Spiritual Autobiography: Summary, 3

I have learned, by being a Christian, to love and value truth. I am not thinking here of biblical truth. My appreciation of that has changed and morphed somewhat over the years. I did begin, like many in the Jesus People, as a biblical fundamentalist. I believed literally in the Bible, in everything, and being a thinking child, I soon found it harder and harder to square a lot of it the teachings with reality as I understood it. It was also impossible to talk to others in the Jesus People about it because they believed that it was wrong to ask questions and they were all suspicious of education or anything that had to do with higher critical thinking. Those were all the same ones who fell for the Children of God cult, by the way, which I, because I refused to shut down my capacity for thought, was able to get away from. There was, I concluded, a danger in too much togetherness. Everyone would end up thinking alike and anything that deviated from the accepted lexicon was shot down as heresy. I came to focus my attention more on the life and teachings of Christ and less on the commentary of Paul and others. I also came to view much of the Old Testament as having allegorical value, even if I couldn't stomach the slaughter and the barbaric executions, and saw in much of the readings I did something of what God was trying to speak to me about here and now. For example, instead of accepting that it was okay for the Israelites to slaughter the natives of Canaan (it was not, it was genocide, no matter how the fundamentalists will try to apologize and justify), I would extrapolate an understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit conquering and taking out all the sin and resistance in my life to the work of his love. Etcetera. Of course=, now I see the Bible rather differently. I still accept its authority as divine revelation, but not as the literal word of God. Perhaps as the Word about the Word of God, because I do accept that Jesus is the word of God and the Bible is the message about God made incarnate in human flesh as an act and sacrifice and victory of love. `Word of the Father now in flesh appearing. O come let us adore Him`. Truth is more than a compilation of facts. Truth is the very essence, the undivided whole of things. The truth of the universe is contained in the integrity of the human soul. And this very truth has been made manifest to us, not as a religion, nor as a creed or a set of sacred writings and texts, but as a person incarnating in his very essence the truth of the universe and it's creator and sustainer who fills all and holds altogether in a dynamic and mesmerizingly complex balance, rhythm and dance. by living in the presence of this same creator we become people of truth and what we delight in and aspire to is going to be in itself true. This has also become my way of reading and understanding scripture. For me it is not a record of miracles, healings and apocalyptic warnings, but each word bears something of the divine presence and weight. Do I believe literally in the miracles of Jesus in the Bible? At this point I do, simply because, why not? We do not live in a merely rational universe and time after time we run across experiences and evidences of a transcendent reality. Does this mean that the healings, miracles and exorcisms actually did take place exactly as they are written? How should I know? I accept that those things were recorded by flawed, limited and imperfect humans, much like you and me, and so we are not going to get the full story. The Bible is in itself a flawed document, because it was written by humans. But they were still inspired by God to write those things, so even with the errors, the miscalculations and the lack of insight and comprehension of reality as we now boast to know it, it is still the best document we have for communicating something to us of the reality of God's truth and love. Flawless, no. But that is the way of God to take limited and imperfect things such as us to manifest and show forth the perfection of his goodness and grace. Because God is love, as well as truth, and truth is made perfect in love.