Blind Faith: A stumble in the dark!

The Christian church's assertion that the Gospels to be divine inspiration and that belief is a matter of faith is intriguing.

Most people who know the Bible's history accept the Gospels as a collection of writings by men who wanted to record or preach beliefs prevailing at the time. Accepting without question any matter of importance would be imprudent, so how can we be expected to blindly follow something which, affects life, death and beyond? Especially as we read in 1 Thessalonians 5.21 "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good."

The 'Blind Faith' package is sold, under different wrapping, throughout the world and many trusting people, who without consideration of the consequences, can end up following eccentric religions. The results can sometimes be tragic. An extreme example is the disastrous incident in Waco, USA. The generations before us who approved such indoctrination were sincere but uninformed. Today knowledge is more widespread and not to use it is an insult to the human intellect.

In order to improve our understanding it is essential to determine whether the Gospels are divinely inspired and to do this we need take glimpse into the beginning of Christianity. It was not until the year 325 under Emperor Constantine that a Bible, different from the present version, was compiled and for many years after that, chapters called 'books' were added and others, which had been included, were subsequently removed. Clearly the Nicaea Council did not consider them to be inspired. Even in the last century doubts were expressed in the Catholic Herald (1844 Vol. 3 page 205) regarding the authorship of the Gospel of John. It was considered to have been written by an unknown student in Alexandria and in most modern Bibles it is still referred to as the Gospel 'according' to St. John.

It is interesting to note that the Bible (Revelation 22. 19) cautions people who add or subtract parts of the 'book', and that the Douay adaptation of 1609 contains more 'books' than any other Bible. To authenticate the inspired ones from the apocrypha would be an impossible task.

Jesus never expected anyone to worship him as God, but he did rebuke one person by saying: "... Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one that is God..." (Matthew 19.17) This statement alone invalidates any claim for Christ's divinity. Any contradictory statement would make the 'inspired' Gospel inconsistent. If any man could claim to be God it would surely have been Malchisedec who was "... without father, without mother, without decent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life..." (Hebrews 7.3) and as Christ had both beginning and an end he was a most unlikely candidate.

Without quoting all the relevant verses from the Bible it should be sufficient to say that the contemporaries of Jesus never believed that Christ, the man amongst them, who walked, talked, ate, slept, wept and was tempted by Satan (Mark 1. 13) when God cannot be tempted (James 1.13), was in reality God. Apart from a few ambiguous inferences there is nothing to support Jesus as a divine being.

When compared some verse of the Bible can be perplexing, that is why we know that it is not inspired "... For God is NOT the author of confusion... " (1 Corinthians 14.33.) The Gospels are a collection of historical documents and not divine inspiration. The discerning person with a searching mind will find it to be just that.