I admit I'm a heretic. I do not believe that every word in the Bible comes from our Creator. In the beginning, perhaps it did, but centuries of human meddling for religious, cultural, and political reasons has rendered much of it suspect. Contradictions in the Bible, therefore, arise from prior human interference. It may be the case, also, that the propensities of biblical writers for using parables and code (a Methodist minister informed me that John meant much of what we read in Revelations as code to fool his prison guards; nevertheless, given the nature of the current U. S. president, one must wonder if there is more to it than mere cipher) created the appearance of opposition. I averred my unorthodoxy. Now, let me add the following. I believe that passages in our most sacred text that speak to His omniscience, His omnipresence, His omnipotence, His unending mercy, and His eternal love, come closest to the truth about Him and though His Son, about our relationship to Him... Yes, for want of a better pronoun, I use the male forms. Arguments about that are mere pettifoggery--with special emphasis placed on creating a fog of obfuscatory semantics... He is not evil. I regard with suspicion any passage that makes Him appear human in His nature. I would not believe in a supreme being so angry, petty, and retributive, that he would consign any one of us to everlasting agonies--fire and brimstone; torments; Dante's self-indulgent visions; Dickens' clinking, clanking collection of cash boxes and chains--after a mere lifetime. My Creator is more Godlike (as opposed to Grecian, Roman, or atavistic godlike) than any of that insupportable wishful thinking suggests. My Creator teaches... I could wish that He has provided a special place in Hell for the exquisite torture of those who claim to be teachers. I mean, of course, the inculcators, the propagandists, the uncritical ones, the union mobsters, who have helped during that last 50 years and to this day to "dumb down" their students--and our children--so that they unwittingly accept serfage in Obama's socialist America, instead of resisting it and fighting it with the weapons of knowledge and understanding that their teachers could have given them. Truly, I could wish for the worst sort of devilry to befall such fiends, but to what avail? Our Father in Heaven has other things in store for each of us according to our deeds.