The Bible and Science of Mind

What does Science of Mind believe about the Bible?

Is the Bible the literal word of God? Can we trust that everything in Scripture is the literal truth and historical fact? Did the stories told in the Bible really happen as they were written?

These are questions that many are asking in these turbulent times. The answer is not a simple one. There is no way for us to prove that much of the Bible is factually true. Should we even try? Does it matter? In my view, a debate about the literal truth of the Bible misses the entire point.

Is the Bible the literal word of God? That is purely a matter of faith. No human has ever heard the word of God unfiltered through his or her own mind and senses. Not one! We all hear the still small voice of God in our minds giving us direction, comforting and counseling. But do we receive God's word from without -from the heavens - or from deep in our own being? Are we not all direct revealers of God's Truth; if we are open to receive it?

The Bible clearly states that God is a Spirit, not a superperson. This Spirit is everywhere present and therefore is in us. We are told to seek the Kingdom of God within ourselves. Do not look here or there but within! That is good advice - God lives and moves and his Its being within each of us. God's Word, like God itself is within each man and woman and did not come readymade from Heaven in book form.

Human beings wrote every word of the Bible. They may have been inspired by the Holy Spirit, as we like to call the God Spirit within, but Biblical authors were totally human and as such were fallible. They wrote what they believed and what they felt and it was their Truth. Writing and speaking our Truth is all any of us can do. I am sure they felt that God was working through them but isn't God the doer and thinker behind everything?

The disturbing fact is that there is no absolute Truth - we seek the Truth that rings true for each of us. Is the Bible the Truth? Yes, the lesson is True but not facts taken word for word. The lessons taught by the parables and stories in the Bible are Truth, the greatest Truth every told. The facts of the stories are most certainly not the literal Truth.

I am sure that all who read this message are aware that what we call the Bible was not written as a book at all. It is a collection of parables and stories collected over 3300 years by thousands of people long dead. The truth lies in the meaning of the stories not in the stories themselves. Was Jonah swallowed by a whale? Was Lot's wife turned into a pillar of salt? Did Sarah give birth at 80 years of age? Did Jesus walk on water?

Who cares? Those who focus on the facts are like literal minded children grasping at small details and missing the entire message the Bible seeks to teach. Lot's wife was turned to salt because she could not leave the old life and move into the greater life of oneness with God. She was "fronzen" in place because she could not move forward. She could not obey the clear direction of God and leave a place of darkness and walk with Lot into the Light.

Jonah being swallowed by a "great fish" (not a whale - no whales in the Mediterranean) and being spit back out is telling us that no matter what situation we create in our lives, no matter how hopeless it seems in the world of facts, that our faith and our use of Divine Law can overcome any condition, any situation. Those are the Truth's the Bible is telling.

Dear ones, the Bible was written in parable. A parable is a story told to teach a great moral or spiritual lesson. The ancient hearers of these parables understood that they were not to be taken literally; the lesson was the point of the story.

For example, we know that Jesus spoke Aramaic as his daily language. We know that he thought, spoke and taught in Aramaic. This language is a language of parable. When you describe an event in Aramaic, you tell a story in order to describe the event. When you want to make a point, you tell a story to do so.

The people who gathered to hear Jesus speak were Aramaic speakers and they understood perfectly that the facts of the story meant nothing - it was the moral and spiritual Truth the story taught that was the message. The story was the vehicle in which Truth was conveyed to the listener and had no other value or purpose.

Some of us have parked our brains at the church door and become like literal minded children, insisting on the factual accuracy of something that was never intended to be factually accurate. Are we not as intelligent as those who heard Jesus speak? I believe we have been taught a giant lie for hundreds of years by well meaning people who were teaching what they were taught.

I hear Fundamentalists braying that if one word of the Bible is false then the entire Bible is worthless - its the inerrant word of God! What utter childish foolishness!! The Bible is a collection of Truth stories, not a record of actual fact. Yes, actual events in Jewish history often inspired the Truth stories, particularly in the Old Testament. But it was not written as factual history, nor was it ever meant to be taken as such.

When we insist on Biblical inerrancy, we demean and diminish the granduer and majesty of a great work of Truth. I sometimes hear people say that we know exactly what Jesus did and said because he had scribes follow him around everywhere he went and they recorded every word! Wow, where did that come from? Very few people in Biblical times could read or write and the scribe was a very well paid professional that people depended on to communicate over distances. Jesus despised the scribes and Pharisees of his day as corrupt money grubbers who oppressed the people. He would hardly have one in tow everywhere he went. There is no written record of Jesus' ministry that has surfaced anywhere.

The lack of Biblical knowlege of many Christians is amazing. Many Fundamentalists that I come in contact with think that the Disciples and the Apostles were the same people and that the Gospels were eyewitness accounts of the life and works of Jesus The Christ. The earliest Gospel, Mark, was written somewhere around 60 CE, almost thirty years after the death of Jesus. Matthew, Luke and John where each written years later (John was written about 95-110 CE). These men never saw or had any first hand knowlege of Jesus. They wrote down what had been passed down, elaborated on, embellished and even invented over a period of 30 to 70 years!

These men were not recording facts, they were writing the story of Jesus as they felt it should be told. This fact accounts for the numerous contradictions between the Jesus stories in Matthew and Luke, for instance, and the totally different Jesus we see in John. They wrote about the Jesus that lived inside of them, not the man that lived, walked and taught. They never knew or saw Him.

Jesus never wanted to be worshipped as a God. When He said that "The Father and I are One, he was saying that The Father and all of us are One" He wasn't using the term Father as his biological father he was using it as we do, the Heavenly Father (God). When he states that "I AM The way and the Light" he was referring to "I AM" which is God's name in Aramaic and Hebrew. He was saying that God is the way and the Light, not himself. It is easy to see where the error crept in over the centuries.

Jesus understood very well the difference between Jesus the man and the Christ mind that he developed after years of study and spiritual discipline. The Christ mind is the mental state of mind that allows any human to be so unified with God that the physical facts of this world are totally ignored and the supernatural power of God can be used at will. This is what Jesus did and what every one of us can do if we can suspend the world and believe totally in the Love, Power and Presence of God as the only true Reality. This is what He meant when he said that "No man enters the Kingdom except by me". He was speaking as the Christ not as the man Jesus. We have confused the two for hundreds of years. You must have the Christ state of Mind to enter the Kingdom of God and the good news is that each of us can have it.

Early Christians understood that Jesus was fully human and that the Christ is a state of being that was developed by Jesus and given to Him by God in order that He be able to do his work. They believed that this Mind lay dormant in each of us waiting for us to actualize it. I believe this as well.

Science of Mind believes that Jesus The Christ was perhaps the greatest Master Teacher ever sent to mankind thus far but He was not a God anymore than any of us are a God. We all have Divinity within. We all are made of the very stuff of God.

The Bible is an indespenisble book of God's Truth but was never meant to be taken literally. The Truth behind the stories and events in the Bible is the message and it is a message for the ages.

Namaste'

Why Does God Allow Suffering?

One question I hear more than any other is: "Why does God allow suffering? Isn't God our loving Father"? Before I came back into the Science of Mind way of life from my foray into the Episcopal and Lutheran churches (due to spousal request) I used to be troubled by these same questions. As I re-learned the true nature of God I remembered why God and suffering have absolutely nothing to do with each other. '

The problem is not an uncaring God, the problem is that we have created a God in our image rather than humanity being created in the image of God. God is not a super-sized human. God is not a being at all in the sense that we conceive a being. God existed before anything anywhere existed; God is First Cause - the beginning and the end of all that exists, ever has existed or ever will. God is not a person with temper, anger, compassion, feelings. God is our Creator but not our parent. There is a critical difference. You create a painting but you are not its parent. You may create a great book but you are not its mother.

Does this mean that you do not care what happens to your creation? No, not at all, but you know that you must let your creation stand on its own merits; let it be what it will become or the creation means nothing. Once you begin to understand that God is your Creator and that God wants only Good for you, you have begun to move into Spiritual Adulthood and have left that eternal Childhood that most people seem to be stuck in.

You now know that while God may wish you only Good, God cannot and will not live for you. You must make your choices, you must experience the vagaries of natural law and do what you must do to survive them. Storms and earthquakes are not sent by God, they are a natural phenomenon of this world that God created for us. They happen in order to keep the planet in balance and keep it from self-destruction. God cannot rescind the natural laws of physics or the law of cause and effect in order to make you comfortable or happy.

Likewise, God does not punish and does not reward. Only parents do that to their children. You are not a child of God, you are a child of your mother and father. But you most certainly are a creation of God and you are cherished by your Creator. In fact, you are a part of God, you are an experience God is having as you. You are not really separate from God, as you may have been taught. You are made of the very stuff of God and God lives and moves and has its being in you, just as you do in It.

Notice I do not call God Him or Her. You may do so if it makes you feel better but you and I both know that gender is a human and animal trait and God is neither. God is THE Spirit that animates all of the Universe. God does not have a penis or a vagina (what in heavens name would a Spirit need with such appliances?).

God creates with a thought every planet, every star, our Eathly home - so we know that God has a Mind beyond our comprehension. The best we can do is to call this Mind God.

Our Creator (God) wishes us all the best that we can create but It knows that no matter what happens to us or what we create in our life that we are safe, that we cannot really be hurt and can never really die. Oh yes, our bodies die but they are the husk, the capsule, that holds our Spirit and our Soul. The essence of who we are lives on forever and ever. It is made of pure energy and we know that energy is indestructible, it changes form but never is destroyed. So it is with each of us. We changed form when we were born and we will change form again when we die but we live on in one form or another.

A good analogy would be a human parent whose children were playing in a very well fenced back yard with all kinds of fun things to play with and to explore. Now this parent knows that the children can not be seriously hurt. They might skin a knee or bump their heads, but nothing can really hurt them in this yard. Would this parent need to be concerned about which game the children played or what rules they played by? Probably not.

In God's view, you are an indestructible part of Itself, so no worries!

The key to understanding this is to enlarge your view from the tiny microcosm that we live in to a cosmic view such as God has. See the big picture. As the lovely and oh so true song "From A Distance" says: "From a distance, there is no disease, no war, no poverty.... From a distance there is love and unity". Very True!

God's Richest Blessings on each one of you!

The Law of Attraction

Many of us were brought up to believe that life happened to us; that our life was created independently from who we were inside and what we thought and did.

This just isn't true and it never has been. Scripture tells us that "as within, so without". This means that our lives, are but a reflection of what is inside of us. In other words, our thoughts and deeply held beliefs about life and the people in our lives literally creates our personal reality.

To me, this is common sense. How can my outer world be a place of abundance if I think of lack and want and poverty all day? How can I be healthy and well if I am filled with fear of illness, disease and disability? Like attracts like, so what I think about, what I am, what I say is what I will attract in my life.

What are you focusing your thoughts on right now? Stop right now! Bring to mind what you are thinking about. What do you say to yourself on a daily basis?
Is your inner conversation with yourself critical, judgemental, negative? Do you approve of yourself, are you comfortable with you and with those in your life. Your internal conversation about yourself and about your life is what must change if your life is to change.

Sounds simple, doesn't it? It is simple and perhaps it sounds too simple to be accepted by many people. Perhaps that is why most of the people we encounter still believe in the great lie that life happens to them, that somehow circumstances are created over which they have no choice and no control - it just happens, I am a victim! Don't you believe this stuff for a second; unless of course you like being a victim and some people do.

Do people ever want to be a victim? That can't be! To say that I must be a heartless monster! Not at all. You see, victims get sympathy, attention and help. They have no responsibility. Their bad "luck" just happened to them - Fate dealt them a cruel blow. However, if we take responsibility for every aspect of our lives, we will forfeit all the sympathy, outside help and "ain't it awfuls". Victimhood can be very seductive and very attractive to many.

New Thought and particularly Science of Mind, is for the spiritually mature person who knows that they are the master of their fate and the captain of their soul.

Once you take the leap and take responsibility for your life - once you make your life your symphony - you will never want to be a victim again and you never will be. You and God are the co-creators of your life. You make the choices, with direction from God if you will open yourself, and God provides the material, the opportunities, the right people at the right time.

Understand this, dear friends. God will not save you from your bad choices! They are yours to make and yours to experience. Every cause has its effect and before you choose a word, a belief, a thought or an action - be sure that you can live with the consequences.

Becoming a student of the Science of Mind faith and philosophy and using it each day in your life will liberate you forever from victimhood, fate, luck and all those other fables we tell ourselves to avoid responsibility. Once you have learned the Truth, God can now give you the life you have longed for, the life you deserve. You are now ready to be a full partner with the Most High God in the creation of the life you were meant to live.

Resolve today to take control of your reality. Recognize that in every aspect of your life you made a choice to accept, promote, or create the situations in which you find yourselves. There are always choices - not always easy ones - but there are always choices.

Stop being a passenger of life and get in the driver's seat! Science of Mind and Awakened Heart will help.