The Bible and the 'Feel Right' Factor! As a boy it was the expectation that I would go to church, and Sunday School, (which I didn't like). This was because father had been, among many things, a Unitarian minister and mother, from a strong Methodist family, had gone along with it. Odd that, isn't it, father and mother, not mum and dad? That tells you something about our family doesn't it! And you would be right with father being born in eighteen eighty and mother in nineteen hundred and eight. The Unitarian family and church obviously had its effect and still to this day I will challenge what is 'certain' against my own developing belief system. Yes, that's right, my belief system which is still developing or being refined in light of what I experience, both in the world and in my head and body. The reason that I am telling you all this is that this is what I expect and perhaps demand of each one of you. Test what I say in the light of your own developing experience and see which parts seem to be right or even 'feel right' for you. Yes you heard it right - 'feel right'. This is the phrase I have used increasingly as I have grown more mature. 'Feel right': that which you know with absolute certainty but you can't see why it is so and you certainly can't explain it sensibly to anyone else. To give you an example from my own experience I will share with you how I interpret passages in the bible. When I read a part of the bible I find that some passages, verses, sentences or words seem to shine out with 'rightness'. I also find the reverse is true. Some passages, verses, sentences or words seem to lack that sense of 'rightness'. Content like this I tend to ignore. How often have we heard on the radio or television and seen in tracts or on billboards such sentences and phrases as "You are a sinner" and "We are all sinners" "You can be saved" "You can be saved today." "Repent before it is too late." "Repent your time is at hand." "Give up your evil ways before it is too late." "Jesus came to save you." "Only Jesus can save you." "Your sins can be forgiven." "Come to Jesus and your sins will be forgiven." "Let Jesus wash your sins away." "Be quick for the time is at hand or be dammed forever" or, "be dammed for all eternity"" or just "be dammed". "Act now and be saved." "Be forgiven today." For a long time I have totally rejected such rhetoric as false or based on misunderstanding, perhaps even mine. Deep inside me I have 'known' that such words as above, seem wrong and perhaps, based at the best on simple misunderstanding, or at worst, individual acts of direct manipulation of the content of the bible. My reading in the last ten years also suggests, quite strongly, that the early 'Church of Rome' was involved in murder, vandalism and the direct suppression and destruction of 'alternative' texts which painted the Jesus story in a different light. That is different to the taught understanding of especially the early 'Church of Rome'. However, lately I have come to see and understand that even evangelical Christian views which seem to me to be rather extreme, may not be wholly wrong. This sermon is intended to be an attempt to discuss aspects of that last statement within the light of my present 'belief' or 'knowing'. In the hope of getting a tenuous handle upon the use of such words as 'sinning' and 'saving' I was faced with using a thesaurus. When I looked at the word 'sin' I found that sin was equivalent to offence, wrong, misdeed, felony, misdemeanour, and transgression. In a sense sin means behaviour which is beyond that expected by our social group, somehow 'set apart' from society. It is interesting that the word sin, therefore, includes all negative behaviour from a slight grumble or petty act right up to extreme acts of totally unacceptable and extreme individual and group violence. There is no distinction made between the petty and the extreme. Now the question that we need to ask is would Jesus have been likely to have used such a word as 'sinner' or 'saved'? I feel that the answer would assuredly have been yes. Of course he wouldn't have used 'sin' and 'saved' because he spoke Aramaic and not English. I feel, however, that he would have used a word of a similar general meaning. Why do I say this? Well, we have to ask ourselves who he was working with, who was he helping and healing. It was those that were looked down on as the riffraff by the then upper society. Of course it didn't mean that his message was limited to that social group, it wasn't, but he certainly wanted an all embracing 'church'. Anyone was welcomed. He talked to, preached and helped all who came to him. No one was turned away! That is why he used a word related to saved. 'Saved' means to put aside, set aside, store, rescue, recover, salvage, except and be apart from. In a sense saved means to be made or perhaps even recycled but always to be kept safe. In a sense 'saved' means becoming a part of a special group and often this will have the flavour of 'our' group. Having looked at the words let us now have a closer look at biblical text more closely through this morning's second reading, taken from relatively modern bibles and both translated from the original Greek. In 1 John verse eight to ten both versions seemed to agree about the content. Summed up they say that if we say we are not sinners then we are lying, which of course makes us a sinner. This definitely seems to be a 'catch all' approach. On this basis surely it is a safe bet that we are all sinners because we have all had at least a grumble and grump from time to time. Of course this again makes us all sinners because the term is written as a sort of self fulfilling prophesy. We can't win can we? The passage goes on to say that all we have to do is confess our sins and we will be forgiven. Presumably then we would be saved straight away. However, in the next part it goes on to say that if we say we haven't sinned then we make God out to be a liar and therefore he has no place in our lives. A bit like - We are all sinners whether we know it or not and to say this is not true is to reject what God says, therefore we are automatically dammed. Is this a way for an 'all loving' God to act? It sounds like the petulance of the school playground. If you want to be in my gang (and it is the only gang) then you must believe everything that is said in my name. This sounds like God is being very immature. Is that right for an ever loving being? Perhaps we should remember that this text is not God talking, nor is it Jesus talking. What we have here is a part of a letter written by John the apostle, later in his life. Some estimate it as being some fifty years after the time of Jesus. The purpose of the 1 John book is to encourage his followers and warn them about becoming Gnostic. Presumably, the then early Christians, were finding Gnosticism attractive. So how about 1 John verses fifteen to seventeen then? I had chosen this biblical book simply because I had used it in my last sermon here. I looked at the front of the book because I wanted to find out who this John was. I chose the two passages initially from the 'red letter' bible because they seemed to be about sin and saving ... and they had that sense of feel right in connection with this sermon but at the time I didn't see beyond the sin and saving. Personally I can agree with the statement - "Do not love the world or anything in the world." I would, however, say that for me this means don't focus on the physical things as you can't love physical things and God. Love, in this context, is used to denote a focus that excludes all else. It is a choice. Make God your prime focus or make the physical world your main focus but it can't be both. So if I largely agree with this part why then have I been prompted to look at this part of the bible? Well it is because the last sentence seems to be saying something very slightly different in each bible. In the main, both bibles agree with each other a good deal but they do have some linguistic differences which I would like to comment on. Let us look at only one difference. In the 'red letter bible' John says "The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever." In the NIV bible John says "The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives for ever." Lust has changed into desires. But how can that be? I know that the word lust is connected to the word desire but surely they indicate a different level of emotion? To me 'lust' is an extreme emotion while 'desire' is of a lower order of emotion. Also, these bibles were translated from the same Greek manuscript within thirteen years of each other and in the same country and with a similar board of academic scholars backed up by pastors of the faith. Personally, I can accept that translations taking place hundreds of years apart might, because of the remorseless changes in the spoken and written language, come up with a different translation. To have this happen in only thirteen years is unbelievable. Surely this means that we cannot put faith in the claims that the words in the bible are the unchanged word of God and therefore always correct! If that was true there would be no changes from bible translation to bible translation and this is always the assertion of all fundamentalist believers across the world! There it was staring me in the face, proof of the fallibility of the bible. I know that Dr. Martin Pulbrook's sermons here frequently point this out but this was the first time that I had seen this for myself. This is further compounded by the fact that the manuscripts used for translations date from the late first and second century after the time of Jesus. Initially, the academics say that only memory and word of mouth was used to spread 'the message'. Then each apostle began to see to the writing down of the 'sayings of Jesus'. No story at all, just what Jesus said".. Even with the best will in the world if the story of Jesus began to be written down some fifty years after Jesus lived, what would that mean? Can you remember all the details of your life day by day? Are you likely to remember it really accurately and as it was? Would you be able to remember all the details after fifty years? I would suggest that there are bound to be errors, if for no other reason than you would have had fifty years of 'telling the story'. What often happens is that with each telling, some embellishments are added to make it more interesting " and so it changes, it is adapted. This, therefore, leaves me with some degree of uncertainty about the actual infallibility of the content of the bible. In its present form is it really the definitive story of Jesus? No it probably isn't. So, is the bible useless to us? No it isn't, for if you are aware of your 'feel right' prompt then you will always understand what is important for you to know at that time. The 'feel right' is a great tool to help you and, who knows, this just might be God nudging your elbow. Amen Joe Potter  31/05/2009