Religion confuses me sometimes. One God - different interpretations?

Question

Isn't it bizarre how millions of people all claim to follow God (and to my mind there is only one!) and yet all believe in such different things? Sometimes it seems as though people only believe in what is conveniant for them to believe in because it merely suits their lifestyle. Who actually sat down and wrote the bible in the beginning? How many times has it been re-written and by whom? If it has been re-written so many times (and by different people) then isn't it conceivable that some misinterpretations may have occured along the way? This is not a criticism of faith, just an awful lot of confusion from somebody trying to understand!

Answer 1

I'm glad you're asking this, because EVERYONE should be asking this, and seek the truth to it all.
I guess everyone needs to find a way to interpret religion and how to best relate to it. The only problem is, everyone takes it too seriously and too far, now there are extremists claiming their religion is the right one.
Or maybe sub-consciously they know that Christ never visited their land, and theirs weren't chosen for the "holy land" and feel resentment towards this.
And aren't all wars in history mainly stemming from religion or race?
It's all very narrow minded thinking when you think about it.
There must be one basic truth to what the bible is trying to say (I'm referring to the Christian one for example) and even that itself if full of mythology, stealing stories from older civilizations like the Mayans for example.
For example: Adam and Eve are not real people, but are just a mythological story used for the mathematical "story" of the universe: the X and Y chromosomes: If you "break" a piece of one letter, you get the other.
Maybe one day we'll be able to find the real truth to everything, or become open minded and compassionate enough to find one that exists.

Answer 2

Oh poor Baby! I can understand your tiny head is confused! Did you expect the universe to be explained in a two word sillable or in a simple equation? Even science hasn't cracked our own genetic codes yet, let alone that of the animal kingdom, let alone that of the mineral or sea world or indeed the universe. So it's not that simple!
Plus you say tomato I say tomEto. We can't even express what sadness or love are. Now how do you expect God to fit into a simplified formula? How can we simplify God so that we all agree on it. Hell, we don't even agree on what the ****is terrorism; we don't even agree that global warming is real! There is no way we could agree on a definition of God.
Yet this is not a bad thing. We should accept this diversity.
The only thing we don't understand is that all religions (at least the major ones - Islam, Christianity, Hinduism and Hebraism -sorry for others..) ALL preach the same - LOVE and fulfil your true self.
That should be common ground enough.... Isn't it enough? What more do you want?!

Answer 3

Years ago there was a song w/ the lyric, "Working my way back to you, babe." The major religions are variations off that line. Each road represents a particular cultural - ethnic belief of how to get there.
FYI - The Bible was written by many different people over a 1000 plus period. Then it took another 200 years for people to agree which books went into it. We do not have the "original" for any of the books. The Dead Sea scrolls come closest. All together there are well over 12,000 bits and pieces and yes, they differ from each other occasionally. There are three additional clusters/groups of books which had maybe two instead of 3 of the qualifying characteristics.
Your questions are beautiful. They are the seed ground of a vibrant faith abirthing.

Answer 4

God has preserved His Word. In the spring of 1947, the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. These manuscripts were copies of large portions of the Old Testament, a thousand years older than any other existing copies. Study of the scrolls has revealed that the Bible hasn’t changed in content down through the ages as many skeptics had surmised.

Anyone can now obtain access to computer programs that give the original Hebrew and Greek words, and the only "changes" have been made for clarity. For example, the old English translation of 2 Corinthians 12:8 is "For this thing I besought the Lord thrice ...," while a contemporary translation is "Concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times..."


Did men write the Bible? Absolutely. When you write a letter, do you write the letter, or does the pen? Obviously you do; the pen is merely the instrument you use. God used men as instruments to write His "letter" to humanity. They ranged from kings to common fishermen, but the 66 books of the Bible were all given by inspiration of God. Proof that this Book is supernatural can been seen with a quick study of its prophecies.

Answer 5

Where you may have problems and I agree it is confusing it is not usually because of different translations of the bible it is more those who write ther own Quran and such The Bible Old and New Testament are true to God's word from the begining. If your talking Jewish religion the Christians religion follows their teaching up to Christ who is believed by Chrsitians to be the Messiah which is the fufillment of the law. While other religions that do not know him allow themselves to remain under law the Christian believes that God knew man could not perfectly follow the law and came to the wrold in the form of man to overcome sin and to be tortured and die in our place so that we who accept this salvation can be with him eternaly. Now If you consider most differences between Christians it is not atributed to diferent scriptures but sometimes different interpretations of the scripture...If you move on to the Muslim religion they have accepted the names of the prophets and Jesus but do not accept there teachings and do not accept the diety of Jesus. It may be confuseing that peple believe so many different things but it is not becase of the word of God but many different interpretations of what the word means. There are some things believed to be scripture that have no part of origianl scripture simply rewritten such as the Quran but the truth is still here and available to all who seek God his truth has been here from the begining and wil be here to the end.

Answer 6

the Jewish scribes used to copy it and count all the vowels or consonants from one end of each book to the other etc. They then published the figures at the beginning of each book and pronounced a curse on anyone tampering with the texts.

By the way you have it right in your first sentence!

One God - different interpretations

ie Get to know the one God and stuff the different interpretations. Jesus would have agreed with you because he says in so many words "why do you guys do so many weird things, if you really knew the Father you wouldn't be trying to kill me"

And that's what all these confusions do to the body of Christ; his church..."my people perish for lack of vision"

Please look at the original texts for a clearer picture, as it's getting late here and I'm off to bed, good night!

Answer 7

Unfortunately there were many misinterpretations along the way, It is because there are so many interpretations about the bible that confuses so many people today, one simply has to trust in God the father, and leave the bible to those that are trying to prove it's legitimacy and credibility of those who wrote the bible.

Answer 8

it's like if you told a friend that you got your hair colored and had her tell others. in time, there's a lot of different words going around that'll change the color people think they were told and even to the point where people aren't sure what they heard so they create whatever image of you that they want. get the parellel? but moses wrote the first five books in the bible and then those after him which should say so right in the bible. i understand your confusion. people change it to what they want to hear. but interpreting from language to language is hard with some words. if you look in a study bible, footnotes on the pages will tell you the various interpretations of each word and other details.

Answer 9

You've got it. They are all describing the same thing from different angles. How could it be otherwise? We all share the same deepest truth.

The bible is a random collection of ancient gnostic teachings. The deeper meaning of it all; your seperation from wholeness and your return, are still in there. But for a long time they have been mistranslated and interpreted by people who have taken it too literally; have not penetrated the deeper truth you can see.
Also, they are very old; they were written for a culture long gone. There are much clearer forms of teaching here for this time.

Answer 10

the bible has been re-written a number of times, but who honestly can prove that. Its all relevent. There is not 1 god acorrding to different religions. For example Muslims worship Muhammad which is not the Catholic God that most people know about.

Religion is confusing, very confusing, to tell you the truth if you know about all the religions your a genious but till then theres a little knowledge for ya.