The Bible: Commentary and Controversy

What is it? An age-old question asked by everyone from Adam to Charlie Brown. When asked,  Albert Einstein answered: “What is the meaning of human life, or of organic life altogether? To answer this question at all implies a religion.” Well, yes and no. What he should have said is “Do you mean the meaning or the purpose of life?”

The “meaning” of life in the commonly accepted sense of the word pretty well restricts the question to those who can ask it. Don’t get many ants, or elephants, or chimpanzees worrying about it. And when you discuss the “purpose” of life, you have to be careful not to individualize it, as in “What’s my purpose in life.”

En fond, the “meaning” of life varies with every person to whom the question is put, because “to me” is inherent in it. So it’s unanswerable universally.

Didn’t used to be. I don’t think Moses, or Noah, or any of those old testament stars would have had any trouble answering the question if anyone had asked it, which is an astronomically remote possibility. In their case, of course, both “purpose” and “meaning” would have prompted the same answer: to obey and serve God. So in that context, of course, Albert was right.

And if you are a religious person who believes in God, you would probably answer the question the same way, whether your God is Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic, Rastafarian, Mbuti, or the central figure in some other religion. As my old Catholic catechism taught us: God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in heaven.

I’m pretty sure if you asked any religious person, no matter what faith, the answer would be similar.

But that’s the meaning of their lives, not of life itself. The real question, it seems to me, is “Does life have any meaning?” That depends, of course, on the meaning of “meaning,” which the dictionary describes as “the end, purpose, or significance of something,” which definition exactly suits the question, which becomes “does life have any end, purpose, or significance?”

It would seem that Bill Maher, the poster boy for atheism, and his ilk, would be forced to answer “No. Life has no end, purpose, or significance.”  Maybe I’m being too harsh on old Bill. Perhaps his answer would be “the purpose of my life is to ridicule and degrade those I don’t like for the enjoyment of those I do.”

How would I respond? Doesn’t matter. How would you respond. Doesn’t matter. We don’t care about you, or me, or Bill, or Moses. We care about the universal meaning of life itself – by definition, its purpose. Not your version of it, or mine, or Bill’s, or the Pope’s.

And the answer to that is, in my opinion, to perpetuate itself.

Why is an ant afraid of dying? Why does it try to scramble away from danger? How does it perceive danger? What does it know of life and death? Why doesn’t it just sit there and let you smack it? Why does it care? Why do plants like Arabidopsis thaliana warn other plants of danger when they are injured? Why does a common housefly try so hard to evade the swatter?

Why is reproduction one of the most important activities of any species – only slightly less important than breathing, eating, and drinking? And why is it such an integral part of our beings, whether we’re flora or fauna?

Why? Because perpetuation of the species is our DNA’s prime goal, the most important motivator in every living thing, which means perpetuation of the individual is only slightly less important. It is why we breathe, and eat, and drink, and reproduce.

Imagine the beginning of life. It all started, evidently, with the first “live” creature: our Last Universal Common Ancestor, or LUCA. Imagine, if you will, a microscopic one-celled animal coming to life some four billion years ago in the hot soup of the sea, appearing like Athena, complete with DNA and a full set of 355 genes. Bingo bango bongo, all of a sudden there’s life, and a set of building blocks that will create every animal and plant on the planet for the next four billion years.

No one seems to know how that happened. In fact, scientists, biologists, and such don’t seem to care very much about how or why a tiny single cell organism should suddenly pop up with an immensely complicated and sophisticated set of world building blocks.

But let’s dismiss the how for a moment, and imagine what would have happened if perpetuation was not the singular goal of that creature’s DNA, and the DNA of all that came after it. Life itself might well have died with that first infinitesimal creature: the LUCA.

With its DNA commanding it to do so, however, LUCA was impelled to do those things necessary to stay alive, and to reproduce. But the perpetuation in LUCA’s DNA was not as simple as eat, drink, breathe, reproduce. It also included the only element that would guarantee survival: the necessity to evolve, to adapt to the environment and its surroundings.

Okay, let’s get technical for a moment. DNA (or deoxyribonucleic acid) is the hereditary material in humans and almost all other organisms. Nearly every cell in a person’s body has the same DNA, located in the cell nucleus. The information in DNA is stored as a code made up of four chemical bases: adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C), and thymine (T). The order, or sequence, of these bases determines the information available for building and maintaining an organism, similar to the way in which letters of the alphabet appear in a certain order to form words and sentences. Human DNA consists of about 3 billion bases, and more than 99 percent of those bases are the same in all people.

For simplicity’s sake, think of it as code, the kind used to write computer programs. Binary code has only two building blocks, or bases: one and zero. The way they are arranged tells the computer what to do. Human DNA is a very long and intricate “code,” with, as mentioned, more than 3 billion bases.

Probably the biggest advance in computers today is the study of artificial intelligence. Basically this means the computer inputs data, analyzes it, and makes choices based on probabilities. The key, of course, is the parameters set at the start. Asimov’s laws, for example.

Which fits perfectly with the goal of DNA – to perpetuate the species by keeping the individual alive at least long enough to reproduce, and by evolving to meet the challenges and opportunities of a changing environment. The same way today’s computer programs do it: by gathering information and using it to improve and/or adapt future individuals – making changes based on empirical evidence.

Which also fits perfectly with the meaning/purpose of life: to perpetuate itself.

Okay. If you read my article titled “Where We All Came From,” you know that in it I proposed the suggestion that DNA, very much like modern computer programs, is capable of receiving data, analyzing it, and making decisions based on that information. All creatures have their own version of DNA, which, of course, we know as “the building blocks of life.”

It all started, evidently, with the first “live” creature: our Last Universal Common Ancestor, or LUCA. Imagine, if you will, a microscopic one-celled animal coming to life some four billion years ago in the hot soup of the sea, appearing like Athena, complete with DNA and a full set of 355 genes. Bingo bango bongo, all of a sudden there’s life, and a set of building blocks that will create every animal and plant on the planet for the next four billion years.

No one seems to know how that happened. In fact, scientists, biologists, and such don’t seem to care very much about how or why a tiny single cell organism should suddenly pop up with an immensely complicated and sophisticated set of world building blocks.

Yeah, well, they say – the conditions were just right; acidic ocean rich in iron, sulphur, the development of amino acids and nucleotides, and whammo! This astoundingly developed creature just popped into being.

That explanation just doesn’t make sense to me. I have trouble believing that a simple one-celled creature could accidentally develop the material that would guide the future of the entire planet and all its inhabitants. Were there other creatures wandering around DNA-less before LUCA? No one seems to know. But obviously LUCA must have either been created with DNA or DNA was inserted into a living being. Was it a gradual process, starting with tiny bits of the DNA string and finally, with LUCA, evolving into a complete set? Well, no one knows that either, which isn’t surprising, since it happened four billion or so years ago.

However it happened, I believe this event is the most reasonable proof of an external intelligence – the thing we have named “God.” You may believe, as science tells us, it was some sort of cataclysmic, random accident. I believe that escapes the bounds of reason.

If you’ve spent much time on this site, you know that I believe the Bible is a collection of stories, some rooted in real events, some not, written to instill and reinforce the fear of God in the Jews. Strangely enough, the very first part of it – genesis, the creation of the world and its first human creatures – is by modern interpretation the part that is most consistent with modern science’s explanation.

My article “Genesis: A Reconciliation” on this site details the similarity between the bible’s account of creation and the one offered by science, up to and including the creation of Adam, whom science has labeled LUCA. And that same science tells us how Eve came to be, saying the infinitesimally tiny creature “duplicated its content, then divided, forming two beings.” Not exactly plucking out a rib and using it, but close enough for me.

Let’s skip to the bottom line. To me, the suggestion that all life as we know it was dictated by a creature that arrived in the world by accident four billion years ago is far more difficult to believe than the suggestion that it was it was programmed into this tiny, senseless creature by some kind of cosmic intelligence. God? Watchmaker? Master Architect? Other worldly beings?

Your guess is as good as mine.

Of course if you believe a cosmic intelligence was the cause, then you have to begin wondering how it came to be. Hmmm. I think I’ll go take a nap.

So let’s talk about God, and the Devil, and what to do about it.

Let’s say you’re at the end of your rope. Your house burned down, your wife/husband left you, your kids don’t like you, you’re out of a job, and your dog died.

And the devil appears.

“Sell me your soul,” he says, “and I will make you rich, give you another, more wonderful house, and a more wonderful wife and dog.”

Now what do you do? Faust evidently said “where do I sign?” But that was not logical.  Because if the devil pops up in front of me, offering me all that wonderful stuff, I suddenly realize he’s real. There is a devil. And since he’s real, he can, I am sure, give me all those things. All I have to do is consign my soul, tattered and unappealing item that it is, to him.

And why not? What use do I have for it? I’ve never used it much, never saw any real benefit from it. It hasn’t done me any good so far. But wait.

If the devil is real, that means a lot of other things are real. Like hell. And God. And angels. And if I sell him my soul, that may mean all that stuff I’ve heard about is true, too. Like unending torture. Which a minute ago sounded like a dark fairy tale, and right now sounds like someplace I really don’t want to be.

So that’s at least one strike against the devil, except he really is pretty appealing, the kind of person you’d trust and want to have for an advisor and friend. God help me, I really like him. And lord also knows I’d like to have all those things he says he can give me.

Oops. There’s that other big problem. If he’s real, so is God. Darn. So is this really a decision about whether I want to go to heaven or to hell? Well, I actually haven’t lived the kind of life I think would automatically qualify for heaven. So I might wind up going to hell, anyway. Except if you’re truly sorry for all your sins, you’re forgiven them, and qualify.

But can I trust that? Heck, I don’t know.

What I do know is the devil’s a bad guy, and God’s a good guy.

But wait.

My study of the old testament has caused me to believe that God is a narcissistic, malevolent personality, killing or having killed millions of people just because they don’t believe in Him. Umm. Did the devil ever do that? Well, the bible tells us God is the only entity with power over life and death. With some odd exceptions, such as Satan killing Job’s children and servants – with, however, God’s permission.

So… God, bad guy; Satan, not so bad guy? Is a puzzlement.

But wait again. That all happened in the old testament. What about the new one, in which Jesus portrays God as a loving God, who cares about us, who clothes the wildflowers and marks the death of even a sparrow? And who says His father’s house has many rooms, and He will prepare one for us?

Besides, Jesus said Satan was: a roaring lion seeking to devour Christians, the evil one, the enemy, the prince of this world, and a lot of other things.

I think the thing for me is that – if Satan popped up before me, in the flesh, so to speak, offering me dominion over the world or some such extravagance, I’d have to opt out. Not that I’d think I have something better going for me, but that a) if Satan exists, then probably Hell does, too, and by signing with him that’s where I’d be sure to end up, and b) if he does exist, then probably heaven, and repentance, and forgiveness do, too. And though I’m by no means sure I’ll wind up walking through those pearly gates, at least I figure I might have a shot at it.

So… thanks for the generous offer, Mr. Satan, but I think I’ll pass.

Maybe you don’t believe you have one. A higher power, that is. Maybe you’re convinced you do, and pray daily to it. Maybe you try to reach your higher power through meditation. Or medication. Or magic mushrooms. Or whatever.

The truth is sometimes you connect; sometimes you don’t. Or as the vested clergy say, sometimes the answer is “no.” Which is more twaddle by people who don’t really understand what’s going on, and what Jesus’ biographers were trying to tell us with his words. Because as they wrote, the computer was about 1900 years from being invented, so they couldn’t accurately describe the process.

I can, and will. It’s simple and achievable. In fact, it’s in your DNA.

But first, let’s backtrack a bit. Somewhere on this website I talked for a bit about DNA.

Technically speaking, DNA (or deoxyribonucleic acid) is the hereditary material in humans and almost all other organisms. Nearly every cell in a person’s body has the same DNA, located in the cell nucleus. The information in DNA is stored as a code made up of four chemical bases: adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C), and thymine (T). The order, or sequence, of these bases determines the information available for building and maintaining an organism, similar to the way in which letters of the alphabet appear in a certain order to form words and sentences.

For simplicity’s sake, think of it as code, the kind used to write computer programs. Binary code has only two building blocks, or bases: one and zero. The way they are arranged tells the computer what to do. Human DNA is a very long and intricate “code,” containing more than 3 billion bases.

I believe DNA, like a well programmed computer, is intelligent in the way a computer is intelligent. Let me explain. Artificial intelligence is undoubtedly the biggest field in computer science today. Basically this means the computer inputs data, analyzes it, and makes choices based on probabilities. Results, of course, are guided by the parameters set at the start.

Now. Suppose the parameter set for DNA is to improve the container. Wow! Now everything fits. The process of evolution is explained. More food in the sea than on land? Start developing a sea creature. Blind mouse? Start developing a sonar system. Beak too big to get enough food? Make it smaller and more pointed. With plants and animals, it’s automatic.

Of course, with homo sapiens the process is radically changed by our ability to process data and desire – even demand – change. No, we don’t have control of our DNA, but we can influence its choices with our conscious and unconscious minds.

The truth is, we are actually living, breathing computers, and our DNA is our programming. And how do computers get in touch with a higher power? Their operator connects them with a larger, faster, computer – one with immensely more data. The operator tells this larger computer what their smaller computer needs, and the larger computer finds the solution in its data and downloads it. How is that connection made? With an Ethernet cable, or through wifi, or with an unwired, un-wifi connection known as Bluetooth, which only requires a two-way connector in each computer: one for data going in and one for data going out.

In order to make this connection, the operator turns on his (or, obviously, her) computer’s Bluetooth, and tells it to seek other devices it can connect, or “pair” with, which Bluetooth does, and lists the number of accessible devices.

I assume you’re getting the idea. You, as a living, breathing, computer can connect your DNA to a higher power in the same way. Turn on your own Bluetooth, see what other “devices” are out there, and connect to the one that can provide what you’re looking for. Simple.

This is true no matter what your religious or non-religious beliefs are. You can believe that God is your higher power; you can believe there is no “God.” What you must believe is that the universe makes sense, that the DNA of every species is programmed to improve, and that improvement begins with individuals. That’s the first step.

The second step is belief there is a higher “power” that helps each individual member of a species improve. Not necessarily a god, or a prime creator, or anything else you can put a name to, but a positive direction for the universe inherent in its creation. Perhaps this power is available in infants and as we become more and more worldly we lose touch with it. The challenge is to regain contact.

We do that by consciously connecting. In order to do that, you must turn your Bluetooth on. You can, for example, pray all you want, but if your Bluetooth isn’t working, neither will your prayers. Same with meditation and medication. If you aren’t connected, nothing happens.

Plants and animals connect automatically; they have nothing to distract them. Ergo the process of evolution. Some people are, or have been, connected automatically. When that happens, they’re usually connected with just one or two data sources in the “great computer in the sky,” and lack full access. That explains savants. It may also explain off-the-chart geniuses.

How do you connect? We’ll explain that in our next post.

Years pass, a few minor leaders follow, and then “Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, so the Lord delivered them into the hands of the Philistines for forty years.” And along came Samson.

And, of course, another great story. A man named Manoah had a wife who was unable to give birth. One day the angel of the Lord appeared to her and told her she would give birth to a son whose head is never to be touched by a razor “because the boy is to be a Nazirite, dedicated to God from the womb. He will take the lead in delivering Israel from the hands of the Philistines.” He also told her pretty much what doctors tell pregnant women today, that she must not “eat anything that comes from the grapevine, nor drink any wine or other fermented drink nor eat anything unclean.”

The angel then made the man and his wife believers by shooting up to heaven in a tower of flame, That would certainly have done it for me. So the woman gave birth to a boy they called Samson. He grew and the Lord blessed him, and began to stir in him.

After a few years Samson went down to Timnah, where he saw and admired a young Philistine woman who, when he returned home, he told his parents he wanted to marry. They were against it, but of course they didn’t know the Lord was making it happen, wanting an occasion to confront the Philistines, who were then ruling over the Israelites. On the way back to Timnah, Samson was attacked by a young lion, which he tore apart with his bare hands, then went into Timnah, talked to the young woman, and liked her.

Some time later, on his way to Timnah to marry her, he stopped to see the lion’s carcass, and saw in it a swarm of bees and some honey, which he scooped out with his hands and ate as he went along. When the people saw him at the pre-wedding feast, they chose thirty men to be his companions, and Samson told them if they answered a riddle within the seven days of the feast he would give them thirty linen garments and thirty sets of clothes, but if they couldn’t answer it, they must do the same for him.

This was the riddle: “Out of the eater came forth meat, And out of the strong came forth sweetness.” (Youngs) Well, no one could answer that riddle without help, and Samson’s wife helped, haranguing him until he finally told her the answer, which she passed on to the companions. So on the seventh day the companions answered the riddle, saying What [is] sweeter than honey? And what stronger than a lion? (YLT)

Infuriated, Samson said to them “If you had not ploughed my heifer, you could not have answered my riddle.” And filled with the Lord he went to the Philistine town of Ashkelon, struck down thirty of their men, stripped them of everything and gave their clothes to those who had explained the riddle. Burning with anger, he returned to his father’s home.” (NLT)

Samson’s wife was then given to one of his companions who had attended him at the feast, which angered him so that he plotted an revenge to do them great harm. So he caught three hundred foxes and tied them tail to tail in pairs, fastening a torch to every pair. Then he lit the torches and turned them loose in the Philistines’ standing grain, burning the shocks, the standing grain, the vineyards and the olive groves.

When the Philistines asked why Samson had done it, they were told it was because his bride to be was given to someone else. So the Philistines burned the girl and her father to death, whereupon Samson vowed more revenge, slaughtered many of them, and went to dwell in a cave in the rock of Elam. Judah, with three thousand men, went to take Samson prisoner. Samson agreed to be bound and handed over if the Israelites promised they themselves wouldn’t kill him. So the Israelites bound him and took him to the Philistines. But the Spirit of the Lord came upon him; he burst his bonds, picked up the jawbone of an ass, and slayed a thousand Philistines. Then he complained to the Lord of his great thirst, whereupon He opened up “a hollow place in Lehi, and water came out of it.”

Some years later he fell in love with a woman named Delilah. The rulers of the Philistines came to her and said they’d each give her 1100 shekels of silver if she would find out and tell them the secret of Samson’s strength. (At today’s silver price of $17 an ounce that would be about $50,000. However, basing the value on what it would buy in the time of Samson, some historians calculate each shekel would be worth $400 – $500. Meaning Delilah was being offered at least two million dollars relative to today’s dollar.)

Captivated by the thought of so much money, Delilah began to harangue Samson for his secret. He lied to her three times, then admitted if his hair were to be cut, his strength would leave him. So Delilah promptly managed to cut off his hair, making him weak enough for the Philistines to capture him. They then gouged out his eyes and put him to work grinding grain in the prison. How long he was there the bible doesn’t say, but during that time his hair grew. Why the Philistines didn’t barber him every month is beyond me, but they didn’t.

One day the Philistines shouted for Samson to be brought out to entertain them. He was taken to a temple where thousands were waiting to see him humiliated. Samson asked the servant who had led him out to “’Put me where I can feel the pillars that support the temple, so that I may lean against them.’” Now the temple was crowded with men and women; all the rulers of the Philistines were there, and on the roof were about three thousand men and women watching Samson perform. Then Samson prayed to the Lord, “’Sovereign Lord, remember me. Please, God, strengthen me just once more, and let me with one blow get revenge on the Philistines for my two eyes.’” Then Samson reached toward the two central pillars on which the temple stood. Bracing himself against them, his right hand on the one and his left hand on the other, Samson said, “’Let me die with the Philistines!’” Then he pushed with all his might, and down came the temple on the rulers and all the people in it. Thus he killed many more when he died than while he lived.”(NLT)

An amazing story, one that – at least to me – smacks of the storyteller’s creativity. But as someone once said, “God works in strange ways His wonders to perform,” of which Sampson’s story is certainly an excellent example.

Now comes something a bit different. Gideon’s son, Abimelek, tells his mother’s brothers to ask the citizens of Shechem (Israelites), whether they would want him as the ruler, or Gideon’s seventy other sons. The citizens were inclined to follow Abimelek, and gave him seventy silver shekels, which Abimelek swiftly uses to hire a bunch of thugs. He goes with them to his father’s house and there murders his seventy brothers, the sons of Gideon, except for Jotham, who escapes and runs aways. After Abimelek rules over Israel for the ensuing three years, the Lord, wanting revenge for the murder of Gideon’s sons, stirs up animosity in the citizens of Shechem, who then post themselves on the hilltops to ambush and rob anyone who passes by.

So Gael, son of Ebad, moves into town with his clan, and starts badmouthing Abimelek, saying he would like to take his army and destroy him. So he calls his troops together and plans an attack, but Abimelek defeats him, slays his army, then kills everyone in the town of Shechem and salts the ground so nothing will grow there. However, there are still some citizens in the city’s towers. So Abimelek builds a fire around one of the towers, killing about a thousand citizens. He approaches the other tower to do the same, but a woman drops a millstone from high in the tower, which hits Abimelek and cracks his skull. Whereupon he commands his armor bearer to kill him, so it can’t be said that a woman killed him.

“Thus God repaid the wickedness that Abimelek had done to his father by murdering his seventy brothers. God also made the people of Shechem pay for all their wickedness. The curse of Jotham son of Jerub-Baal came on them.” (New International Version)

Again, after about 45 years of peace, “the Israelites do evil in the eyes of the Lord,” come under the thumb of a tyrant, beg the Lord to save them, and the Lord chooses Jephthah to set things straight. Jephthah, a mighty warrior and son of Gilead’s union with a prostitute, had been driven away by Gilead’s other sons, to save their inheritance. But later, when the Ammonites were attacking them, the elders of the province of Gilead came to Jephthah and asked him to be their leader, saying they would make him head over all those who live in Gilead.

He eventually agreed, and made a promise to the Lord: “If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the Lord’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.” An unfortunate vow, and a pretty nearsighted one, as he should have known that whatever came out of the door first was likely to be someone he dearly loved. But that goes back to our discussion of sacrifice, I guess. The more it hurts to give it up, the more the sacrifice means.

So Jephthah destroys the Ammonites, and returns home, and wouldn’t you know it, out of the front door comes his only child, dancing to meet him. I have another small problem with this. Everyone of any note so far has had flocks and flocks of children – from wives, concubines, slaves, whatever. But Jephthah has only one? Pity. He gives her two months to prepare herself, then sets her on fire, fulfilling his vow. Other battles ensue, primarily one against the Ephraimite forces, which Jephthah and his army win, killing 42,000 Ephraimites.

No. I am not lawyering for the devil. I’m not even sure there is such a thing as the devil, as you already know if you read “If there is a God…” on this  site. Neither were the Jews. So where did Satan, the Devil, Beelzebub, the Evil One, the Prince of Darkness, etc., come from?

Sit down, grasshopper. This may be a tough lesson.

According to biblical scholars such as Lucas Sweeney, there really wasn’t any “devil” in Jewish tradition, and therefore in the old testament, until the Persian period, from 300-500 years before the birth of Christ. Woops. What? Then where did all that evil come from? And what about the snake in Paradise? Truth is, God was believed to be in charge of everything up until that time, the cause of all good and all evil.

Consider Isaiah 45:7, in which God says: “I form light, and create darkness, I make weal and create woe: I the Lord do all these things.” Or according to Youngs: “Forming light, and preparing darkness, Making peace, and preparing evil, I [am] Jehovah, doing all these things.” That makes it pretty clear, except to an ambitious public defender, who would argue “No, God doesn’t do evil; he just prepares it.” But it still presented a problem. Why would a god who created the world and all of its creatures, who gave Adam and Eve Paradise, who was responsible for countless good acts, also be responsible for all the evil in the world? Remember, God described Himself as a loving and forgiving God, slow to anger and quick to show mercy. But how could God be good and loving and evil and hateful all at once? Was a puzzlement.

Enter Zoroaster, a Persian religious philosopher who lived about 600 years before the birth of Christ, and the concept of Dualism, which is belief in the existence of two supreme opposed powers (gods), or sets of divine or demonic beings, that caused the world to exist. One good, one bad, don’t you see. This concept put the uncomfortable Jewish minds at ease – God does all the good stuff; that other Being does all the bad stuff. Yay! And over time, the name that came to be most associated with “that other Being” was “Satan.”

True, the word “satan” was used with some frequency in the old testament, but it had a much different meaning – that of “adversary,” “obstacle,” or “opponent.” David himself is called by that term at least twice in the book of Samuel, but the word never has the meaning of “an immortal evil being.”

In many translations, however, “Satan” is blamed for everything from tricking Adam and Eve to tempting Christ, thousands (or maybe billions) of years later. In Job 1:6, for example: “One day the angels came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came with them” (New International Version). But Young’s translation reads: “And the day is, that sons of God come in to station themselves by Jehovah, and there doth come also the Adversary in their midst to station himself by Jehovah.”

Is this a distinction without a difference? Not really. If you accept that the bible is the word of God, then you must believe that God is the cause of both good and evil, happiness and suffering, life and death, as He said He was. And Satan, by whatever name you want to call him/her, is nothing more than an “adversary,” or, as in the story of Balaam and the Angel in Numbers 22:22, a being of some kind who only acts as a messenger or servant of God. This latter definition might shed some light on the story of Job, in which “Satan,” or the “adversary” is sent by God to wreak havoc on Job and his family. As a test, of course. This all-knowing being seems to be always testing his creatures to make sure they love him and only him. Which a modern psychiatrist might suggest stems from an insecurity complex. Or narcissism. But that’s stuff for another article.

As you may or may not know by now, I’m sort of slowly working my way through the bible, trying to discover what it means – at least to me. And it occurs to me that the bible as we know it is not really The Bible, as we would like for it to be, and as many teach that it is. Because of what it really is. And knowing what it really is answers many of my questions about it. Like why did God change from the old testament version to the new testament version after – according to the begats, etc. – more than 5,000 years of appearing to people, and killing whole bunches of people, and generally acting like one of the “pagan” gods of Rome, Greece, Egypt, etc.

The answer that occurred to me is pretty simple, and I’m sure obvious to more capable brains than mine. God is not God in the bible. Instead, the God of the bible is man’s idea of God. God anthropomorphized. Does that mean the bible is not a sacred work, or is just a bunch of fables? No. I have no idea whether it’s all true, or part true, or all untrue. And that’s not my point.

My point is the folks who passed the bible down from generation to generation verbally, and then later with the written word, made God act the way they thought a god should act. Sodom and Gomorrah, for example. Terrible, promiscuous, God-ignoring people who needed to be taught a lesson. So God wiped them out. “The LORD rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah — from the LORD out of the heavens. Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, including all those living in the cities.” Wow. He only took pity on Lot and his family, because they were good, God-fearing people. Except, of course, Lot’s wife and the pillar of salt thing, but that was really her own fault, right?

Makes a great story, teaches a great lesson. True? Archeologists say such a place might have been destroyed by a rain of meteorites. There is also a theory that subterranean deposits of petroleum-based bitumen, common in the region South of the Dead Sea, could have been released by an earthquake through a fault line, and somehow been ignited by a spark or surface fire. It would then fall to earth as a fiery mass. In fact, it was only after this theory was formulated that Sodom and Gomorrah were found – modern-day Bab edh-Dhra, thought to be Sodom, and Numeira, thought to be Gomorrah.

So suppose I’m an elder, or a “keeper of the faith,” and I run across the story of a city that was destroyed by fire. Pretty good opportunity to teach a lesson, I’m thinking. Noah and the flood is another obvious example. The beings He created aren’t behaving, so he wipes them out. I don’t want to appear irreverent, but that doesn’t seem very Godly to me.

Am I saying those things didn’t happen? Absolutely not. I’m saying if they did happen – whether God was involved or not – they were great grist for the mill of the religious. The truth is, the Judeo-Christian God presented in the bible isn’t so very different from all those other gods already mentioned, who were petty, tyrannical, and unreliable. Because they all have been humanized by the storytellers and writers. Does this refute the credo that every single word of the bible is divinely inspired? Of course not. Divinely inspired, however, is several miles from “divinely written.”

God obviously didn’t write the bible. It was written by men to record certain events, many of which contain reference to or the actual presence of God. And as a writer, I can’t imagine sharing those events, either vocally or in writing, without embellishing them at least somewhat. And I think it perfectly plausible that actual events would be attributed to Him and His power to make Him more awesome, more memorable, and more frightening.

Because that’s what writers – and good teachers – do.

Did God create it? Or did it just kind of happen?

I’ve read several of Stephen Hawking’s lectures about the beginning of the universe, and studied other hypotheses rather desultorily, but none of them answer my question. Is it because the question is irrelevant? Dumb? Probably. I’m certainly no cosmologist, or scientist, or time theorist. I’m not even in the same neighborhood with those guys.

But my question makes sense to me; it just doesn’t seem to make sense to anyone else. Anyone who counts, anyway. So here’s the question. If there was a big bang, and the universe was created in trillisecond, what was it created out of? Hawking says asking that question is like asking what’s South of the South Pole. Irrelevant and meaningless, because there’s nothing South of the South Pole. And he talks about the theory of relativity, and quantum physics, and how the universe was “created,” but not what it was created from. That’s bad grammar for emphasis.

In my little pea-sized mind, you/we can’t create something from nothing. If I want to create a bookcase, I need wood. If I want to create an ice-cream soda, I need ice cream. If I want to create a universe, I need universe material. Lots of it. That’s just me, of course. Someone who barely understands the basics of why gravity works.

The only two logical hypotheses for me are 1) there was a whole bunch of universe material available some time, and it got all squinched up and became a singularity and boom, the universe, or 2) somehow the universe was created out of nothing. So this narrow range of possibilities, I guess, accounts for a bunch of other theories: the string theory, the parallel universe theory, the space/time continuum theory that time is basically a circle, and probably a dozen or so others.

Of course, if something was created out of nothing, someone or something had to create it. Which opens up the God door. And raises the question: where did God come from? See how difficult this is for a poor little pea brain like mine?

In Catholic school, they taught me that the answer to the question: Had God a beginning? was No; He always was and always will be. That’s obviously one of the Great Mysteries. But the truth is, hard as it is to believe, I lean toward that theory rather than the theory that the universe just popped into being from out of nowhere.

It’s interesting to me that atheists and many (if not most) scientists can believe the something out of nothing theory instead of the God theory by creating all kinds of unprovable exotic ways it could have happened that way. On Tuesday of next week, or 50 years from now, will one of those theories be proved? Beats me. But right now I’m not getting on that boat.

The truth is there are mysteries out there that can’t be solved by experimentation. To come up with a solution you have to take a leap of faith – be born again, in a way. Put aside logic and convention and believe. In string theory, parallel universes, God, whatever. And do that without provable evidence.

But if I tell you the universe was created by no one from nothing, or that time is a continuum and this sort of thing happens every 100 billion years or so, or that God did it, you really can’t refute it – no matter how implausible it might seem — as long as the hypothesis answers the available facts. Which to me shows what rude, close minded jamokes Bill Maher and others like him are who make fun of someone else’s belief in God. Until something’s proved either way, if something ever is, one theory’s just as good as another.

I believe in “God.” Not Charlton Heston or some other old white guy in robes, not Morgan Freeman, not Groucho Marx or Whoopi Goldberg or George Burns, but a God whose shape and form are unknown to me. I believe because in my life I’ve experienced what I choose to call proof. I believe, as Jesus said, that God is good, and that good is God. And that God is interested in our well being. I don’t know why that should be true, but I believe it is. Perhaps God is simply a consciousness that exists in the universe. Perhaps God only created the circumstances in which we could be created, and we happened, and now God feels responsible. Beats me.

That does, however, lead me to evolution. Which is just about the craziest idea I ever heard of. Survival of the fittest works, obviously, but I have a hard time believing that a rat developed wings in response to its current circumstances, so it could survive in the future. Please. I can see it developing longer, faster legs. Bigger teeth. Whatever. But wings?

I lean much more toward the chaos theory of evolution.

My life has been blessed. Not perfect, but blessed. Maybe that describes yours, too. You may not yet be what you dreamed of someday being. You may have not yet accomplished all you hope to accomplish. Today is not the day to dwell on those things. Today is the day to celebrate.

“Count your blessings, Angus,” someone once said to my father, who thought for a minute, then counted “One, two.” Of course he was being funny (or thought he was.) How many do you have? It’s hard to know, because it’s hard to categorize all the things that have happened to you in your life. The good things are easy. But could the “bad” things somehow be blessings, too? They’ve helped in their way to make you who you are.

And today I say to you, “This is the day to take a moment and count yours. No, it’s not a competition. We won’t be comparing scores.

The first Thanksgiving. In 1623, Plymouth was in such a severe drought that (according to William Bradford) “they set apart a solemn day of humiliation, to seek the Lord by humble and fervent prayer, in this great distress.” That same evening it began “to rain with such sweet and gentle showers as gave them cause of rejoicing and blessing God, and caused them to set apart a day of thanksgiving.”

Here’s my message for today.

Like a car, your life has a forward, a reverse, and a neutral gear. Today’s the day we use them all. Put it in reverse for a minute, and be thankful for all the good things that have happened in your life to make you who and what and where you are today. Then stick it into forward for a bit and be thankful for all the things you still have time and will to accomplish.  Then slip it into neutral, and don’t think about anything but enjoying the day. You’re welcome.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!