How many Christians do not believe the bible should be taken literally.?

Question

All day I have seen fundie after fundie answers.

Please restore my faith in mankind. PLease, if you are an intelligent Christian please speak up.

I know you are out there. Not all Christians are the ignorant fundie type.

Thank you. Thank you so much. I KNEW you were out there.

Answer 1

I believe that the bible is not the "word of God" but a collection of transcripts that talk about people's experiences. Some of it may very well be God inspired, but a book that validates itself as "God's word" is not enough proof for me.
I believe that much of the Old Testament was written by very spiritual people who, for the most part, blamed human shortcomings on God. God told them to kill. God told them so marry such and such a person...
The New Testament I can follow better as possibly real stories. I believe that Jesus came to earth and did a lot of good things. He also teed off the religious bigwigs and paid for it with his life.
It took a leap of faith for me to believe that he came back. That was the miracle that has my attention. And the grace he had too! Just before he died, his friends left with their tails tucked between their legs and his fan club turned on him. He could have said, "Screw that!" and never come back, but he did come back and rather than chewing his friends out, he said, "Peace be with you."
After the gospels, the writings pretty much go back to people who claim to speak for God.
Revelations was about current events written in code. There were political things going on that people who spoke or wrote about openly would be executed. About 150 years ago, some historical illiterate nut said that Revelations is about the end times and the fundamentalists have been preparing for it ever since.

That's my take on the bible in a snap. Many "christians" say I'm going to hell for thinking the way I do, but:
1. thank God that decision is not up to them
2. I believe God lives outside the book
3. God gave us brains to think so I decided to use mine

Answer 2

The answer to this question depends a lot on where you are from. In my experience, I have met a lot of 'moderate' Christians who don't take the Book literally. And then I have met a few that are a bit hardline about it all. In this age where the world is a smaller place and increasing multiculturalism, you come across (at least where I'm from) people with beliefs in different religions. Who is right in the end? Is 'my God' better than 'your God'... is Islam or Judaism better than a flavour of Christianity? I believe people should be a bit open minded and not be blind to what is out there. Unfortunately, this also detracts somewhat from the sanctity of a religion - the power of a religion is it's core of believers and if they are distracted by other possibilities, well, this kills the religion. This is why 'fundies' get a little insecure about it all. Be they Christian or Islamic fundamentalists. People want to believe in what feels 'right' and so do I.

Answer 3

Consider this: try interpreting the bible functionally. Learn to think in general terms.Then all the words become a kind of code, kinda like DNA. And the code's keys are only known to the open-minded ones that can use associative reasoning along with deductive reasoning. Learning to translate the passages into modern-day slang usage can also be helpful:
how would we say now, what they said then? Remember, human nature has not changed since biblical times...and watch carefully for the prophesies to manifest in UNexpected ways- think outside the box...

Answer 4

The Bible should be taken with all seriousness literally.When you doubt in God think through out your life and find a time that something should have gone wrong and did not.Think of the miracles of birth and death how these processes happen and how special they are.Being a believing Christian can be hard but at the end of the day all the misbelievers will suffer.Our jobs areto try to guide as many of them to God in any means possible.This Sunday go to Church I say to anyone reading this.Actually listen to what the preacher is telling you.Read of all thed wonderful things He has done.Do not let others lead you away from Him.He is the way, the truth and the light.Remember that always.Never questionyour faith and if you do don't let it lead you to far away from God.It is easier to find your way back on the road if you are 50 ft. off it than it is 500 miles away.

Answer 5

Well, the Bible can be taken literially IN THE RELATIVISTIC FRAME OF REFERENCE of someone living 3,000+ years ago.

The bible is someone over 3,000 years old talking about what they saw.

That description comes from the terms of a 3,000 year old intellegence.

The Bible talks much of technology. The man of metal who ate a roll of parchment and spoke. Until the advent of computers, speech syntheziers and punch tape encoding that description sounds sci-fi, but in today's world it's actually quite BACKWARDS technology as we juse magentic disks instead of punch tape.

But, if God's servents were using punch tape driven speech syntheizers in metal robots back 4,000, or 5,000 years that is pretty advanced for back then.

We stopped using punch tape in the 1980s

But the FIRST offering of BASIC by Microsoft for the Altair was on PUNCH TAPE

The Bible clearly shows that God's servents had and used technology. The Angel who guarded the tree of life with a flaming sword.

That could easily be a lazer or flame thrower. Who'd go up against someone with a flame thrower 7,000+ years ago!

And it would look like a flaming sword.

Creation indicates there is a method and waiting period, otherwise God would have created everything in a Flash and it would all be set in stone in less than a second.

But it takes 6 days to make a universe.

And if you look at the basic time line it matches a lot of what science says until we get closer to man, but even that matches if you take Einstein's Time Dilation into account.

The Universe on the day of creation was moving fast, near light speeds.

The Universe on the day man was created had slowed and cooled and formed. So time was slower.

The Earth and Sun came into being on the 4th day, and man on the 6th day

It meets with the time lines of Science and Dr. Sagan.

So we can easily take those as literal if we look at it RELATAVISTICALLY

If TIME dilated logarithmically from day one to day 6 it can meet with the scientific age of things.

Even the great flood only lasted 40 days. Look at the wake of KAtrina, it will be fully gone and restored in another 10 years and you won't be able to see much more than a trace of the damage that flooding left.

Answer 6

I certainly don't take the Bible literally in general, and definitely not in the sense that fundamentalists do. I certainly do think that historical-critical investigation can sometimes turn up details that are factual (as well as showing beyond reasonable doubt that others are not). But a far greater number are symbolic. How could anyone really doubt that the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, who recognize Jesus in the breaking of the bread, is a symbolic story about the Lord's Supper/Communion, rather than a historical report?

More on my approach to the Bible on my web page at:

http://blue.butler.edu/~jfmcgrat/blog/
http://blue.butler.edu/~jfmcgrat/bible/
http://blue.butler.edu/~jfmcgrat/jesus/

Hope some of this helps restore your faith in humanity - and in Christianity! :-)

Answer 7

i do not see most of it as literal. i think much of it was originally passed on through oral tradition through stories that ordinary people could understand...giving a detailed account of exactly how the world was created would be difficult for most people to understand as well as difficult to pass along orally. so the main ideas were put into comprehensible stories. the stories were eventually written down to comprise the old and new testaments.

when i read the Bible, here's what i do: i read a passage, contemplate it myself, and then pray about it to see what God wants me to get out of it.

i hope that is an intelligent, non-fundie Christian answer =)

Answer 8

I can't take the bible literally without feeling like a fool. All I really know for sure is that I'm gonna die some day, though I believe I'll meet God on that day. The rest is a complete mystery.

Answer 9

in my opinion , i know the bible has been rewrote and rewrote over and over again, however it still has the same meaning that Jesus gave his life for us, there was a beginning and there will be an end. i myself have often wondered what is true and what is not, however it was written not for just religion but for history also.many of our history books have been changed deleted , words interpreted differently , however most all of them have the same meanings when talking about a certain subject.
there have been many things found that back the bible up in archeology,

Answer 10

Almost all of them, you get the self selected Fundies on here, real Christians have better things to do.... oops...