The Wheat from the Chaff

It is easy to play the Bible Game. That’s what I call it. The Bible Game, as I call it, is the game that strong/mean atheists and “fundamentalists” / evangelical Christians play amongst each other. Google and wikipedia can make anyone a Bible expert in a relatively short amount of time. Like all easy games, The Bible Game bores me for this reason.

Yet, the Bible does not bore me. It is not easy to find passages that are moving, entertaining, or whatnot. The Bible is not a novel, it is a library. You do not go to a library and start at “A” and start reading there, nor do you go to whatever is at the far left because that’s “the beginning.” You could, of course, and certainly you’d have an amazing reading list! You’d certainly read all the classics that the library has to offer! But what happens when you reach the romance section [if romance novels are your thing, then insert a different genre, fantasy, or Joyce]? Do you read all the pulp that’s ever been printed? You could, but most people don’t read what doesn’t seem interesting. Why do so with the Bible?

Like those who play the Bible Game, I can go through and find all the parts of the Bible that conveniently fit my arguments [be they pro or con] and skip the rest, or I could use the Bible as a library: something to be used when you need it. I for one don’t need The Bible every day. Weeks or months go by without ever feeling compelled to glance inside. As far as libraries go, it is dramatically incomplete. I can tell you, it didn’t help me at all as a Senior in high school trying to learn Java. It can’t teach me to play the drums. It can’t teach me to operate machines. But then, a library can’t *really* do a lot of these things either. The only way I can learn is by practice, by experimentation, by making mistakes, and learning from people who already know how to do these things. Some books can help in understanding the basic structure, the names of certain apparatus—and it is these books that the Bible, as a library, lacks.

What does the Bible really even say? There are plenty of boring passages. But there are also poems, and stories, and metaphors. But in terms of a message, what does the Bible really talk about? Information systems and social structures.

Take the parable of the sower. “There went out a sower to sow, and it came to pass, as he sowed, some fell by the way side, and the fowls of the air came and devoured it up. And some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth; and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth: But when the sun was up, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit. And other fell on good ground, and did yield fruit that sprang up and increased; and brought forth, some thirty, and some sixty, and some an hundred.” That’s the introduction to the heart and soul of the parable, and although discussion of it occupies almost the entirity of chapter 4 of Mark, most of the discussion only goes to clarify the meaning of the metaphor. More time is spent explaining the metaphor as is spent stating the metaphor. Yet, in the end, the metaphor becomes much clearer than it would have been otherwise. Yet, the explanation is only given to those who are already devote followers. As Jesus eventually explains, “The sower soweth the word.”

The sower, then, is the disseminator of information. The field is the audience. If there’s a “stony ground” then the seed has less to work with and may die. On the road, the seed has hardly fallen before “Satan” takes it away. When there are thorns, the seed is choked out. Christians are quick to give this parable Christianity-specific explanations, as though Mark and Jesus needed to rationalize or explain their religion instead of just stating it. Some might claim, “This parable highlights the reason it took three decades to write the gospel, it needed time to grow.” Although cute, to anyone interested in understanding the gospels, the three decades really just aren’t all that important. Ironically, anyone trying to quickly rationalize the meaning of it becomes indicative of the “stony ground” that Jesus speaks of. Unless you give the parable some room to work in, the meaning is quickly squandered.

Many can sympathize with the message of the parable. If you have some valuable product, and you want to spread it, even if it is a good product it’s not necessarrily going to do well. Imagine you actually are a sower. If you are a good sower, you will want to maximize the benefits from your seed, and will want to focus on good ground. Why spread it where it won’t grow? And if your land is rocky, then you may very well need to clear the rocks before you can sow your seed. That is, even with a good product, you might need to work beforehand to prepare for your product. There are no real maxims that completely describe the meaning conveyed by this parable. It’s a simple yet effective metaphor, and quite frankly, one that many Biblical “scholar” game players seem to ignore.

There is nothing so astounding as the constant importance of the Bible being the immaculate word of God, yet the parables it sows being so completely ignored by so much of the modern “fundamentalist” movement. How can fundamentalism be so fundamental if they ignore so much of the Bible? Why do people argue so much about Genesis and evolution? Because that’s the part that’s at the very beginning. You know, the part that people read before they hit one of the boring parts. (Deuteronomy? Screw that, I’m gonna turn on the game!)

I am of the sincere opinion that if people who profess belief (or for that matter disbelief) in the Bible actually read the Bible more often on its own terms and not on theirs, they would have a much better job defending it or refuting it. (Of course, if it was so easy, why bother?)

Why are parables effective? Because they characterize. They demand information not be stripped out of reality, even if they are a metaphor. A single parable can complicate so many “straightforward” answers. After all, “omnipotence” comes up quite frequently in non-theistic discussions. And among theistic discussions, I understand that “the correct translation” of the Bible is frequently discussed as well. After all, if God can do anything, why can he not communicate in a more universal manner?

Instead of referring back to Genesis for explanations (I think that using Genesis to explain just about anything that isn’t about Genesis is dumb. Give to Ceasar what is Ceasar’s.) maybe one should try understanding God from what he does, rather than what someone somewhere said about God. Jesus spreads the faith by communicating. No telepathy here. Jesus doesn’t even use telekinesis—he commands the storms to abate, and they listen. After all, this is Jesus we’re talking about. He’s just like that.

Is God omnipotent? If Christianity is so great, why do people reject it? A great amount can be explained by the parable of the sower. Just as seed will not take root in rocky ground, so will Christianity not take place with someone with no interest in sociality. See: a simple explanation as to why so many Scientists deny Christianity. And not even in a way that diminishes the value of either science or Christianity. They live in rocky ground. Or, suppose you’re selling an original operating system. Thorns (Microsoft) may very well choke you.

I think atheists, too, could do well to give Christianity credit for what it accomplishes when it’s due. In “The Demon-Haunted World” Carl Sagan gives faith-based prayer the benefit of the doubt when it comes to psychological-pain conditions, for increasing the life-span of people with certain types of cancer, etc. Why? Because prayer can relieve stress and pain, and when one doesn’t have stress or pain different chemicals operate in the brain and in different parts of the body. A sad, hopeless person lives longer than a happy person with hope as a scientific fact, and a better life too.

When Christianity is effective at providing hope and relieving stress, it is worth it. But, when it misleads, when people bring drastically sick people to a fake faith healer, real damage is done and real pain is felt. Twain argued that the benefits of Christianity, in providing hope and relieving stress probably ends up keeping people healthier than all the deaths suffered by the extermists who bring the dramatically sick to faith-based healers. Yet, I don’t see why it is so for good and just people to do both—to recognize that, if speech, if talking was good enough for Jesus, why is medicine not good enough for man or woman?

Jesus spoke. He did not telepathically communicate. What is meant by omnipotence? Evidently, omnipotence includes the necessity for language. If that’s the case, then any definition of omnipotence that isn’t capable of including it simply does not describe the God and Jesus of the gospel of Mark.

I can appreciate a good metaphor when it’s a good metaphor, and I can hardly be said to be an unusually Christian person. In addition to having to talk to the storm to calm it (as also happens in chapter 4 of Mark), it took four gospels to convey the story of Jesus. Four differing accounts. Not every parable works for every man, and you cannot summarize everything in the world with a single parable. Metaphor is woven into our very language. To expect otherwise is to stand in a stony field and expect fruit to spring from the ground. What is this, Exodus?