What Is The True Christian Religion?/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX
HOW SHALL WE UNDERSTAND THE BIBLE?
The Bible seems easy to understand but actually it is the most misunderstood book in the world. It is interpreted by different individuals and sects in a thousand different ways, and this is the chief cause of the existence of so many different denominations of Christians.
One reason that it ts so misunderstood is that individuals come to it with certain definite theories which they wish to confirm from it. Let us say that it is true that they derive those theories from their cursory reading of the Bible, but they emphasize some one point or other, or various points which they unite into a system of belief, and then insist that what they have derived and emphasized is the true and only belief from the Bible and hence the true religion, and everything which is contrary to their view is heresy. They then teach their view, or interpretation, to others about them, and confirm what they reach from the passages which they think prove the completeness of their new phase of religion. Since most people do no clear thinking for themselves, they are open to an emphasis taught them by others of an ardent spirit. They see, or thin they see, from the Bible itself the correctness of the view which has been presented. Every passage which appears to be contrary to their interpretation is made to harmonize as far as possible with the system of belief adopted, or at last is twisted into an appearance of harmony, or else cast aside as unimportant. St. Anselm evidently approached the Bible with a theory of his own from his reading, but his effort resulted in a total failure to understand its message—in the eventual destruction of the Christian Church.
The method suggested of approaching the Bible with a theory of our own, and attempting to prove it by passages of the Word, is a most unfair way of getting at the truth of the Bible and it always results in an unfair presentation of its truths. There is probably enough truth in a new system so derived to prevent a total destruction of the individual. He is probably taught to be good and to do good and in such a simple way that he feels somehow the presence of God in his life. But we simply cannot go to the Bible or any other book with preconceived theories and hope to arrive at a true interpretation of it.
What is the true method? It is to take certain fundamental ideas presented in the Bible concerning the nature of God and the purposes or objectives He has in dealing with men and try to get at its basic teachings. When the lawyer asked Jesus which was the great, or greatest, teaching of the Old Testament, Jesus told him that the worship of one God and love to Him and the neighbor were the two great commandments of religion and that all the Law and the Prophets hung upon those cardinal or fundamental teachings of religion,—love to God and love towards our fellowman. It is true that no branch of the Christian Church gives this same emphasis in its practical teaching, even though all do so nominally. Instead they emphasize their doctrines which separate them from others. Therefore we see why all of them have failed in saving the world. But, at least, it is evident that we know now how to begin a true interpretation of the Bible. Anything which arises in our further interpretation which is not in harmony with the acknowledgment of God as One, One Being, and in a life of keeping God's commandments, summed up in the Ten Commandments, or the Two Great Commandments—our truest way of showing our love to God and our fellow man—the only way acceptable to God—is to be cast aside.
Taking this simple method of understanding the Bible we see at once that any doctrine taught by any church which shows that God is cruel and unjust, more cruel and unjust than any man of ordinary sensibilities, is untrue. Take the Plan of Salvation as an example. All people will acknowledge that the parable of the Prodigal Son is a true and obviously true statement of the attitude of God towards His erring children. It was not true that the Prodigal's father was angry with his son, wholly alienated from him. His love went out ceaselessly to have him see the error and evil of his life and to return to his father's home. It is a perfect picture of the attitude of God towards the human race. Who will deny it? Then when we read that "God is angry with the wicked every day?" what are we to think? Does it not obviously mean that from the viewpoint of the wicked the Lord is angry with him, just as the evildoer thinks of the police and law courts as hostile to him,—or, let us say, as angry with him? For a people who were idolaters and immersed in evil living, as were the people to whom the Old Testament came, who persisted in their evil living, as is witnessed by the denunciations of the Prophets against them, it is evident that God did seem to be angry with them; and with those who were trying to live decent lives when they saw what happened to the wicked it did appear that the Lord was angry with the wicked. They did not realize that evil punishes itself, and that God's attitude is forever that of the father of the Prodigal Son.
In both Old and New Testament good-intentional people, as well as the wicked, assumed that God was like themselves in anger, hatred and revenge, and God allowed them so to think of Him because of the need to try to maintain among them a semblance of order. They could not easily comprehend that the Lord's statement through Jeremiah was always true, namely, "I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee." This means that the Lord was always loving, always patient, always striving to save mankind from destruction. In the last book of the Old Testament, Malachi, the Lord says very definitely, and conclusively, "I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed." Is it not evident that God is not like a man to give way to anger, hatred and revenge. Thus when we read that "God is angry with the wicked every day," we realize at once that this is only an appearance and not the real fact.
But writers in both the Old and New Testament yielded to the appearance and believed God to be an avenger, ready, and eager to punish evildoers, and even constructed hell to be an appropriate place to punish them eternally. They were quite ready to accept the attitude of the heathen world and believe that God needed to be propitiated and appeased, ready to believe that sin must somehow be expiated, that since "the wages of sin is death," death must be the penalty of all who disobey the Divine law, and proper expiation must be made in order to escape the penalty of evildoing. The only way they thought of to appease God was by an atonement, or expiation, of their sin,—an atonement, or expiation, which would show their great sorrow for their evil. This led not only in animal sacrifices, where animals poured out their life's blood to pacify Deity, but to the hideous sacrifice of sons and daughters.
This idea was carried over into the New Testament, and despite the eternally true picture provided in the parable of the Prodigal Son, they felt it necessary to change the thought about God's attitude from that of a loving Father ever standing ready to receive back the penitent sinner to that of an autocratic and merciless Ruler, or Sovreign, who demanded the death penalty for every sinner, even of innocent little infants because they were the offspring of Adam. This is the change effected in the Christian religion as received by mankind by the work of such men as St. Anselm. And it is hinted at by writers of the New Testament who seemed to have forgotten the attitude of Jesus who said, "Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely," and "Him that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out."
After St. Anselm his interpretations were accepted by the Roman Church and later in the Reformation started by Luther by the Protestant Church. This hideous misunderstanding of the nature of the God of the Bible, this fantastic and inhuman idea of His cruelty, became part of the Christian religion and people have been persecuted ever since, or at least called heretics, who did not believe it.