Tuesday 7 July 2020

THE RELEVANCE OF THE BIBLE

The Christian God seems so obviously a hoax to me, a power manoeuvre: in removing the sacred from the natural world and focussing it in one super-being, people become disempowered, for they no longer have access to the sacred in their day-to-day lives. From there, it is but one step to getting rid of the sacred altogether, and what you have is science.

That said, I think the Old Testament God is closer to what we call Spirit than is the all-loving New Testament God. Around the OT God, real things happen, like an envious man slaying his brother, and natural disasters like the flood. These are part of life too, they are there to be grappled with and learnt from.

I have been having a great time listening to Jordan Peterson's series of podcasts on the Bible. He works the stories and suggests what we can learn from them, bringing his own experience of many years as a psychotherapist. I think it is important to know the stories, because they are OUR stories whether we like it or not, they have been at the foundation of our tribe's mythology for the last 1500 years. And if you don't know your people's stories, then you don't know who you are. It doesn't mean you can't bring in new stories, but I think we need to know the meaning of the old stories.
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1 comment:

  1. Dr Mad Fish8 July 2020 at 00:23

    Yes but they are largely Jewish stories aren't they? I don't relate to the Old Testament much at all. The OT God is just like the Greek gods, which I relate to a bit more easily. But I can relate to Jesus, especially in the context of Jungian psychology. I reckon Jesus was a shaman.

    One of the best interpretations of Jesus as healer, prophet and wise man though was done in a series of lectures compiled into a book by Shree Rajneesh (Osho) - 'The Mustard Seed'.

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