I was chatting to someone about Christian belief. We were discussing the final version of the Bible as agreed upon by scholars. The book we know today. They stated it’s a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of an oral tradition, of another oral tradition before that. So on and so forth.

I asked “How then can you know what is truth within that book and what isn’t?” I was told by them that God gives people a Spirit of Discernment to weigh up what is correct. Rather ironically then, it’s Corinthians which mentions such a spirit, in the book which is problematic to begin with.

Too many people I meet who have jettisoned organised religion from their lives, still find themselves clinging to it, in one form or another. I have done so myself.

Then there are those who take out the bad bits of the bible, choosing to concentrate on the nice verses, or even viewing the entire book as allegory and metaphor. I have done this too. The problem for me was in realising the Old Testament god is a psychopathic, capricious, tyrannical and cruel being whereas the New Testament god is the O.T. god ‘made flesh.’ An evil person can pretend to be good though.

A good person however does not generally go around killing people on a whim or ask that you do exactly as they have told you to, with a dire lifelong punishment awaiting you if you don’t. Even if I take out the bad parts of the Bible and go with that, I am still aligning myself with a system of control which has resulted in shed blood all around the world, for 20 centuries. A belief which has spawned further fear-based systems. No, thank you.

The best people I have ever met by far are those who follow their own spiritual pathway or none, with no reference to their former beliefs. The worst people I have ever known are those who follow the Abrahamic religions. By a long chalk. High church, low church, liberal, fundamentalist. Endlessly divided into and against itself. Rotten to its Eden core.

“Above us, only sky.”