I generalise, but there are more or less two types of Christianity in the UK today. One of them, which one might describe as ‘mainstream’ Christianity is characterised by a number of things, including the approach it takes to the Bible. If you’re not familiar with the Bible, it’s a collection of books, all very old, but some significantly ancient. Many of these very old books belong originally to the Jewish tradition, and now form part of Christianity too. People who are mainstream Christians will sometimes describe the collected books of the Bible as “the word of God”. Most people who grew up as Christian in the UK, grew up with this sort of approach to Christianity.
Each of the three principal ‘streams’ of Christianity has a slightly different Bible, Catholics and Orthodox Christians have more books than the Protestants do, for instance. What they generally share though, is an underlying view of the Bible, which is that the book is a divine product, which means it is altogether trustworthy – because, y’know, God more or less wrote it. This is particularly true for Protestants.
But that kind of thinking has a few problems, philosophical, theological and practical. One of the main practical problems is that millions of people have stopped believing it. Which is kinda #awkward. Over the next few weeks, I’m going to outline an alternative approach to the Bible. You may think this is irrelevant to you if you’re not a Christian. However, the likelihood is that your thinking has been influenced by Christianity far more than you realise, and thinking about what the Bible is, will help you understand why you think the way that you do. And that’s always good.
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Header image is used under a Creative Commons license.
Orginal photo by bcps on morguefile.com
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