Is having a difficult time trusting the Bible the same thing as rejecting Jesus?

Question

I don't particularly like the idea of being an eternal reject but believing in religion is not exactly easy for me. My bones tell me that it is written by men but I can't prove that it is false or true.

What is going to happen to me if it is true and I am wrong for being atheist?

Note: I know about Pascal's Wager but that is not genuine faith.

Answer 1

Did Jesus condemn doubting Thomas? Honest doubt is a good thing-no one should unquestioningly accept the validity of any doctrine.

Answer 2

Your question is a good one! Unfortunately, I don't think anyone can answer you either way about what may or may not happen to you in the afterlife for being an atheist. We can only speak about things we've experienced and since none of us have been dead it's hard to tell. I feel your pain, though! As a cradle Catholic, I have struggled with my faith and I still continue to do so. There are SO many different theories about the author(s) of the Bible...I don't think that you having a hard time trusting the Bible means that you automatically reject Jesus. I think you can still hold in your heart a level of respect for Him as a man and the influence He had on the world. I hope you find peace within yourself. That is what truly matters.

Answer 3

The Holy Bible is the word of God who is Jesus. Written by men inspired by the Holy Spirit Given them in a particular way to use there individual talents to convey exactly what the Lord wanted written down for the sake of our salvation. As such the same Holy Spirit was given to the church to determine which books belong in the Bible. However not all of what Jesus said in His teachings is in the Bible, this is called Sacred tradition also given to the magisterial of the church in the teachings of faith and morals.

Answer 4

There is a great deal about the Bible that arouses suspicion. The fact that some of the books in the Old Testament predicted the rise of a good and noble king named Josiah who would reunite the northern and southern kingdoms were "discovered" just as a king named Josiah was renovating the temple and entertaining imperial ambitions gives rise to a number of questions. Then there is Constantine the Great, who organized Christianity to support his claim to the throne of Rome

It's a book, written by people, often at the urging of governors. It contains a great deal of wisdom, but then so does Douglas Adams' "Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy."

Answer 5

I don't think it's the same as rejecting Jesus. It's true, the Bible was written by, and compiled by, and translated multiple times by imperfect humans.

But who else does God have to work with here? God's work is done all the time by imprefect people, and sometimes they mess up a little bit...Sometimes we just have to read with a discerning heart and seek out the precious truths that still shine through it.

Answer 6

Just pray and he will show you how to read the bible and understand it. It is true that you have to be saved. You must believe in Jesus and that he died and arose for you, that you know you sin and ask for forgiveness and ask him into your heart. If you do this and mean it, nothing can take away that salvation. And once saved always saved because after a baby is born, you can't undo that. Just like your soul. Being born again can't be taken back. Just pray. God Bless

Answer 7

If you believe in Jesus that is all that matters. However if you are a atheist and do not believe in Jesus the Bible says that those do not believe will suffer seperated from God forever. Some believe that in itself is Hell to be away from God. Others believe that Hell is full of Fire and a place of final judgement. Do not follow or worry about the rules of man. The only way, the ONE WAY is to believe in Jesus.

Answer 8

I guess the best answer to this is what part do you have trouble with?

In order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven you HAVE to believe Jesus was the son of God and that he died for your sins. There is an ancient historian named Josephus that documents that he was real. if memory serves me correctly, Josephus even chronicled the ressurrection.

From my veiw point, it you do not accept the fact that Jesus loved you enought to die for you then you are going to burn eternally. That breaks my heart. I desire than none should perish, but will not candy coat the truth. Because "You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free."

Answer 9

The Bible says, The just shall live by faith and faith without works is dead. Nevermind what you don't understand, by faith pray and read God's Word and fellowship with His people. By next year this time, you will not be the same.

Answer 10

It is actually rather easy to prove it was written by men -- but that does not mean rejecting Christ. Christianity simply means Christ follower, not book follower. As for the book:

The canon of the Bible was not formalized until the Council of Carthage -- when it affirmed a resolution of the synod of Hippo recognizing a group of books drawn together and claimed as divine by Bishop Anathasius. Anathasius did not even coin the word canon until 327 and the Council of Carthage did not formalize the list approved by Hippo until the 390s, and then sent it on to "the Church across the sea" (Rome) for the Pope's approval.

There are no full copies of what is now considered scripture until the 4th century. There are two copies from the 4th century (Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus) together with hundreds of manuscript fragments of various forms (Papyrus and Vellum Manuscripts and Vellum Palimpsests). Overall there are over 5000 copies of at least part of the present canonical Bible that are from the sixth century or earlier. These range from a few verses to whole books, to Bibles that were read in churches. According to Dr. Bart Ehrman, one of the foremost experts in the world on Textual criticism and Textual reconstruction, those manuscripts have between them at least 200,000 differences. Some of those differences are minor, or meaningless -- but some are very important and would change core Christian doctrines like the Virgin birth of our Lord and his divinity -- among others.

One does not need to be an expert to see that the Bible is fiction, and not the Word of God however. Even the American Bible Society explains scriptural accreation as starting with Hebrew tribesmen telling stories around a campfire. That is exactly where the earliest parts of the Bible started -- then it was expanded through midrash and so forth.

Looking at the received texts, the idea of Sola Scriptura becomes evidently ludicrous. The Bible says that the world has corners (Isaiah 11:12) and that it sets on pillars (I Samuel 2:8). It says that God accepted a human sacrifice -- he may have prevented Isaac's, but he allowed a general to sacrifice his own daughter without even a murmur, the text giving tacit support to the idea that having given his word, the man had to kill his child. (Judges 11:30-39). It clearly maintains that genocide is often commanded by God (Joshua 10:40-42 and I Samuel 15: 2, 3 and 8) and that, after killing all the adults in a race, taking the female children as sex slaves is permissible (Numbers 31: 17-18).

The God revealed by the Bible is not only both a liar who doesn't know the natural laws of his own world, and a monster, as shown above -- but he has no real regard, even for his own people, whom he forces into cannibalism (Leviticus 26: 27-29) when he is mad at them; or his priests, whose faces he wipes with dung (Malachi 2:1-3).

It is not only gays and lesbians that are hated by bible-god. This monstrosity also suggests killing kids who eat or drink too much (Deuteronomy 21: 18-21), and says that if he is angry with parents he will kill their children (Leviticus 26:22) and he blames things upon children whose great-great-great grandfathers committed the things being blamed on the kids (Exodus 20: 5).

Putting it in a word, bible-god is a monstrosity, a horrific demiurge of evil. Something that even he admits ( Isaiah 45:7 ) [Furthermore, the word used in Hebrew for evil, the word ra' is widely conceded to mean a number of different things: It can mean "wickedness," "mischief," "bad," "trouble," "hurt," "sore," "affliction," "ill," "adversity," "harm," "grievous," and "sad." So no matter what particular interpretation is given of this word -- it has profoundly negative implications. The idea that god is sovereign over the affairs of man makes this even worse, because no matter what interpretation it has, it indicates that bible-god deliberately does harm.]; evil about which he sometimes changes his mind (Exodus 32:14). What a font of unchanging morality -- that almighty God can decide to kill an entire people, and then be talked out of it by a human servant... Furthermore, it is obvious, if God can change his mind, then even if the Bible were not full of errors and horrors, you could not trust that God had not changed his mind on any other issue in it.

So, yes, I suppose if one wants to take as truth a book that says that beetles have four legs instead of six (Leviticus 11: 21-23) and that rabbits chew their cud [which they do NOT] (Deuteronomy 14:7) and if you are willing to, having accepted it as truth, overlook the fact that bible-god routinely changed his mind (I can show you other instances if you wish) then yeah, I suppose its words would matter and gays are therefore going to hell.

I on the other hand, while a Christian (as in Christ follower) am NOT a literalist, and do not think that a book of bronze age myths owing heavily to the Sumerian and Egyptian myths in the Old Testament and to a collection of pagan faiths, particularly Mithraism in the New Testament matters at all.

Christianity is centered around love, faith in Christ, and Eucharist. At best the Bible is sacred because of its place in the life of the early church and should be regarded as holy myth -- stress on the myth. And what is a myth? It is fiction.

I hope that helped, please feel free to write me at any time if you wish to chat about it -- either by e-mail or snail mail.

Regards,

Reynolds Jones
PO Box 1322
Schenectady, NY 12301
http://www.rebuff.org
[e-mail]

Answer 11

The Bible is a book of mostly myth mixed with some history. Most credible scholars do not consider it a trustworthy account of anything.

If you are really uncomfortable being an atheist, don't be a atheist but keep asking questions.