rikky51
Dear and glorious Modres,
It is the nature of a scholar to question authority, including his or her own. Having said that, I believe that God is in control--there is no inadequacy in stating this. I also believe, however, that His creation is more complex than some shall accept. He has provided humans with free will, and thus, free thinking and free acting. Consequences exist, even for the Bible, based upon human actions and reactions. Thus, it's a likely impossibility that the Bible has remained unchanged by human interaction with it.
Some folks assume several things: first, that God wrote the Bible, that it is a perfect or faithful and unchanged recording of His Word; second, that there is no historical or cultural context to the Bible; and third, that God has never left the Bible to human acts of free will. I assume, first, that God inspired humans to write it within the context of their culture, or His Word should not have been understood; second, that for His own purposes He has let our free will act upon it, along with everything else in this world, as we have seen fit, either to our benefit or downfall; and third, and of paramount import, that God is not evil.
I will present here no lengthy argument for my assumptions. Suffice it to say that our Bible today is not the same as the Bible of centuries ago. Ours has been subject to, and altered by, human decision with respect to it--e.g., the Apocrypha, the Council of Nicaea, the frequent translations. Cardinals, leaders of other churches and faiths, and scholars everywhere, have decided what stayed in the Bible, what could be left out of the Bible, and the original words and their meaning. In some translation, for instance, hell is simply the grave (OED). I believe that we err if we accept human infallibility in our current consensus; that those who partook in determining it were necessarily men and women of unquestioning faith and probity. Considering the moral and political history of every Church, it's an unconvincing possibility.
I believe that the core truths--God's love, God's mercy, Jesus as His Son and the Messiah, and His commandments to us--remain intact.
If an 'adequate' understanding of God renders Him petty, vain, and vindictive; which is to say, if an 'adequate' understanding of God reduces His nature to that of His creature, then I will remain perfectly inadequate and glad for it. God is not evil.
Again, I am a heretic. I believe that the Anti-Christ embodies more than a man; it is the sum of false ideas either expressed in secular terms or in religious terms; it is the sum of actions that go against the teachings of Jesus--and, thus--His Father. It is telling that the political party that bought and sold slaves in the Old South elected such a man as Obama. Such is the continuity of evil.