The Ultimate Truth: Limiting our reach on the ladder of fundamentalism

 

Genesis 11 (NIV)

The Tower of Babel 

11 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. ² As people moved eastward,^[a] they found a plain in Shinar^[b] and settled there.

³ They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. ⁴ Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
⁵ But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. ⁶ The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. ⁷ Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
⁸ So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. ⁹ That is why it was called Babel^[c] —because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

Genesis 2:17 (NIV)

THE TREE OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL

¹⁷ but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

Those of us who grew up in the fundamentalist sect of Christianity understood the message of the Tower of Babel and the Tree of Knowledge that we, as humans, had the tendency to get very proud. That pride came when we tried to learn more than we should. If we had knowledge, the reasoning went, our cocky spirit would make us feel that we were gods. With knowledge comes power. With power comes possibilities. Adam and Eve were punished for touching the tree of Knowledge and the people at Babel were divided and scattered destined to speak different languages.

In the story God himself says, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. (Gen 11:6)

NOTHING WILL BE IMPOSSIBLE. We will no longer need God. 

This is the slippery slope many fear within the fundamentalist movement. You are a fundamentalist christian or you are a sinner and an atheist. It is why they feel it is necessary to believe that the Bible is the infallible, inerrant, LITERAL word of God. They heed the warning. Punishment is inevitable if we touch the tree of knowledge. 

It is much easier to be told WHAT to do rather than trying to figure it out yourself. It takes the pressure off. 

I, and those growing up as fundamentalists, were taught that if we did not accept the bible as literal and believe that Jesus was the literal son of God who literally died for our sins and literally rose from the dead....we were screwed. Big time. Eternal damnation kind of screwed. 

That put us in quite the conundrum. To study encourages questions.  To question God is blasphemous. To blaspheme God is unforgivable. So its easier to be an ostrich.

 
I am amazed how far people are willing to stick their heads into the sand to ignore the obvious. I proposed an argument once that if God is the author of the bible and it is to be accepted as his literal word, then God is not perfect. If God IS perfect, the bible was not authored by him.

There are numerous contradictions in the Bible. A contradiction is defined as being "A combination of statements, ideas, or features of a situation that are opposed to one another."

From the first book Genesis where the first two chapters contradict themselves in the order of creation, to God being the same "today, yesterday, and forever" (Heb 13:8), yet finding over and over again that the vengeful God of the Old Testament held little resemblance to God of the New, we find examples of biblical ideas and stories opposed to one another.

There is the two different stories of the death of Judas in which one claims he hanged himself (Matt 27) and the other that he threw himself head first off a cliff where, when he landed, his guts blew up all over the place (Acts 1). We are told God plays no favorites in Acts 10, yet find out over and over that God chose the Jews to be his favorite people (one example being Deut 7:6). We are taught God is omnipresent and knows all in Psalm 139, yet God couldn't find Adam and Eve in the garden.

Do these contradictions make me want to throw out the Bible? Of course not! Does it make me want to disavow the possibility of a Divinity? Absolutely not!

It simply means that the practice of literalism and inerrancy is wrong. It means that MEN wrote the words we find in the Bible. It means that MEN copied, translated, and determined what was worthy to be there.

It means MAN was wrong. Not God.

Does that mean we now have no guide for morality? Of course not.

We can and have developed morality that is not biblically based. Our ability to empathize helps us develop moral grounds while our ability to reason help us determine normal principles of behavior. There is a universal morality based upon our human nature and our ability to see the advantages of doing right and wrong within a social group. It is everyone's own best interest to "do unto others as you have them do unto you". Cooperation has gotten us far as a species and this cooperation is based on choosing individual morality in order to survive as a group.

I do believe we are born with a sense of right and wrong. It is the ultimate gift of the Divine.  Just as animals naturally cooperate in packs and understand their place within society, so we too understand what is required of us. Both humans and animals alike sometimes diverge off this path, and it is most often, the beginning of their demise. Nature teaches us right and wrong as well.

Could THAT be the Divine's most clear link to the heart and mind of the individual? Could it be that the lessons of the Divine are engrained in us in our genetics, our DNA, our essence?

Do we have to rely on a book so much so that we must ignore the messages within that we were given at the time of creation? Why would a divinity, with so much knowledge and power, knowing full well that the majority of human beings through the span of time would be illiterate chose to put the truths of the universe in a book that few could read? Would the divinity deny those truths to the illiterate? To the isolated?

If only we would allow ourselves to acknowledge that, although, there is wisdom within the pages, there is fallibility. Although there are examples of man searching for God, it is man's experience, not God's. As we can take from the experiences of ALL those before us, we cannot limit it to a few. The knowledge of the Divine cannot be logged within a mere 66 bound books. It is far more than we can understand.

As long as we limit ourselves to this compilation and limit our reach by using only the ladder of fundamentalism, we will never come close to grasping even a fraction of the Ultimate Truth.

And that is the fear of fundamentalism. Grasping the Ultimate Truth. The Ultimate Truth is what is found at the top of the Tower of Babel. It is the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

With knowledge comes power. With power comes possibilities. With possibility comes responsibility.

Responsibility is what is at the top of the Tower. 

It is the responsibility of knowing that we have been given the gift of learning. It is the responsibility of  knowing that at our creation we were given the things we need to survive and the answer to prayer is within us. No longer can we excuse ourselves by saying "The devil made me do it. Now we must say "I'm sorry I was wrong". No longer can we sit by and hope God comes and rescues us off this planet, but instead take care of the planet we inherited from the generations before us. The fruit of the Tree of Good and Evil is bittersweet because it is realizing that we KNOW what is right and wrong and it is our responsibility and in our power to choose one or the other. It means we can no longer be lazy waiting for God to appoint someone else to do what we should be doing. God is not going to lead someone else to care for your dying friend. It is YOU who must go or admit YOU don't want to.

In the stardust that is US is the DNA of the universe. The spirit within us is a drop of the ocean that is Divine. We are an answer to another one's prayer. As the prince and princess have a responsibility, not only to the king and queen, but to that which lies within the kingdom, so we too have a responsibility to our kingdom. That kingdom is this planet and all who share it. 

And sometimes that is too scary to acknowledge.