here is something which bothers me. a simple thing really, though it is perhaps the initial miscalculation which compounds itself, moving outward over time, into the infinite array of hypocrisies, contradictions, paradoxes, and cases of near perfect paramnesia we feel assaulted with at this late date in human history. this bothersome crux of things might be summed up with three words organized into two sentence fragments-
“jesus says…” and “god says…”

why?

what do these fragments mean?

what do they say?

what can they sum up?

as i said, it’s simple really. any statement which begins in either of those two ways is making a strikingly huge and generally dangerous omission. putting aside the core question of belief in these two entities (or two aspects of a single entity depending on your outlook) saying “jesus says…” or “god says…” leaves out the important fact that whatever comes next is actually a reiteration of something which another ordinary, mortal, flawed, and fallible

said. in many cases that person also happens to have lived over 2000 years ago. simply put believers have the annoying habit of completely discounting the middle-man. that middle-man being not only the group of people which set their holy books to paper but the innumerable theologians, scholars, popes, and politicians who interpreted the meaning of these books and effectively handed down the notions which are faithfully regurgitated as “the word of god.”

this is a troublesome fact.

neither the old nor the new testament were found etched into a mountainside by lightening. neither were found in dried up river basins carved by the once flowing waters. neither arrived in the core of a fiery meteor. these holy books were written by people. people with earthy concerns. people with desires and ambitions and prejudices. people who got boners and diarrhea. people who (i must assume) would be considered now, in the year 2005, to have a 4th grade education in many ways. people who also happened to hold beliefs about the physical world so outlandish that even the most well churched and least schooled child would likely scoff at them. so why should the fruit of their political struggles and will to power be held up to this day as “the word of god?” i certainly don’t know.

add to this another troublesome fact, that the interpretation of these words, arrived at by still more flawed persons, inform the popular understanding of these texts. do believers not realize that their conception of notions like the devil, hell, sin, creation, et al, were arrived at and propagated much later? don’t they understand that much of it was codified in a time when the church and the ruling elite were one and the same? these were not altruistic innocents who interpreted the bible for the shared benefit of mankind! these were wealthy politicians who sought to consolidate their own power against the threat of other factions. don’t they understand that the face of evil evolves each year to conveniently resemble the face of their earthly enemies? don’t they understand that not only do they regurgitate ideas set forth by troubled men like st. thomas aquinas but that they overwhelmingly embrace notions put forth by

like dante and milton? poets! they (in tandem with the gruesome images on stained glass and in oils) may have helped the average man visualize hell and sin (the horror film pleasure of the middle ages) but they also just happened placed their own personal enemies there. why can’t believers see this? these texts are not “the words of god” they are the purposeful words of men.

these are books which likely began as a compilations of aural tradition. they were set down by multiple authors, and were, in their particular sections, likely aimed at different audiences, meant to sure up support for different factions. these are books which underwent change over time with additions and subtractions. these are books that have been interpreted to mean different things in different times. these are books which have been reverse engineered continuously to provide support for the specific concerns of each new age. in point of fact these books have proved to be nothing if not pliable and elastic. so each time someone draws from their pages to illustrate an absolute immutable truth, saying, “jesus said…” or “god said…” they are ignoring this one overriding truth- the old testament and the new testament do not reflect what any god said, they reflect what generations of people have wanted him to say. i’ll have to assume the same is true for all the holy texts i’m not familiar with.

omitting the human element in the prevailing conception of our gods… whether we outright invented them or not to pretend we have had no hand in his evolution… the conceit that the words written by men with all too earthly concerns must be taken as divine… the conceit that the prevailing notions built up from generation of terrified, petty, power hungry human to generation is somehow eternal and has passed year to year unaltered down to us… well that is why being told “what jesus or god said” bothers me. what if i disagree? i’m as flawed and self interested a member of the human race as any other mouthpiece of god we’ve had in recorded history. why shouldn’t i trust my own conception of god? i’m obviously as qualified as anyone else.