Bible Literacy | Temple of Dust, Altar of Light - the Reckoning

I think there comes a point in everyone's life, where they start to twist things to conform with their worldview. Whether we want to or not, I think it eventually starts to happen as our naturally evolving understanding starts running into issues of cognitive dissonance. That is simply a function of "the Confusion". The great variety of beliefs that there are and the great many ways to get to those make it so that we're likely to find ourselves down some rabbit hole that's difficult to get out of. And like in one of those silly games where players need to eat stuff like other players on the map to grow bigger, the scene is eventually dominated by a few really large ones; And while there sure are those more coherent than others, the issue "right now" would turn out to be that the more important thing is how strongly the individuals that subscribe to a belief believe in it.

It sure is possible to fall down more advantageous rabbit holes. I'd argue that that's kind of the point. If you hone your mind to respond to reason and all that, your cognitive dissonance is more likely to save you rather than hurt you.
However - due to how the world is setup, your logic and reason may serve you well a lot of the time, but eventually requires you to sacrifice "nonsense" such as faith and scripture. Or you're really tuned into matters of faith and scripture, but how to make any practical sense of it would easily be far far beyond you.


Anyhow - as for where my belief is at, the matter of how to value the bible is a critical piece of the puzzle. And I think I made a good case for my position on the matter. And to bolster that with a few more words is why I'm writing this.
I mean, the problem is that it would seem that we're either Bible literalists or not. Either we stick to what's in the book and then ... [whatever] ... or we don't but then we're at risk of cherry picking. But of course there's more to that. I mean, if our position were, that the Bible is of God - the one and only - then our position held, that properly understanding it tells us more about Him. However, if we believe that people tinkered with it, not knowing the extent to which it even is representative of God's will - we kind-of can't be literalist about it.

The situation is then this, that simple doubt does in effect cancel out the literalist position - that however in as far as there is nothing to back the literalist position up. So, the word 'Elohim' - eventually translated as God - can be read in a few different ways. The only closest to my belief is to "third Gender" it. After all - it's a feminine word written as a masculine plural. Not non-binary but bi-gender. Essentially assigning "they/them" pronouns to God - as early passages of the Bible do in fact refer to God or "the Divine" as a plurality. We may also read this as a symptom of how parts of the lore comes from a time where people weren't quite all that monotheistic just yet. We may also argue that some idolators rewrote the scriptures to suit their polytheistic agenda. Because we have no way of knowing why what's in there is in there.

While a lot of this may spell doom for holding the Bible as a sacred book - believing in God and Christ however doesn't leave us with much of a choice. We might then simply choose to imply that it's perfect - and that if we don't understand something it's possibly on us. To go with that however, it is utterly self-defeating to be closed minded about what we find in there.

WE - us Gnostics - can however in a sense get away with both. The biggest step towards doing so, is to first develop a relationship with the one and only God - so that by His graces you 'become Christian'. Maybe it sounds like a bad deal, but to those that aren' there yet, this much supposes that the Christian God IS the one and only God; And that the one and only God is by virtue of that the Christian one. While it would then seem that you're thereby shackled to whatever we can make of the Bible, that isn't true. Developing your relationship with God will allow you to learn, from God, things that you may then find in the Bible. Eventually then we can find certain things that are what we might call 'solid'. And once we have enough of them, we may learn to which extent the narrative around them weaves them together.


Like so I happen to believe that God, Jesus, wanted us to learn kindness towards each other. TO work towards a cooperative societal structure rather than an antagonistic ones. And yea, a strict hierarchical society to me is an antagonistic one; Because the maintenance of the hierarchy eventually implies antagonism towards the individual free spirit. Not that we won't or can't have hierarchies in a cooperative society, but that's for the most part beside the point. More to the point do we, I think, need to learn about the complex relationships we have with each other accross the chasms of cultures and individualistic archetypes and what not. All of that. To then come and say: But the scripture wants us to be homophobic is like ... I'd like to say that it requires a certain kind of dunce to then fall for that. That because for once it like entirely ignores everything that was just setup. Like a speedrunner. And then they might go rambling on about how it's degenerate and corroding society and all that; But right now it looks like Conservatives have poisoned the heterosexual world so much, all that's left is to try cash in them homos. And in all that there seems to be zero faith in God doing anything - but that it's all on them to establish order because apparently God is going to be really upset if they don't. Like ... it's their duty or whatever - but they aren't even unified on the matter.
Anyhow ... the point is ... none of that makes sense. I would think that God treis to encourage everyone to lean moreso into sympathy for the stranger than hostility. Now, if that's difficult to you, well - guess what ... trying to argue that away with nonsense logic is actual phobia. Even. I mean, most people I think would argue that when we say homophobia or transphobia, we don't mean literal phobia. But maybe they're wrong.

A next step is to take the content of the Bible and ponder about what effect it has on us. Individually or collectively. If we can square it with what we've learned. Or if we can find some kind of deeper wisdom or meaning in it. But in as far as that would be an individual endeavor, it would most likely happen apart from what "common sense belief" we should be able to cultuvate - if we could perhaps use that solid ground to bring people together.