BIBLICAL MUSINGS
Reading the Bible in a Year Has Not Been Conducive to Spiritual Growth
At least not Christian spiritual growth
I made a commitment to read the Bible in a year and write about my journey. I’ll still read (actually listen) but I’ll write occasionally.
I’ve been following Fr. Mike Schmitz’s program of reading the Bible in a year. I’m actually listening to it on his podcast. Sometimes I follow on YouTube where I can read along with his reading.
He includes a prayer and a short teaching each day.
It’s been years, decades since I’ve read the Bible in this way. I chose this discipline, and it is a discipline, to reacquaint myself with the Judeo-Christian scriptures. When I was in the convent, the Bible was important to my life. I was wondering if it was a collection of truths I would enjoy again.
So far, not so much.
I’ve read/listened to Genesis and into Exodus. The program has also taken me through the book of Job, some of Proverbs, and a few of the Psalms. Fr. Mike is interspersing Leviticus as we go through Exodus.
The “mature audiences” warning
I was originally bemused by his warning that the Bible contained adult themes and was not for youngsters.
As I read, I realized how much the Church, Christian or Jewish, cherry-picks its stories and ignores the lies, deceit, slavery, misogyny, rape, murder, and violence which pervades the scriptures.
Rarely do “they,” at least in the Catholic tradition, talk about the wrongness most, if not all, of these stories are wrapped in. They simply pick out a few verses “they” want you to focus on and ignore the parts which have absolutely nothing to do with love, growth, or spiritual development.
In my almost 70 years, why have I never heard, in the story of Lot, that his offer to give his daughters to be raped to pacify the crowd is wrong on every level?
Why have I not heard that the “manifest destiny” demonstrated in what Christians call the Old Testament is wrong. It is not right or good or holy to kill people and take their land away from them.
Saying G-d told you to cause such destruction is not different than refusing to accept responsibility by saying, “the devil made me do it.”
Oh, no, I changed my mind about the last sentence. Blaming the destruction of others on G-d is worse than blaming it on the devil. God is supposed to be loving of all. The devil, if you believe in one, is supposed to be the source of evil.
The truth is humanity is the source of evil.
The “manifest destiny” in the Old Testament gave the “okay” for Christians to sail across the Atlantic and commit genocide by obliterating 100+ million people indigenous to this land now known as the United States.
And this doesn’t count what’s happened in the rest of the Americas.
Let’s not ignore the acceptance of slavery and the conquering of others different from ourselves giving validity to the kidnapping, torturing, raping, murdering, and destruction of the families of Africans just so the white people could have an easier life.
The repercussions of the Biblical acceptance of violence, deceit, and “we’re more important and better than you” division continues to this day as the United States continued subversion and invasion of countries that we didn’t like and whose resources we want(ed).
That said, I plan on continuing my reading plan. (Today is about locusts, darkness and the death of the firstborn son.) I want to become aware of what I ignored in the past. I also want to re-discover the spiritual gems I had found before. Those I’ll write about.