Opus 2024-280: Dark Thoughts: Is God a Chicken? Part 2 of 2

If you are a cynic that starts from the position of rejecting God and the Bible, you say a camel going through a needle’s eye is stupid.  Who could believe such garbage?  If you are a scholar with multiple PhD’s, you would come up with some very clever explanation, such as I have heard several times.  The geniuses of the ivory towers try to tell you that there was a small door in the big gates of the city, and at night when the gates were closed, no one was allowed in unless they came through the small door.  The store was so small that a camel could only get through if you totally unloaded him and pushing and pulling, and shoving, forced him through the opening. this small door was called the eye of the needle, according to the intellectuals.

When you interpret scripture, you can come from different angles.  You can rely on your own genius to come up with incredibly creative possibilities.  You can deny everything and continue down the road to hell.  Or you can read the context and come up with a relatively simple explanation.  This is a process that can be applied to just about any part of scripture.  Of course, results may vary.  And of course it may not work.  If it doesn’t work, consider that you are thinking about eternal things coming from the mind of God and you are not really expected to understand everything.  You are expected to try and understand and be open to growing.  You are not necessarily going to figure everything out.  That is the nature of prophecy.  Expecting to figure everything out is also an ingredient in arrogance and hubris.

I believe that usually people of goodwill, and who are not too smart for their own good, can figure things out that they read in the Bible.  It doesn’t take a genius to recognize figures of speech and literary devices.  You see them every day.  You recognized him immediately.  Take the camel illustration for instance.  Most intelligent people realize that is not possible.  They don’t go looking for miraculous explanations.  They don’t scream “liar.  They say, “Oh, that must be a figure of speech”, if they went to high school and paid attention, they would even recognize it as hyperbole.  There are many places in the Bible were simply not trying to be too clever, will give you a reasonable explanation.

It is up to you to apply these principles from a heart that wants to know what God is saying in a mind that is open to learning.

homo unius libri