December 12, 2011   180 notes

Mohandas Gandhi on Sharia Law

I’m also no theologian but aren’t we assuming a lot here in saying that ostensible ideological contradictions in the text render the entire faith worthless?

If we’re talking about ideological contradictions (or, at least, tensions) in a text, we’re at least treating the text seriously. That doesn’t bother me at all. I find a cursory reading for the sole purpose of finding contradictions without any effort to understand the context, source, etc. of a sacred text (or any text) to be pretty obnoxious. Clearly a textual contradiction wouldn’t in itself render an entire faith worthless. But these are important texts. Let’s check our footing before declaring a contradiction. “A time to sow and a time to reap,” for example, isn’t a contradiction.

I understand that part of most church services is a sort of “close reading” of the Bible; there’s kind of an implicit assumption that you don’t fully understand or necessarily agree with all or even most of it. In theory it’s sufficient to find the practice a worthwhile exercise.

This is certainly right with respect to understanding. I think disagreeing with the majority of the Bible would be less usual. There might be passages somebody sets aside for years without really understanding why they’re in the Bible or how they mesh with the other stuff—but if a text is going to transform you, you’ve got to keep coming back to the tough parts.

Getting a little further out of my depth I’ve always found Christianity’s tacit admission of its God’s fallibility to be somewhat charming. Again I could be totally wrong but I’m pretty sure God makes a bunch of mistakes in the Bible and is pretty explicit about some of them.

I’m not sure that the Bible is explicit that God made mistakes—though prophets and disciples and so on very clearly make a lot of mistakes. God seems to change his mind occasionally or be moved by empathy, which is a bit like acknowledging a mistake but also a bit different. There are, of course, a number of passages where something is attributed to God that you read and think, “Was that really necessary?” There are, of course, times when God tells people to do one thing and they do the exact opposite or when things don’t go the way we expect that God would want them to go.

(via zombiecuddle)

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    If we’re talking about ideological contradictions (or, at least, tensions)...text...
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