Symbolic meaning sufficient
Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 12:50 am
This was part of a post I wrote back in 2004. Please disregard if you are a diehard atheist, as these thoughts are irrelevant to you. It was addressed to believers.
I am going to make an assumption here and guess that you would not press the claim that the Bible is literally true in all parts. Did the authors of the allegorical Bible stories do harm when they told them without explicitly stating that they made them up, or was there something to be gained from their existence? I think a case could be made both ways.
What if Joseph Smith made up the Book of Mormon? Could it have met the symbolic needs of the time to reconcile the meeting of the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the existence of American Indians? And what about the LDS Church that sprung from this? Couldn't God's love be big enough to cover this Church as well? Of course it could. Wasn't it already given to cover the allegorical parts of the Bible and the religions that sprung from them?
Unless of course your thinking marginalizes the grandeur and immensity of the inclusiveness of this love, forgiveness and mercy.
Anyway, that is just some of my thinking on this matter. We agree that faith is the key. I can believe one thing, you can believe another... It is only when we start thinking thinking that one faith Trump's another because we mistake the secondary existence of "tangibles" as proof do we become dishonest.
So you think ".... it is bad theology, and it is untrue". Everybody has their own opinion. But you are rearing that ugly phantom of "truth" like it really means something other than faith. Why not throw in a little Christian kindness and simply say, "it is not my theology or faith"?