The Religious Case for Greater Uncertainty

Speaking from the perspective of a lifelong Catholic, I think Catholicism can often get too caught up in doctrine and tradition. I’m sure other religions suffer from this problem as well. I respect the desire of these religions to have a well-developed and consistent doctrine, but at the same time I have a strong aversion to getting too caught up in doctrines and rules. Instead of being a clear and consistent supplement to faith and the Bible, religious doctrines sometimes seem to originate from a desire to believe a certain thing. The following is an explanation of why I think we should be wary of strict doctrines and avoid overconfidence in our beliefs. I expect a lot of people will disagree with my interpretation, and that’s totally cool and I welcome any arguments as to why. This is all just my personal view and the way I currently think about it.

It’s accepted in most religions that humans have free will. I don’t think free will exists, at least not the way we usually think about it, but for now let’s assume that it does exist. God wanted to make his will known to us, but could not just give each of us the whole message individually for some reason (one possible reason might be that sharing that knowledge with us might negate free will, because who would choose to do anything other than in the most perfect way). So God inspired some people to write down what he has in mind for us. He could not control these people or force them to write exactly what He wants because that would violate their free will. So naturally the Bible cannot say exactly 100% what God wanted it to say. My opinion is that it took them some time to really understand the message, and that they only really got a firm grasp on it when Jesus arrived.

This makes sense to me, as there are some really questionable things that happen, and some questionable things that are attributed to God. For example, the footnotes in the NAB Bible suggest that the story of Lot’s incest was inserted as a derogatory origin story for the nearby rival nations of the Israelites. I also find it hard to believe that God ordered the genocide of those inhabiting the promised land among other things. In my opinion, the old testament is a story of people figuring out their relationship with God and what God wants for them, and in some cases they told stories about their origins that they believed to describe the foundation of that relationship. These stories included attributing natural phenomenon to God and assuming that God supported their violent tendencies. But I also think they got some of the lessons right, and that the teachings of Jesus are a good way to determine where the old testament was on the right track.

I think one of the biggest supporting arguments for the idea of the Bible as a process toward greater accuracy is Jesus’s teachings on divorce. In the old testament divorce was legal under the law. In the new testament Jesus tells us to let no one divide what God has brought together. He tells the people that divorce was permitted because their hearts were too hard to understand. So it seems to me that God has a history of only exposing people to lessons they are capable of learning at the time. It’s incremental improvement toward a better understanding.

The old testament was not the only part of the Bible subject to imperfect human authors. Jesus did not write the gospels himself, so they can’t be perfect. He relied on flawed human authors to tell his story. And we can see the human influence on that story in their different styles. The facts differ somewhat in each of them. Particularly John, where messages and acts are literal and more obviously miraculous instead of subtle and mysterious as in the other gospels. (The preface to John in the NAB suggests this may be because John was written later to clear things up for a later church.) And the letters of course are going to be influenced by human errors and biases, despite the overall message and purpose being divinely inspired.

My interpretation here is obviously far from a literal interpretation of the Bible, and its biggest weakness is that it makes it more difficult to figure out what God intended and what may have been introduced by human flaws and biases. While this is absolutely true for some details, I don’t think it’s that hard to figure out for most things. There are four gospels. Jesus says very similar things in many of them. Jesus has a clear and consistent message in the gospels. The gospels are stories about Jesus’s travels and teachings, written not long after his time on earth, so they are probably more likely to be accurate. The Acts and the letters are by and about people who are not far removed from Jesus, possibly written before the gospels were, so they probably have pretty good interpretations of what Jesus’s teachings meant for the world.

So yeah, this kind of interpretation leaves a lot of room for questioning what it is that God wants in some areas. But in other ways it can also make it clearer. And it focuses more on Jesus’s message instead of specifics and doctrines. You might say this interpretation is too convenient because it allows a person to believe what they want and ignore difficult Bible passages. That’s sort of true. But I argue that people have always believed what they want about the Bible. Every religion has justified itself in the Bible by considering some passages literally, others by accounting for context, and others are considered logically instead of literally. That’s the problem with basing strict doctrines on years of teachings with contexts that are difficult to understand and based in times where humanity was far less equal than it is today. It’s difficult to nearly impossible to figure out if a passage was a result of historical biases, author error, or if it reflects the direct will of God. That’s why there are so many Christian denominations, and so many other religions based on the Bible, and why some Bibles don’t even have the same books, and why there are so many Bible editions that portray each passage in subtly different ways. Every Biblical religion has justified its prior biases from the same (or at least very similar) source.

As a result of this line of thought, I wonder whether most people just believe what’s convenient to support their prior biases. For example, if Jesus came down from heaven and told those that are against homosexuality that homosexuality is totally cool, do you think most of the most people who justify homophobia through their religious beliefs would say “oh wonderful, I’m glad I was wrong on this.” Or do you think we would hear a lot of “ but-but-but…”? I think even if you disagree with everything else I say here, it’s important for religious people to ask themselves that question. Especially for the beliefs we may hold that might be at odds with Jesus’s golden rule of loving God and treating your neighbor as yourself.

Now I’m not saying that just because the Bible and religious teachings are open to interpretation that it enables people to live a life without morals. Instead, I think it enables people to consider moral reasoning not found in the Bible alongside Biblical morals. God gave us the ability to use reason, so why would he want us to ignore convincing logical arguments in favor of blind adherence to older moral reasoning? This doesn’t mean ignore the Bible, it just means to better consider the context and evidence in the text to figure out if something in the Bible is the direct will of God. For example, things Jesus said would be hard to ignore, unless you could make a convincing case that the gospel authors screwed up or inserted their own philosophy. But you could wonder whether something in other books makes sense as the will of God or if perhaps the author was justifying or inserting their own opinion.

So if I favor this loose, pretty un-Catholic view of the Bible, why still be a Catholic? For several reasons. For one, I recognize that the church you’re born into is the most relevant factor for what religion a person is. I’ve been Catholic my whole life, I like my church, and I like the effort it makes to be consistent and well reasoned, even though I don’t always agree with it. I also like the church community. And I also feel that even though I disagree with it on some issues, I agree with it in a lot of other areas. Maybe this makes me a bad Catholic, but if it does I at least hope it’s for the right reasons.

I’m sure a lot of people disagree with this interpretation. I’m not even going to say you should agree with it. My main point is that overconfidence in doctrine and Bible literalism can sometimes lead to believing things that contradict the main message Jesus teaches. The Bible has been the source of many religions and a diverse array of opinions. All from one book. I think that’s important to keep in mind, as it really shows just how much interpretation went into the religions many of us are currently a part of. I think it’s wise for us all to be constantly aware of the possibility that what we believe is flawed or wrong in some ways. Accepting the possibility that we’re wrong can really help us be compassionate toward the opinions, beliefs, and lifestyles of other people.

Last point: Some might see such a loose reading of the Bible as strengthening the case that it’s all made up hokey baloney. I understand why, but I disagree. Ultimately I think belief in God is something people choose based on their view of the universe and our place in it, not because a religious text told them to believe. But these people who choose to believe in God will want to figure out what God has in mind for them and what God wants. For them, they may find the Bible to be the best guide. People who choose not to believe will of course see the Bible as made up hokey baloney. The difference isn’t something that can be proved or disproved, it’s just how you choose to see the universe.

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