“Unchanging”?

It may be very hard to engage with the Bible as an atheist; whether you have dropped faith entirely experientially or because you were born in an atheistic background, your reasons may vary. And I hold no qualms against either; I find that faith is a private journey that I see no reason to condemn or belittle and there is no reason to begin now.

Having said that; I like discussing my faith with atheists. It keeps my wits sharp and, more importantly, challenges my relationship with my faith on a level that is actually more helpful than listening to someone else who is like-minded, thus allowing me to grow rather than stagnate. I also find that it is none of my business to convert, so I enter these conversations to uncover meeting points rather than to “fish for souls”. Discounting that would be dismissive of people’s journeys, and everyone’s journey is there own.

One discussion that I have engaged with however was rather more of a head-scratcher rather than a challenge. The Old Testament God presents himself much more different than that of the New Testament God; and why is that?

And this is why this is more of a head-scratcher than a challenge: I still wonder why people think of the Bible as a continuous narrative. In this day and age it is, I believe, pretty common knowledge that the Bible was not written by one single person and across many years in different contexts in different styles through different perspectives and thus different ways to engage with God and different ways in which God engages with them. It is more akin to an anthology than a straightforward narrative. The only reason the Bible looks like the way it does is because of the Council of Nicea, where the books that make up the canon – those deemed most relevant and inspired with a consistent theme flowing organically from one section to another -THEME, not NARRATIVE – where formalized into one book.

And the theme is in the shape of a journey. Not like the Qu’Ran or the Upanishads which are collected teachings, but a journey.

Think about it; although we think of God as a being outside of time, this does not present one that is static. He creates the universe, He gets to know humanity from outside of it, but that does not quite go as intended; so He decides to put Himself in their shoes so he can understand humanity from their eyes and vice versa. Having incarnated his perspective and intentions, He leaves a group of people with this perspective and intentions for them to go out into the world; but they are initially lost and take their time to formalize themselves – even with continuous disputes arising to give it shape as they move further and further out – on a journey that continues to this day.

If the Bible indicates a journey, this, of course, includes change – a change in relationship, a change in perspectives, a change in how they engage between them. It does bother me how we Christians try to depict our teachings as rigid and unchanging when time itself indicated otherwise, including the Bible itself. Had it not been so, I would not even be here – remember, Peter and Paul quarreled over whether gentiles (non-Jews) could be Christians at all (Acts 15, Galatians 2: 11-14). And this is without counting the different charisms and perspectives of different Holy Orders that were at odds with one another – most notably the Franciscans and the Dominicans.

I find that when the Church presents itself as rigid and unchanging has made much more damage than it did good. Not only did it open itself more to attack, but in so doing it betrayed its own mission statement to be Universal and, furthermore, forgot that the most important element in itself is that it is composed of is HUMANS believing in God and engaging with its ideas through rituals, not statues – and even those change with time. If the Church removes itself from that perspective, it will lose perspective by dehumanizing itself and thus wither out of existence.

And nothing will be more disastrous to it than its own deeds.

But we know there is a precedent for that; let us hope that we are all the wiser for it.