Some of the most frequently said prayers of Christians are said for the collective whole, yet on the other hand we are often quick to send the vast majority of people to hell. The older I get, the less this makes sense to me and perhaps I am not alone in this, well I know I am not alone. When praying the “Our Father” for example the prayer is in the plural, not the singular, it is not for personal needs alone, nor is the prayer just for loved ones; no it is said for all of mankind. Each person saying this beautiful prayer is a representative before God for all of humanity. We pray for the “forgiveness of our trespasses”. We also pray “our daily bread”. It is all ‘we’. If this is so, why are we so quick to consign the majority of mankind to hell? I know the scriptures can be quoted to bolster this belief, but in the end, scriptures can be found to pretty much strengthen just about anything. Racist will often use the Holy Book to back up their claims for racial superiority, and even for slavery. So I guess one can pretty much find what they are looking for, if the scriptures are reduced to a certain line up of text.
When Jesus taught the ‘Our Father’, he was not teaching it to Christian’s, no it was Jews of course, and I would imagine people of other religions, yet he taught them all. Perhaps it would be good to try to stretch our understanding of what Jesus was trying to impart by his teaching. I am not sure he wanted to just find another group, hating and condemning those outside. That is simply a very common thing for us humans to do. Perhaps that is our root sin, making others outside, worthy of death or worse. If God is love then it is a mystery that can’t ever be gotten to the bottom of, yet we make God into another human, just bigger, and at times bad-er.
Atheists do this also, why shouldn’t they, they are human after all. They go to the scriptures for a very specific reason, and they find everything they want, in order to criticize the beliefs of theist of all strips, who use the Bible as a source of spiritual insight. You can’t separate the observer, or reader, from the text, they are one and it is an intimate relationship. This is true of anything of course. I think the saying: “one man’s meat, is another man’s poison”, pretty much says it all.
[to be continued…]
