothesis is unsupportable and unprovable as false. There are many pieces of the puzzle that we can put together (and have put together) that shows material transfer from one planetary body to another. We, at present, may not be able to show whether a Martian microbe or a home brewed microbe begat all life here…but who knows what will pop up. If we were to find identical microbes on both Earth and Mars, that in itself would be quite compelling. I just watched a show called Naked Science that talks about the fingerprints that we can find from our ancient solar system: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/series/naked-science/3494/Overview .
Now if you are arguing that it is fantasy that complex life arose from simple life (I don’t think you are), well there is no controversy in the scientific community. Every biologist in the world recognizes Evolution by Natural Selection as fact [if anything can be 'fact' in science].
First, what a honor: "scripture-quoter". Thanks
Secondly, What?!
"simple life (i.e. microbial life)"
Oh how microbiologists would like that this sentence be true! The complexity, the perfection, the engineering!!!
"For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse,"
No., that would be pretty cool. It just seems obvious to me that Crick has just moved the problem off site. It could very well have happened that way – that's not my issue. (Although I had heard, perhaps incorrectly, that he did postulate some advanced civilization was in on the act.). My understanding is that the estimated age of the earth does not allow enough time for organic materials to develop, so rather than re-examine the theory, let's have life being introduced from an outside source. Yet some mathematicians have argued that the universe is not old enough for life to have developed within the narrow parameters necessary for (what we know about) life.
Either way, I don't think that the relative meritsof any of these theories about life (which I do find to be fascinating) in any way threaten the authenticity of faith. At least not my faith which is by no means deistic – it just, by it's nature, defies description. I don't feel compelled in any way to convince anyone that my faith is the 'right' thing for them.
because just because just because -jeesh!
Can all the self-proclaimed Christians out there get together and establish some objective, minimum standards for one to be allowed to use the name ‘Christian’? On this thread alone we have representatives of Christianity that run the gamut of ‘just believing a preacher named Jesus existed’ to…well…the other obvious extreme.
I think a certification program is in order.
please make that " no less fantastical, no less miraculous to the finite mind" . Sorry.
Mike, sorry if I gave you the wrong impression. Nothing gets under my skin anymore. (Well, OK, my wife is still pretty good with the old bamboo shoots if she puts her mind to it
).
You are still missing my point, though. I am not criticizing science or the scientific method. Crick's hypothesis, IMHO, falls into neither – he knows it is evidentiary unsupportable and essentially unprovable (unless the aliens come back!). It's an act of desperation akin to how hard the Creationists work at 'proving' the Flood carved out the Grand Canyon. He might as well say the Great Spaghetti Monster left life here. Now let's just start looking for 4.3 billion year old strands of pasta…..
I do not want to get into a futile science vs. faith debate. The problem with some theists and some atheists is that they think that science and faith are ALWAYS at odds with each other and they are not. Religion does not begin with a claimed truth – it was a search for the truth which resulted in religion – no matter when or where. Religious people begin looking for causes and, in the early stages they anthropomorphize nature and come up with their own particular concept of God. And science helps us to see where we were wrong, yet again, about our concept of God.
That does not prove that God is ultimately a false concept, other than to say that too clear of a concept of God is bound to have many false qualities. Our environment shapes our image of God and as our environment changes, as our culture evolves, so does God, or at leas our concept of God. To assume that eventually we, as a species, will evolve ourselves out of faith in something beyond the material world has not been supported by recent history. In my case, it was (admittedly a layman's) introduction to quantum physics that got me interested in the idea of God.
If Thomas Jefferson had studied the more obscure and ancient elements of Christianity (or at least the Orthodox Church) or some of the Eastern mystical traditions, he might find that other people of faith would agree with him. John will remember the old Zen line: "When you find the Buddha – kill him". The Church in Jefferson's day (and today) would not understand this.
The thing is Mike, science and mathematics are uncovering 'facts' every day that are no more fantastical, no more miraculous to the finite human mind, than the idea of God itself. In order for science to grow, in order for faith to grow, it must die and be reborn every day. Because only by being willing to let go of an idea, a concept, can we ever continue to learn. Any concept. Any idea. We hold on to anything too tightly then that becomes our stumbling block. Even if this concept is God. Or "no god". We can't move up the ladder without allowing ourselves to step away from the first rung.
I didn't mean to get under your skin Christian…my certification idea was in jest.
An important distinction, though, is that science does not claim to know what it doesn't know. Is light a wave or particles? It behaves like both and, depending on circumstance, our predictions/calculations are very accurate. That is not the same as claiming there is some 'fundamental light controversy' where physicists are split into battling 'wave' and 'particle' camps. All physicists (and beginning physics students) know that light can be described various ways depending on the circumstance. Of course this indicates there is some fundamental understanding of light/energy/matter that we do not yet understand and the lab coats will be absolutely giddy whey they figure it out. Importantly, though, they do not claim to know the answer to that problem so continue to look for the real answer.
To claim that Crick's hypothesis that life was delivered from mars (or elsewhere) enter into the fantasy world is a poor characterization. The fact is life appeared at some point and we are free to speculate on how that happened. two examples: Some hypothesize deep-sea thermal vents. Some hypothesize that life was cast here after some massive collision in our solar system. On the former; we know that the basic building blocks of organic matter can self assemble under various conditions. On the latter; we know that pieces of Mars have been ejected after some collision and landed on earth (I don't know the status of the research as to whether a microbe can survive the trip, but I know that bacteria can be revived after 45 million years). It is the scientific process to look at the unknown and speculate on what happened leading up to it. We then start looking for evidence to support or refute those speculations…no matter how fantastical. [An aside: It would be fun to know whether we are Martians, but the more important question is how did life begin in the first place. Whether it was Earth, Mars or elsewhere is immaterial to me. ]
All cosmologists assemble the evidence that we have to gain understanding of our universe. Where that evidence is ambiguous we are free to speculate and continue searching. That is [part of] the scientific method. Religion, for the most part, begins with a claimed truth and tries to make the evidence fit what they already claimed as true. Like Mr. Jefferson said…it is better to not know than to be wrong.
You're missing the point. Why don't you try and get all the cosmologists out there to agree on some sort of unified theory? Or the beginning of the universe. Or is light really a particle or is it a wave? (Is it chocolate or is it peanut butter? It's both!) Is the universe flat, spherical or a torus? String theory, anyone?
But heck, they are all deserving or the term 'cosmologist' even though they can't agree on what the cosmos 'is'. A problem occurs when one scientist becomes dogmatic about his theories and insists that the discussion is over – no need to look further. That is not science – that is religion. Or when someone recognizes that there are flaws in their theories (or the ones they ascribe to) and make up fantasies to fill in the loop holes (like Crick did with his intergalactic seed pods) – that's superstition.
So I can't dismiss science because just because there is not a solid consensus on what 'is' really is. And even then, all scientists are not universally opposed to the idea of God. I think the problem here is that it is not very satisfying for humans to develop a philosophy based upon what is 'not' (there is even a school of theology built along these lines) At some point we all want to know what 'is'. Theologians and philosophers and artists and scientists are all, in some way, working towards this. To me it seems that their lines of inquiry are not parallel, but converging.
Julia,
I think you need to set the time on your clock. Your comments pop up in the middle of the thread..
I think you are "flummoxed" for a variety of reasons, and most of them can be blamed on institutional Christianity.
The things that you see being dismissed by myself and others (biblical divinity, miracles a personal God etc) have not necessarily been dismissed. For example, I can see that the bible is divinely inspired – meaning written by men and women who were inspired by their 'faith' in God – but that doesn't mean that I believe that the bible IS God or dictated by God. This is only a recent understanding of scriptures.
I call myself a Christian (hesitantly, these days) because I believe that the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth contain the wisdom necessary to travel on the "Way" towards the Kingdom of God, a 'kingdom' that is accessible here, now, on this earth and in this life – not a place per se that we go to when we die. Though this afterlife obsession may be Christian doctrine, it is not something that I see in my study of Jesus. In fact, IMHO, almost all Christian doctrine has been added on to the teachings of Jesus and most of it runs counter to his message of the Good News (particularly the idea that he was the blood sacrifice necessary to appease a wrathful, uncompromising and judgmental God)
This available 'kingdom' is not only for Christians. Jesus was a Jewish teacher working within the tradition of Judaism among Jews. He was not establishing a new religion- he was showing the religious (and non-religious) what a life living in the "kingdom' looks like. Other teachers in other traditions – other "masters" – have uncannily similar teachings. Enlightened Buddhists see Nirvana in much the same way as many Christians have come to see the "Kingdom of God".
But I am not Hindu or Navajo. I was not born in China, India or Kenya. I was raised in the "Christian" tradition and have come to encounter God through the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth and have come to see him as the "Son" of God, just as a Buddhist might see the Buddha as a son of God. It makes no sense at this stage in my life to go shopping around for other teachers to follow (especially as this one's teaching has been so enlightening to me). Nor would I feel compelled (any longer) to persuade another person of faith (or non-faith) to give up their way of living.
If asked I would certainly speak highly of Jesus. I would certainly say that in some way he is "God" to me that in some way Jesus is alive to me and has become central to my existence. But I would not expect them to understand this, not from anything that I could ever say. Which is why, I think, so many neo-evangelicals resort to the persuasive 'stick' of hell because the Way of Jesus cannot be explained so neatly and concisely. Jesus himself spoke in parables and cryptic sayings that eerily
resemble Zen koans.
All Christian theology is pseudo-Christian. Which one tradition can you hold up as being the one true authentic practice? One of the problems lie in the fact that so many claim this for themselves, to the denigration of all others. Kind of nuts. And unlike George Bailey and Atticus Finch, neither Jesus or Gautama or Lao Tzu are fictional. But George and Atticus, both had an understanding, though imperfec, of the Way they taught.
Thanks for your thoughtful comment Christian…though I would have some quibbles with some of what you said. One nit to pick…I fully agree that God (or Buddha, or Vishnu, or Zeus, or Osiris, or Ra) is a mental concept, but I would, at the very least, categorize non-belief quite differently. If gods are created mental constructs; non-belief would have to be the absence of creating that mental construct [or discarding it]. To dwell on this would probably result in unending debate of semantics. I mention it because the distinction for me is quite important in that a good many apologists would like to have non-belief equated equally with belief so that they can use the same rhetoric (i.e. labeling non-believers as dogmatic).
What I see in both you and Julia is what I see in many tolerant, inclusive, non-judgmental believers (the majority I would like to believe). Some have successfully discarded sooo much of standard doctrine (Christian doctrine in this case), that they, under close examination, are much closer to deists/atheists than anything I would recognize as Christian…yet they still cling to the Christian moniker. I presume this is for traditional or social reasons. I am a bit flummoxed when someone can dismiss the divinity of the bible, dismiss miracles and dismiss a personal God yet still maintain that they are 'Christian' and even attend services. Are Jesus' teachings noble and good?…for the most part, yes. But in this pseudo-Christian interpretation, you can pick any character from fiction and build a good life around it. You could do worse than George Baily or Atticus Finch.
My concern is that by not fulling 'letting go' of a holy book, one is always [metaphorically] carrying around a tome that demonizes homosexuals, other faiths and non-believers, subjugates women, and exhorts flawed knowledge our of world.
I think that problem we have here is that too many people are claiming "God did this" or "God did that". Or that "God is this" and "God is that". However one thinks of "God", even if one thinks there is no "God", it is merely just a mental concept.
What Julia seems to be saying is that "she who knows does not speak and he who speaks does not know". She is not compelled to convert nor chagrined that others may have completely different ways of seeing (or not seeing) "God" than she does, even if those ways may at times generate toxic ways of thinking. Everyone does have a personal concept ( framework) but it is not that concept that makes the world 'work'. More often than not our concepts are not working, hence the state the of the world that we have made.
Of course this is one way to conceive of the 'Way' of Jesus. It is also the way of the Buddha and the way of many faith traditions. It can also be the way of science. Religious legalism (theistic or atheistic) coupled with self absorption and an intolerance of other perspectives is one example of a 'way' that does not work.
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