Jesus Christ
It seems that fairly recently the view that religion is a load of bollocks and is responsible for wars and so on has become very popular. There is no doubt that there is heart-felt sentiment in support of this view but to dismiss a belief that has been held for over 2,000 years so flippantly was not enough to fully convince me of this standpoint. I mean, how exactly did Christianity start? I wanted to find out a bit about it but there was no way I was going to read the bible with its image problems and the fact that it seems to be written in some sort of code, such is the antiquity of the text. Luckily I managed to find a children’s bible stories book which handily summarised for me most of the writing from the hallowed tome.
Upon reading it my reaction was that it was a collection of extremely good stories on the subjects of life and love. So why have people and, in particular, those in power accepted it as a truthful account of human history and still do to this day? It was clear that history itself could shed some light on the answer to this and so it was with great interest that I read a book called ‘Sophie’s World’ by Jostein Gaardner about the history of philosophy while on holiday. This contained an insightful section about Christianity and more particularly Jesus himself.
Apparently, about 1,000 years before the birth of Christ, Israel was a powerful and glorious country but eventually lost its power and its population was enslaved. People were looking for a saviour to restore Israel to greatness - which many people tried to do. One of these was Jesus and, being the first recorded human to preach the importance of love, he left the most lasting impression. He distinguished himself from the other potential ‘saviours’ by stating clearly that he would not be saving the people in a political or military sense but by expressing love and forgiveness for one’s enemy. The Bible resulted from the desire of his friends to record his revelatory thoughts and so they wrote stories and accounts that conveyed them. These stories mixed truth and fiction in much the same way as modern film and writing.
Why have certain people decided to abandon their reason and accept all of it as the literal truth though? There comes a moment in everyone’s life where you have to take a leap of faith. Many people have understandably turned to the Bible at this point. The misunderstanding takes place when somebody over simplifies the Bible as a rulebook on how to live. The reality is that this great religious tome can only act as a guide. This simplistic perpetuation amongst our political leaders only aggravates the awkward state of the modern world but it has proved, to me at least, that religion in itself is not just bollocks and shouldn’t be dismissed as such.
Upon reading it my reaction was that it was a collection of extremely good stories on the subjects of life and love. So why have people and, in particular, those in power accepted it as a truthful account of human history and still do to this day? It was clear that history itself could shed some light on the answer to this and so it was with great interest that I read a book called ‘Sophie’s World’ by Jostein Gaardner about the history of philosophy while on holiday. This contained an insightful section about Christianity and more particularly Jesus himself.
Apparently, about 1,000 years before the birth of Christ, Israel was a powerful and glorious country but eventually lost its power and its population was enslaved. People were looking for a saviour to restore Israel to greatness - which many people tried to do. One of these was Jesus and, being the first recorded human to preach the importance of love, he left the most lasting impression. He distinguished himself from the other potential ‘saviours’ by stating clearly that he would not be saving the people in a political or military sense but by expressing love and forgiveness for one’s enemy. The Bible resulted from the desire of his friends to record his revelatory thoughts and so they wrote stories and accounts that conveyed them. These stories mixed truth and fiction in much the same way as modern film and writing.
Why have certain people decided to abandon their reason and accept all of it as the literal truth though? There comes a moment in everyone’s life where you have to take a leap of faith. Many people have understandably turned to the Bible at this point. The misunderstanding takes place when somebody over simplifies the Bible as a rulebook on how to live. The reality is that this great religious tome can only act as a guide. This simplistic perpetuation amongst our political leaders only aggravates the awkward state of the modern world but it has proved, to me at least, that religion in itself is not just bollocks and shouldn’t be dismissed as such.
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