Crash Course Religions #9: Sacrifice, Redemption & Miracles: The Story of Christianity or One Idea: Many Interpretations

For the past ten-months I’ve been attending a weekly in-person Meetup group wordily called “A safe place to ask dangerous questions about the Bible.” I jokingly call it my weekly Bible study group, that I greatly look forward to attending every week. It’s a small private group where one has to be recommended by someone already in the group and have a phone call with one of the group administrators before attending. I was nominated by a former Roman Catholic who currently runs the Las Vegas Atheist Meetup group. She knew that I have a degree in Biblical Studies from a conservative Christian university (Biola) and that I’d probably fit in with the weekly discussions that we get into. She was right and I’ve written about or alluded to several conversations and thoughts that have come out of this group (particularly thoughts on human consciousness, see list below).

The two leaders both attended seminary and had roles in their different churches, but are now what I would call Post-Church believers who respect what they understand to be the message of Jesus, but reject their prior experiences being part of the “church industry.” A third member has no formal training, but is self-taught, very conversant with the Bible, also a bit “Post-Church” person but would call himself “just a Christian.” Then there are three of us former Roman Catholics, one now considering himself agnostic and myself and the other atheist who brought me into the group. There is another atheist who attends, but I don’t remember if he shares a Roman Catholic background (is there a theme there?). And there are a couple others who drop in from time to time, one who is an Episcopalian priest, whenever she’s available and others on other levels of spirituality/belief.

One might wonder how such a diverse group could even sit at the same table and discuss the Bible? Well, the answer is that I believe we’re all interested in learning from each others’ different experiences and most discussions are centered on what do we see in the Bible on a somewhat academic level and what does history and science have to say. And unlike an Atheist group that I attended a few times, where it would seem that several were there just to be heard and convince others of their point-of-view, this group is careful to listen to each other and really draw on our understanding of the texts and where the scholarship is inconclusive and that these issues are deep and complicated. Basically, I love that there is an attitude of listening first and that no one is there to change anyone else’s opinion or position. It’s by no means perfect and sometimes feelings get bruised, or we need to take a little break in the discussion, or narrow the focus down to something we can attempt to intelligently talk about. And sometimes we just laugh and tease each other to lighten the mood.

We’ve talked about the Problem of Evil, and Free Will and how old is the New Testament or the Gospels, or how reliable are the words of Jesus as recorded in the New Testament. Sometimes the topics are more current events like the “Manosphere” or Gender roles in the Bible. Sometimes we get a heads up on the subject we’ll be discussing via text or email beforehand, and somethings it’s a “who has something that they want to share” kind of deal. We’ve never had a night where some topic didn’t grab us and keeps us engaged for the two-hours that we meet.

But for as much as there is a definite attitude of listening and learning first, I don’t think anyone is under the impression that “all opinions are valid” or anything along those lines. We all have our own ideas that we hold as True but are also open to learn from each other. I find this a bit different from how John Green ends this video, somewhat saying that we have to accept anyone’s self-identification as Christian and perhaps need to open our definition of Christianity or Religion a bit more to accommodate all the different ways that people believe. I think we’re open to learn but still hold to our own pursuit to discover the Truth of our existence, that for me, at the moment, does not require the existence of the God that’s described in the Bible. I have no desire to push someone away from their own spiritual journey. I have come to recognize the cultural and literary value of the Bible as a testament of humans trying to understand their place in their world and what we can learn thousands of years removed from this anthology’s creation.

One of the first things I learned as a Religious Studies major at Loyola Marymount was that, for all of my familiarity with the Bible, at that point having read and re-read it dozens of times over the prior two years, academic scholarship had been working on this for thousands of years and I had a lot of learning to do just to understand the conversation that scholars had been having for those thousands of years. I respect those who have had a similar experience of needing to know and recognizing that this isn’t something that anyone is going to definitively decide, most likely, in their lifetime. So it’s about the journey, not the destination and that those who take shortcuts are only cheating themselves and those who end up listening to them. I guess I can agree with Green’s final sentiment at the end of the video, that despite our inability to come to any consensus on what it “really means” to be a Christian, it might be enough to understand that we’re all on the same journey, even if the paths lead in all sorts of different directions. Enjoy.