The Bible is Wrong

I was inspired to write this post for several reasons. One reason is that most of the problems I face with people and my philosophy, or people and their rejection of God and the Bible, almost always stems from a misunderstanding of the inspiration of scripture and a poor interpretation of God's word.

Most conservative Christians have a very literal interpretation of scripture. They would even dare tell you that they do not interpret it at all, but simply let the Bible interpret itself. This is impossible, because it is impossible to read anything without interjecting your personal worldview into what you are reading. There is no such thing as an interpretation free of bias and personal thought. Liberals on the other hand will cherry pick what they like out of the Bible and disregard the rest, as was noted in Derek Flood's recent book "Disarming Scripture." As you can likely guess, both of these approaches to scriptures are completely wrong and will lead you into a misunderstanding of not only inspiration but God's character as well.

As I have pointed out many times throughout my writing, the writers of the Bible were human. This point cannot be stressed enough because so often it is forgotten as people read and interpret scripture. We have this human characteristic to idealize the past and even idolize it. Because we are 4,000 years removed from much of the history found in the Bible, we put it on a pedestal that no human work has the right to be placed on. The writers of the Bible were human. I know that most Christians would never dare say that any human was divinely infallible, that is boarder-line blasphemy. Yet all of a sudden when you transfer this knowledge to a reading of scripture, people abandon caution to the wind and place their entire faith in the hands of fallible humanity. Why is this? It is because of a misunderstanding of how inspiration works.

I'll bring this home with an example. I'll use Seventh-day Adventists as an example for this part because that is the faith I happen to belong to and was raised in. Many Adventists believe that Ellen White is absolutely infallible. They believe that God himself is the author of her books and every word that proceeded from her mouth is the express will of God, much as other faiths view the Bible. This leads many to believe things, such as the idea that pepper should never be used because it "excites the animal passions." Or that masturbation causes blindness, and many more medical inaccuracies. It isn't because Ellen White was weird, she simply wrote according to the medical knowledge of her day, which just so happened to be incorrect. Ellen White also changed dramatically in her writings after 1888. Why? It was Because Mrs. White's understanding of God changed drastically after 1888. The message of Righteousness by Faith preached by Jones and Wagner drastically affected her theology. She discovered an aspect of the character of God that she had never fully comprehended and without Jones and Wagner she would never have been able to write the Desire of Ages or Steps to Christ. Ellen White was human, just like everyone else, and she was influenced in her writing according to her own understanding of God and the cultural context in which she lived. It is that way with Bible writers as well. They are all human, they all understood God in their own way, and each of their understandings of God can teach us something about His character that we may never have contemplated otherwise.

As I wrote in a previous blog post, the beauty of the Bible is not found in the infallibility of its writers, but rather in its awesome portrayal of mans development of understanding. People are always talking about the difference between the old and the New Testament and their strikingly different perspectives on God's character. Several years ago I couldn’t understand people's concern with this. It did not seem to me like there was a huge difference between the two, after all there are some wonderful depictions of the love of God found in the Old Testament. Yet as I studied further, it became very clear that there is indeed a very distinct difference between the understanding found in the Old Testament and that found in the new. There is a very distinct progression seen with a common theme throughout the entire Bible. The theme is that God is different than all the other gods of other nations, and that He cares for His people. The details, however, are not always in keeping with an understanding of a God of Love and compassion, who seeks to woo the hearts of mankind and draw all nations to himself.

For instance, throughout the Minor Prophets you have men saying that God is pleased when His people bash infant’s heads against rocks, and murder women and children. You have commands for mass genocide that are attributed to God. David was a man of violence, which is also attributed to the fact that God was with him. Over and over again throughout scripture humans have been attributing to God what we would only be able to say was the work of the devil today. Why is this? Why would God allow such things, and why do the writers say it was actually God's command? The answer is very simple: humans wrote the Bible. Because of this, people have used the Bible in very terrible ways over the centuries. They have used it to justify Crusades that murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Catholics used the Bible to murder Protestants; Protestants used it to justify murdering Catholics; America used the Bible to justify slavery, and Adventists use the Bible to justify sexism. By their fruits you will know them; if your interpretation of the Bible leads you to believe such things, then you can be certain that your understanding of it is completely wrong.

The Bible is not a perfect document. It was never meant to be a perfect document. It has only become a perfect document as humanity has moved further and further away from the source of the original "inspiration." We cannot ignore the negative things found in the Bible as the liberals do, or accept it all as the revelation of God's character as the conservatives do. We must recognize these passages for what they are and seek to understand the perspective of the writer inside of their own cultural context. All scripture is profitable for instruction, but it may not be true that all scripture is an accurate depiction of God's character.

The Bible gives us an amazing glimpse into the lives of individuals as they struggled in search of truth over millennia. There is no other book in this entire world that gives us such a broad depiction of humanities struggle with truth. In fact, the only way I was able to arrive at the conclusions I have come to about the character of God is because I stood on the shoulders of the Giants that came before me as they fought to discover who God was. They did the groundbreaking research and I reap the benefits and the privilege of pulling that information into a coherent and valid philosophy on God. I use the entire Bible in my search to understand God, but some of it teaches me what God is not, rather than what God is. When faced with a hard passage of scripture, I do with it what I do with all written works of other humans. I ask myself the question, "Does this understanding of God's character reflect the character of a loving God found throughout scripture and confirmed in Jesus?" If it doesn't, I try to understand what led that writer to see God the way he did. I put the writing in cultural context and compare it to the general understandings of God at the time.

It is actually very interesting, because as you read the Bible, you find glimpses of Gods character all the way through, but you realize that the full character of God took 3,500 years to develop. It wasn't until John the Revelator wrote down his record of Jesus that we had a full and complete depiction of the truly awesome character of God. John is the one who first recognized that God IS love itself. He was the one who recognized that an abiding relationship is the key to a changed life. He comprehended better than anyone else the mercy and love of God. God has been seeking to lead humanity to this understanding of His character from the very beginning, but it has taken us a very long time to arrive at this understanding. In fact, even though we have the knowledge today, we still have not accepted the character of God that was so plainly revealed in Jesus. We get stuck on an Old Testament understanding of God. This does not mean that we should not use the Old Testament but that we must recognize that God has moved past the Old and New Testament and is moving forward to even more truth! God is constantly ahead of our time, drawing us toward the future. We are constantly playing catch up with God, and it has been that way from the very beginning.

In order to come to these conclusions and continue on to a more complete understanding of God's character, we must read the Bible like Jesus read it. Here again I am stealing ideas from Derek Flood. Jesus read the Bible very differently than the Scribes and Pharisees. Jesus read the Bible with the knowledge that man has misinterpreted and misconstrued the character of God. Jesus constantly confronted the literal interpretation of the Pharisees. Jesus taught love for enemies. He revealed that God desired the hearts of everyone, not just His "chosen" people. Jesus taught that hating your enemy was the same thing as murder. Jesus fought the idea that God desired his people to conquer, kill, murder and rape their enemies. Jesus taught a message of love and compassion that was contrary to much of what the Pharisees quoted from the Bible. Jesus did not pick and choose which scriptures to read but rather confronted it head on and reinterpreted it’s meaning and revealed how we as humans messed up our understanding of the character of God.

On The Sermon on the Mount, Jesus started with what the Jews previously had thought. Then he proceeded to reinterpret everything they had assumed about the Bible and its depictions of God. The word of God was never meant to be infallible; I state that again because it is very important to understand. In Jesus' day there were different camps that adhered to different scriptures. It was like some today who stand behind this person's theology or that person's theology. Consequently, today we have both types of scripture in one book, which makes it difficult to discern. Jesus pulled from each of their philosophies and revealed the character of His father through all scripture. He revealed both what God was not and what God was. Jesus' interpretation of the Bible was founded on the central theme of His ministry: that God is love and he desires all to be saved. Upon this philosophy, Jesus based all of his theology. Framed in this context it is easy to discern the truth found in scripture for those who are seeking it.

Jesus understood from where scripture came and to what purpose it was intended. The scriptures have gone through several phases over the thousands of years it has been under construction. It was first written down as a record of how God had led His people in the past. Much of it was written to comfort an enslaved people. It was basically a record that said "if God did this for us in the past, then certainly He has a future for us." Some of scripture were letters written to individual people or people groups, they were letters of instruction and encouragement, much as you would write a letter today. Some of scripture was written as personal journals, or songs of praise to God. Still other parts were prophetic depictions of the hopes and fears of God's people. The point is that the scriptures were never written because the writer thought that his writings were timeless and perfect. Paul would probably be horrified today to find that we make a claim of perfection on his writings. He was a fallible human being, how could we place on his shoulders a burden that only God can bear?

Besides having many different goals and purposes, the scriptures have also been used many different ways over the years. As mentioned they were used as simply a written record of God's dealings with His people. They were used to lead worship; they were used to construct faiths and philosophies. The Bible was assembled in its current form very recently, only in the past 600 years or so. There were many books that were hotly debated as to whether or not the church should accept them as scripture, such as the book of Jude in the New Testament and many others. The scriptures were diligently pored over to try and come up with a list of books that most accurately represented the Christian faith and were consistent with themselves. However, because the Bible was compiled by mere humanity, it is not an infallible document. In fact it wasn't until Martin Luther that we begin to view scripture as we do today.

Martin Luther took the scriptures and placed them on a pedestal that they had never occupied before. Never in the history of religion had the Bible been so firmly upheld as the absolute word of God and the soul foundation of our faith. Luther did not make a mistake in this; this understanding of scripture was absolutely necessary in order for truth to be carried forward. Christianity needed to understand that truth does not originate from the understanding of one man. For so long the church had placed its entire beliefs in the hands of the clergy. No individual had the ability to discern truth for him or herself. Luther placed the gospel in the hands of the individual and revolutionized our understanding of scripture, revelation, salvation and the relationship between the sinner and Christ. He brought grace within reach of the poor and the uneducated. You see an absolute understanding of scripture was the firm foundation Christianity needed in order to break free of the dark ages.

Every age had a different understanding of scripture and used it in many different ways, this was needed then but it may not be what is needed now. What was understood in Jesus' day was not the understanding that Luther needed in order to pull the church out of a doctrine of control and hate propagated by Christianity, but what Luther needed is not the same thing that we need today. We need a firm foundation on scripture but with a different understanding of what scripture is. We need scripture because like the Jews of old it points us toward how God has led His people in the past and where He intends to lead us in the future. Like Jesus pointed out, we need scripture because it points us toward a God of love and compassion for all people. Like Martin Luther we need the scriptures because it gives us a firm understanding that truth is available to the individual and is not a monopoly of priests and kings. We need all these understandings of scripture, prefaced with the knowledge that humanity was intimately involved in writing, committing to memory, translating and compiling the document we have now. There is just way too much humanity in that process for us to have a perfect document. However, in terms of its value to the furthering of truth and the knowledge of the character of God, the Bible has no equal.

So is the Bible wrong? The answer is two fold. Yes, it contains depictions of God that are not accurate and not in keeping with the knowledge of a loving God. But the Bible also contains the very principles that have led me to the knowledge that God is love. Without the Bible, it is unlikely I would have ever arrived at the conclusions about God that I have. So yes and no, the Bible can be wrong, but even in the concepts that are not entirely accurate, valuable information can be found about the tendencies of the human mind. Like I have said all the way through this post, the Bible is a record of mans progression toward truth, all of it is important for us to know and understand in order to construct an accurate philosophy that incorporates the knowledge gleaned throughout the ages. If we have this understanding of scripture rather than either the understanding of absolute conservatives and cherry picking liberals, we will arrive at a truth that far surpasses any philosophy on God ever constructed. If we have this view of scripture we will find what John found, that God is absolute love and His one desire is an abiding relationship with the individual.

Love of the World is Righteous

You hear it so often, in fact, if you haven't said it then in most Christian circles, you aren't truly converted. It usually goes something like this, "I used to love the world, but now I no longer care about this world, I just desire heaven." This isn't a terrible sentiment of itself, it stems from the biblical thought that you cannot serve two masters, either you serve the world or you serve Christ. It sounds great, but I believe that the way it often is played out in our churches destroys our relationship with those around us and has led Christianity to be careless with the world we live in.

I was in a Facebook conversation about the holiday season, particularly Christmas. There were people arguing for its values and people arguing against its pagan roots. It might sound ridiculous to you, but in conservative Christian circles this is a real issue. Should we celebrate a holiday that the church clearly adopted from paganism? One individual wrote something along these lines, "The closer we get to the coming of Jesus, the less we will care about this world. I no longer have any interest in Christmas, I just long for Jesus to come back." It sounds nice, if you ignore the almost blatant holier-than-thou attitude, but it actually disturbs me a great deal. You see, the closer we get to the second coming of Jesus, that we all look forward to so much, the more we should care about this world not less.

I love this world. It is evident that Jesus may be coming soon. I do desire that, but the more I see of this world and what it has to offer, the more in love with it I grow. Our earth is special. The green rolling hills, tall jagged mountains, flat plains, open deserts, and vast ice caps all combine to make such a miraculously crafted planet. The earth is full of diversity that I haven't even begun to explore; I am not ready for Jesus to come because there is yet more for me to do! There are cultures that I have not studied, there are places I have not been, and there are people that have yet to impact my life. Diversity is a beautiful thing.

God loves diversity. If you get nothing else from your study of this planet, this is something to take with you forever. Diversity is at the heart of God's design. He designed this planet to diversify, to change with time, to mold to our desires, to adapt to the environmental influences. He designed within animals the ability to adapt, to adjust, and yes to evolve. Why did he do all of this? Simply because of this, God loves diversity. It was part of the plan all along. It is the same with humanity. We were meant to change the world, to explore, to subdue, to tame, to make wild, to protect, to design. In return, we ourselves were not to be left unchanged. As we explore, as we learn, as we adapt and grow, we ourselves have changed. We have hundreds of etiologies, religions, economic doctrine, philosophies, sociologies, faiths, beliefs, and superstitions. Humanity has become as diverse as the world is diverse and it is beautiful. I believe God saw this diversity coming and said, "it is very good."

Why do I believe God designed the world like this? It stems from my beliefs of who God is. You see I do not believe that it is possible for God to be understood in just one way. You cannot simply take the written word found in the Bible and expect to know all there is about God. No matter how far you dig, or how deep you search, you will never come to a complete understanding of God. Imagine you finally make it to the very edge of our universe, the logical question after reaching the edge is, "what else is behind that?" There is always something else to the story, much more to understand that we can't even comprehend, and it is that way with God as well. God required diversity in order for us to know Him. Not only do we need the diversity of the entire universe and nature found on our little speck of dust called earth, but we also need the diversity of each other. Each person reveals something different about the aspects of who God is. Everyone's understanding of God is essential to our comprehension of His character.

I know people who think their religion has a monopoly on all truth. It is an extremely self-centric idea, "because I believe it to be absolute truth, it is." People believe things simply because they want to. It is comforting to think that you are involved in a religion that has nothing to learn, and no need to change. There are a very few people that I have ever sat down and talked to that believe their church does not have all truth. You speak with Anglicans, you speak with Catholics, or Adventists, or orthodox, all of them believe they have a monopoly on absolute truth. Here is the kicker; they all hold to that belief because they are all partially correct. You see there is no one religion that will ever have absolute truth. The only person with a monopoly on truth is the one who recognizes that there is always more to learn, more to explore and more of God that their current understanding may not know. All religions are valid, some might have more truth than others, but that is only because they borrowed from the old and added to the new, yet all have truth, and all are useful in understanding the character of God.

I love this diversity. I love that people groups have different theories and understandings of God. I love culture and tradition. I love to see mans interpretations of the reality they occupy. It is fascinating to me, and the closer we get to the second coming of Jesus, the more I desire to know about the thoughts and theories of others. I see God everywhere. In the scientific ideas and discoveries of humanity I see amazing revelations about the way in which God has created us to interact with Him. In the cultures and religions of the world, I see amazing revelations of the way that God has led us in the past and continues to lead us toward the future. I love Christmas, because in it I see remnants of God leading the thoughts and ideas of man. Seeing how the holiday has changed over time, even in the last 20 years has made an impact on how I understand God. God is working, and he is leading all men to knowledge of Himself.

As Christians we often have this idea that we must go in to the foreign field and change the culture and religion of those who live there. We are ethnocentric; we believe that the western ideals are the ideals of God himself. It actually makes me angry how twisted our missions are. God did not create western culture, humanity created it. Who is to say that our culture is better than the natives that run around naked in the woods? Because we believe modesty to be a gift from God, we force it on cultures that don't even understand it. It isn't a gift from God; it is simply a development of culture, and a product of society.

It is also not our job to convert everyone to our faith. That was NEVER the purpose of Jesus. Why do you think Jesus never converted people to Christianity? In fact, Jesus didn't even convert to Judaism. You look at His interactions with humanity over the course of time and what do you find? Jesus did not convert to religion, but rather to an understanding of God that transcended religions and ideologies. He didn't ask people to abandon culture and forsake society; he called them to adjust their understanding. If Jesus came today, he would not call people to Adventism, he would not call them to Judaism, he would not call them to any religion at all, not even Christianity in General, Jesus would call people to a higher understanding of the character of God. If Jesus preached the holiness of the Sabbath, it would not be in the context of Adventism, it would be in the context of relationship with God. If Jesus preached a healthy lifestyle, it would not be in the context of an established religion, but would be in establishing a proper understanding of the character of himself. God does not care what religion you belong to. The only people who will be in heaven at the end will be those who are seeking after a relationship with Jesus.

I feel so strongly about this in fact that I find it absolutely terrible that we call people out of their church families to join ours. We convert people to the "truth" and then make them leave the very place that they have an influence and a family of believers that cares for their well-being. We remove them from their community and place them in one that they often cannot relate to. How much better would this world be if we merely converted people to a correct understanding of his character and then called them not to leave their churches but to influence their community for good. What if every new believer simply began to lead others to an understanding of the true character of God? I guarantee you we would have a Christianity that was more unified and committed to truth.

Let me share with you my ideal situation, perhaps it is an idea you have never even considered. I know I never did, but I believe it is the only truly "Christian" way to live, and yes, I am being a little self-centric myself. I would prefer to permanently delay the second coming of Jesus. Yes you read that correctly. My goal in this life is to put a permanent hold on the second coming of Jesus. Why is that my goal? It is simple really, because from what I read in the Bible, the second coming only happens because humanity makes a final decision to reject God forever. Perhaps you have never imagined there could be an alternate ending to the story of humanity. Let me share with you my ideal version of events.

My alternate ending would go someone like the following: humans finally come to a realization of the awesome and wonderful character of God, they come together in unity of purpose and commit, once and for all, their hearts to doing the will of God, which is to love. We end war, hunger and waste, we band together as one people under a common rule, which is the rule of love. We allow the Holy Spirit to take control of our life and we become changed in to the image of the character of God. We end the slaughter of animals for food, we begin to heal our broken planet, and rather than using our resources to gain power over each other, we instead begin the exploration of creation. Perhaps we would solve human aging and disease, we could explore our deepest oceans, and apply our technology to stabilizing the earth once again. We could explore our solar system and all it has to offer and establish colonies on other planets, maybe even begin terraforming Mars to be a second garden home, creating a breathable atmosphere, warming it's crust and making water flow there once again. We would then begin to explore far beyond the reaches of our solar system and venture out in to the galaxy to explore what else God has to offer. That would be my alternate ending to the destruction of humanity and this world that is found in revelation. What if?

Until the day comes when humanity makes the ultimate choice, I am determined not to leave this world unchanged. I desire to change it for the good. I am in love with this home of ours, I am in love with its peoples and animals, it's cultures, and diversity. I love the world. I want to visit other countries and the cultures inside of them to learn what they have to teach me about the character of God. I want to celebrate their holidays and immerse myself in their lives to know who they are and what has impacted their life. I do not want to call them all to forsake their country, culture, and religion; I want to learn from them and them from me as we all seek out God for ourselves. God is drawing humanity to himself, he is not only working with Adventists who understand the Bible and Sabbath, no, he is working with people who know nothing of such things. He is working with Buddhists and Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims, Christians and Jews. The character of God is being revealed all around us. Will we simply shut out the culture around us and snub our noses at society because "this world is not our home." As for me, I will continue to study the culture I live in, I will learn the philosophies of our time, I will seek to understand the world views behind the movies our culture uses to express its deepest hopes, imaginations, desires, and fears. Jesus did not come to destroy the world, but to save it, and I desire the same. I do not desire for God to destroy this world, I desire to save it from itself and teach as many as I can about the true and perfect character of a God who is so much different than anything anyone has ever imagined. I admonish you, love this world, because if you fail to fall in love with such an amazing creation as is already here, what makes you think you will love heaven any more? 

Solomon: A Nihilist's Journey of Hope

Solomon was a promised child. Before he was born, God told his father David that Solomon would be born and would do great things. Before Solomon was even born his destiny had been determined. He was going to be King, he was going to build a temple to The Lord, he was going to be great, and he was going to walk in the ways of The Lord all the days of his life. You think pastor’s kids have it bad; you can't even comprehend the pressure that was mounting on the shoulders of Solomon.

So Solomon is born, and from the time of his childhood on up his father David was his mentor. Talk about hard to live up to. Solomon had one of the fiercest men in the world as a father. David, the man who concurred multiple nations, established Jerusalem as the city of The Lord, and built the nation of Israel. David, when he was in his youth, killed lions and bears as his past time, and slew Giants while on vacation. I can only imagine the bedtime stories David told Solomon. They probably gave the unfortunate child nightmares. On top of all this, Solomon's father was the greatest man of God since Moses. David was a prophet, a priest who interceded for his people before God, and a King. David was a type of Christ for goodness sake! Yes, Solomon had a lot to live up to.

From a young age Solomon was taught to kill, sing, worship The Lord, and pray. He knew the history of Israel, He knew from where God had led His people. He was more than likely made to memorize whole books of the Bible and commit the promises of God to memory. We often have this idea that Solomon's wisdom was a divine gift from God, but that superstitious idea is not the whole truth. Ultimately all wisdom comes from God since God invented intellect, however, Solomon did not just gain wisdom one night in a dream. Solomon's wisdom was a long time in coming. He studied, he learned, he practiced, he watched his father and he developed in to the man he was. Many have this idea that learning is overrated, schooling is a waste of money and worldly knowledge such as politics, economics, sociology, psychology physics etc. etc., are inventions of man that are not worth the study of the righteous. Some have this idea that the Bible is the only book they need read to obtain wisdom. Solomon would have something to say about that, he says, "She (wisdom) is calling out where the noisy crowd gathers: "Fools, how long will you love being ignorant? How long will you make fun of wisdom? How long will you hate knowledge? I wanted to tell you everything I knew and give you all my knowledge, but you didn't listen to my advice and teaching. "I tried to help, but you refused to listen. I offered my hand, but you turned away from me. You ignored my advice and refused to be corrected. So I will laugh at your troubles and make fun of you when what you fear happens. Disasters will strike you like a storm. Problems will pound you like a strong wind. Trouble and misery will weigh you down. "Fools will call for me, but I will not answer. They will look for me, but they will not find me. That is because they hated knowledge. They refused to fear and respect the LORD." (Proverbs 1:21-29)

Solomon equates knowledge with respecting The Lord. Why is that? Solomon's upbringing had a great deal to do with what he is writing here. Solomon realized something fascinating that I believe is the beginning of a true understanding of God. Everything in existence teaches us more about our creator, the more we know, the more of God we understand. It is true that you can study without understanding, and learn without true knowledge, but a true seeker of God will seek to know and understand as much as is possible. The Bible alone is not enough to gain all wisdom of God. The Bible is enough for salvation and for you to understand a basic version of who God is, but unless you search out wisdom as you would for a lost child, unless you truly seek to understand and explore, you will never come in to a deeper understanding. The brain that stops learning is on a slow progression to death.

No, Solomon's wisdom was not an overnight gift of God. In fact, when we look at the story of when Solomon asked for wisdom, something very interesting is revealed. Solomon, at that point in his life was already wise beyond the majority of the world. The very fact that Solomon asked of God wisdom reveals something quite amazing. Solomon was already wise. Solomon asked of God something that he already had. Why then did Solomon ask it? You might ask. That's very simple, Solomon recognized from whom ultimate wisdom comes. Solomon recognized that although he had obtained the knowledge necessary, it was God who created the ability to learn, and it is wisdom that ultimately leads to ever other gift imaginable. The Bible records that although Solomon asked for wisdom, God gave him everything that he could have asked for, including riches, power, and authority. I challenge this assumption as well. It wasn't that God magically bestowed on Solomon all those things because Solomon was righteous in his ways, no; Solomon obtained wealth, status, and power because of the one thing that he sought for first, wisdom. It is no surprise that Solomon got everything else in return for his one request he made, because Solomon recognized where everything else comes from. Riches do not come from simply praying to God and asking him to bless you, riches come from a cunning mind, the ability to reason and make good judgments. Solomon made the only logical request. In this request, Solomon revealed great wisdom that he had already obtained.

In his younger years Solomon began to become renown in the whole known world. The wisdom of Solomon isn't just bragged about in the Bible and glorified beyond what it really was, Solomon was known by every nation both far and near. He is written of in many writings besides the Bible. He mined massive amounts of precious stones, gold, silver and copper. He had so much gold that he plated the walls of the entire temple in gold. Solomon dealt with the nations with wisdom and he subdued them with knowledge. His armies carried gold plated shields, in other words, they were just for show, Solomon did not fight many battles, his battles were battles of the mind and intellect. As Solomon began to develop his mind, and his might, he began to notice certain things. Every nation around about him had their own God’s; they all sacrificed to them and expected their God to do miraculous things for them, some got what they desired, others got slavery and death. What did every one of them have in common? Each ultimately succumbed to chance or smart wits. Their gods had nothing to do with their successes or their failures.

Along with this revelation to Solomon came a very serious, and very disturbing revelation that I believe is fundamental in the development of your understanding of God. Solomon's God, Jehovah himself, was no different. Solomon's might, Solomon's power, Solomon's wealth, his kingdom, and yes, even his wisdom was a direct result of his own works. God had virtually nothing to do with Solomon's successes, nor his failures. God did not pour out his blessings on Solomon simply because Solomon was worthy, no, God had given to all the same, and in that early dawn of revelation Solomon realized that God had given to everyone nothing.

From this point Solomon built more than just the temple to Jehovah, he built some truly magnificent temples to dozens of Gods from every other nation. Solomon was searching. I don't believe Solomon simply fell to the wishes of arranged marriages, no, Solomon was searching, and he did not find. All the gods were the same, all the temples were the same, and Solomon reasoned away God. There was nothing special about Jehovah! Ultimately Solomon believed the same things about his God, as did the nations about theirs. Solomon realized something extremely important, if God existed at all, He did not care. This revelation led Solomon down a dark road of Nihilism.

Solomon sought for meaning in every part of life. He struggled with purpose, or a lack thereof. He sought meaning in love, but he didn't find it in women. He wrote a wonderful book full of his professed love for his bride. Song of Solomon is a loving and very erotic book. It is your classic Prince Charming and Cinderella story mixed with an erotic novel. Fancy translations and dumbing down of language make it seem as though the book is not truly that graphic, but you read it in its original, it is anything but tame. It is graphic and passionate. I'll give you a brief run down of the book. Solomon goes out in to the country and pretends that he is a shepherd. He meets a girl while visiting the small mountain towns and she falls in love with him. Yet Solomon is torn. He can't reveal to her that he is the king of practically the entire world, or else she would marry him for fear, or for love of money or power, so Solomon continues to deceive her. She marries him thinking he is a humble shepherd. When she follows him to the city looking for him, she describes him to the women of the city, and what do they tell her? There is no man in the entire city that matches that description but the king of Israel, Solomon. There are interspersed depictions of sex and descriptions of their bodies etc. etc. but let's stick just to the story. It is such a wonderful story full of love and passion and excitement, yet even this wonderful loving relationship did not fill Solomon with the meaning he desired.

Solomon lost that love for his bride and he sought it elsewhere. In the end Solomon had at least a few dozen wives (the bible records 300 wives and 700 concubines.) He did not find meaning in women, he sought it in men; yes Solomon practiced homosexuality. He did not find meaning there either. As I already stated, he worshiped dozens of gods, he did not find it there either. He built cities, some claim he built flying machines, he amassed riches, knowledge, he conquered, and in the end what does he say? "Everything is so meaningless. The Teacher says that it is all a waste of time!" (Ecclesiastes 1:2)

Solomon comes to the conclusion that everything is meaningless. If you work for your entire life, you still die, and someone else takes your work and the riches you have gained. We race about our days trying to accomplish something in this life, but when we are gone, the sun still rises over the earth, and the plants still grow, the seasons still come, and the oceans still flow. Everything is meaningless. There is nothing you can do in your life that makes the slightest difference. Read Ecclesiastes front to back and you begin to get a completely different picture of Solomon's life. The guy literally tried everything to make his life acceptable. At every single turn he found all of his works to be useless and to not make a bit of difference. So much so that he writes, "This made me hate life. It was depressing to think that everything in this life is useless, like trying to catch the wind.   I began to hate all the hard work I had done, because I saw that the people who live after me would get the things that I worked for. I will not be able to take them with me." (Ecclesiastes 2:17-18)

Solomon sunk deep in to nihilism. The philosophy of Nihilism is not new. Even before the sophists first started teaching about life having no objective purpose, Solomon himself was a practicing Nihilist and wrote it down for all to see. As Solomon very wisely stated, "There is nothing new under the sun." Solomon mentions how his generation had forgotten everything that was created and built in the past, and that in the future everyone would forget what he was doing right then. It is profound to think about that now, 4,000 years later we are just trying to separate the truth from the fables about Solomon's life, and what he did and didn't do. Did Solomon have flying machines? Did Solomon have knowledge from aliens? Did Solomon exist at all? Did Solomon really have as much riches and power as the Histories say he did? All of these concepts, conspiracies, and ideals exist about the life of Solomon, while Solomon's own words ring truer than they ever have before. His life was meaningless to the generations that followed after. They forgot, they destroyed and they buried what was once a great empire.

Solomon sets out to try to make sense of all the meaninglessness that life has to offer. He basically says, God did it; God set all of this in motion to prove to us that we are nothing and that he is just and the judge of all the earth. So Solomon says, you might as well eat, drink and enjoy the little that you have in the short lifespan that God gives to you. But after saying that Solomon ends with, "But this is senseless!" Solomon tries to reason it out, but no matter how he does it he finds that it is all so chaotic and messed up! Life just doesn't make sense logically. God must have made a mistake, or else he doesn't much care about humanity or the struggles that He had put on them. Solomon built a theory about God that was very distant, and almost atheistic, and no wonder, Solomon was a smart man, his logic was flawless, and his reasoning sound. Who am I to argue with such a man?

Yet as Solomon continues on his journey to find meaning in this life he discovers something fascinating. I actually watched this very transformation happen in my own brother a year or so ago, and I have watched it in my own life. The dawning of what really matters in this life. It isn't how much money you have, how much work you do for God, how big your business gets, how many people you are able to bring to the kingdom, how many countries you have visited, how many degrees you have after your name, how many cars you have parked in your garage, none of that matters, but what does matter is the relationships you have built along the way. You see, in all of the searching that Solomon did, in all the meaningless he found in life's struggles and life's toils he found something that didn't quite fit in side his nihilistic box, relationships. Relationships threw a wrench in to his carefully constructed philosophy of emptiness. Solomon had experienced genuine love, Solomon had close friends, Solomon had loved his father, and Solomon had loved his mother Bathsheba. These connections Solomon had developed with people around him led him to the revelation of chapter 4 of Ecclesiastes. There is a point to life; it is love for other people. "Two are better than one" as Solomon puts it, it is better to sleep in a bed with someone else than to sleep alone, it is better to fight in a battle with someone else, than to stand alone, it is better to work with two because you accomplish more than you would if each of you worked alone. Chapter 4 finishes basically saying that relationship is the point to life.

Then we have chapter 5 as Solomon sends another tirade of all the useless things you can do in this life and how you should never make promises to God because you can't keep them and God will punish you if you don't keep his promises. You see the internal struggle as Solomon writes his journey to discovery. Solomon is revealing the steps of coming in to an understanding of God. Solomon then speaks of the unfair things of this life, God gives good things to some and not to others; God is not fair. Why do people suffer? That is a huge question on the minds of anyone who has ever questioned this life. Why does the world suffer? Solomon makes the assumption that it is because God gives and God takes away for no other reason than because he wants to. In this, Solomon saw senselessness, and again came back to the conclusion, we should just strive to enjoy life and be happy and enjoy each other for as long as God gives us breath. But then something dawns on Solomon, something that he learned at the very beginning of this search, something that he realized before he started his life long search for meaning, God had given to all the same, in other words, God had given to all, nothing. Yet Solomon didn't just stop there, Solomon realized that initial assumption wasn't exactly correct, it was more accurate to say, God had given to all the same, the ability to live.

Solomon writes, "I also saw other things in this life that were not fair. The fastest runner does not always win the race; the strongest soldier does not always win the battle; wise people don't always get the food; smart people don't always get the wealth; educated people don't always get the praise they deserve. When the time comes, bad things can happen to anyone!" (Ecclesiastes 9:11) In another translation it says, "Chance happens to them all." It doesn't matter how good you are, or how much money you have donated, it doesn't matter how dedicated you are to the work of God, in fact it doesn't even matter if you believe in God or not, God has given to all the same, that is life, love and the ability to find happiness. To the atheist, life, love and happiness, to the Christian life, love and happiness. To the rich, to the poor, slave and free, God's gifts fall on all alike with equality. Your works are, as Solomon would put it, completely meaningless in the estimation of God. There is absolutely nothing you can do to obtain the favor of The Lord. God’s favor has already been given. This is because God has given to each of us free will. Not just to us but also to the entire universe free will of action and movement are given. An asteroid will continue its course indefinitely unless acted upon by a force, it has freedom of movement along its course as it is pushed and pulled by the gravity of other large bodies in space. It is the same with us. God had not determined our end. God has not predestined our path, God does not act directly to give or take away.

When something bad happens to us on his planet you bet you can always find a natural cause for it. Let's just pick one, you are driving to work one day and you are involved in an accident that totaled your vehicle. Is this the judgment of God for what you did that night? Perhaps you went out and you had a few beers at that bar, and now God is punishing you for your weakness. Or is it perhaps that this morning you were rushed to get to work, you were stressed for having slept in a little too late and you weren't paying attention. The other person on the road was headed to a doctor’s appointment to find out the prognosis of suspected lung cancer and they were not paying attention. Circumstances worked out to both of your disadvantage and you ran in to each other. The entire experience was pure chance. It was free will acted upon. You had the choice to drive that day did you not? You had the choice to stay out late that night before did you not? You could have woken up early and made It to work on time correct? But you didn't, free will was acted upon and you were involved in a dangerous accident because of your own choices.

Now let's throw another link in our story. The entire drivers side of your vehicle was crushed, you should have died, but you didn't. The other person who hit you died, now what do you say? Any good Christian would say, "Praise The Lord I was saved!" But what would you do if Solomon were to tell you that such a thought is meaningless. Are you really going to assume then, that God saw fit to save your life but not the life of the other driver? Are you so special that God decided He could not do without you on the earth? No my friend. Chance happened and you were saved. Praise God that such a chance was possible, but don't praise God for deliberately saving your life. The same chance that got you involved in the accident is the same chance that saved you. The other car hit you just at the right spot because at the last second the driver saw your car in his blind spot and swerved enough to hit you in such a way as to not kill you. Chance can just as easily bring good things as it can bad. Take the show Deal Or No Deal for instance, if a person makes it all the way to the last two cases, at that moment they have a 50/50 chance of winning one million dollars. Chance could just as easily win them the money as it could lose them everything.

So if God is not deliberately altering our lives and controlling our destiny, what good is He? As Solomon stated so well in chapter 11, "If the clouds are full of water, they drop rain, if a tree falls to the south or to the north, there it stays." In other words, God does not make those things happen, they happen on their own accord as natural chance directs them. God has set up a system of absolute free will; it is a system that can act according to the dictates of circumstance. You see, this system had to be put in place in order for autonomous life to exist. If the world around us was unmovable and could not be altered by our actions, what kind of free will would that be? We would be forced to act a certain way because of the way in which God had created the universe. Because the universe has freedom of movement and trajectory, we have the ability to alter it to our advantage or disadvantage. This is why you have the ability to be involved in a fatal car accident, this is also the reason you have the chance of winning a million dollars. It is the same with our thoughts and actions. If God had designed us to merely act according to his dictates, we would not be alive at all, but rather mere automatons controlled by the dictates of a supreme ruler. There would be no love, there would be no relationship, and there would be no true intellect.

This brings us to one of my most favorite verses in the Bible, Ecclesiastes 11:9, "So young people, enjoy yourselves while you are young. Be happy. Do whatever your heart leads you to do. Do whatever you want, but remember that God will judge you for everything you do." Solomon implores the young to do what seems good to them, explore, learn, enjoy, discover the world that God has created and discover who you are as an individual. It is such a wonderful invitation that I have taken to heart as I have gotten older. There are such few years that we have in this earth in which we can do exciting things, so you use them! Don't come to the end of your life saying you wish you had done something different with it all.

You may notice that at the end of this verse Solomon cautions the young person to remember just one thing in their exploration of life, that is that for everything they do, God will bring them in to judgement. Now Solomon lived in a time and culture heavily influenced by a punitive understanding of God. God was this mighty king and all-powerful judge ruling over the affairs of man. Even though I disagree with this understanding of God, I think Solomon reveals something extremely important in his verse. That is that we must remember that everything we do effects relationships in some way, not just relationships with those around me, but ultimately my understanding of and relationship with God. Solomon understood something very important that I believe Christians often completely miss. There is no such thing as innate sin. There is no sin in the entire universe that is of itself evil. There is no action you can do that can be labeled as utterly evil in and of itself. All actions are amoral. What gives an action its morality is relationship. This is why Solomon wrote chapter 3 of Ecclesiastes. Everything has a time and a place. Let's take a situation as our example. For instance, some teens could take Ecclesiastes and run with it saying, "I'm going to experience everything I can in his world, so I'm going to go out and explore sex to its fullest." And we get the sexual revolution of the sixties.

Sex is not evil, nothing about the action has any innate evil or "sin" associated with it. It is not a sin to have sex with another person, not at all. What makes sex sinful? Sex is sinful when it directly harms relationships around you, and your own personal understanding and relationship with God. I do not believe there is any action that we are capable of performing that does not, in some way, alter our understanding of God either for good or ill, thus we have to be mindful of our actions. To the person who desires to explore sexuality, I say go for it, but remember that whatever you do has an impact, not only on your understanding of God, but on your relationships with people, and it may not have an impact on you alone, it may effect the other persons understanding of God and relationships with their circle of people. Your life, your sexuality, your experiences, the determination of what is sin and what is not is placed In your hands. It is not for the church to decided for you, or your parents, or your friends, the decision is yours alone, but I caution you to, at the very least, consider the advice of the many who have come before you, bible writers, parents, peers, pastors, all advice is profitable, there is no such thing as useless advice. You may not heed all of it, but all of it is capable of teaching you something you didn't consider before.

As we reach the end of Ecclesiastes, we come to Solomon's conclusions on what makes this life worth living and what gives meaning to an otherwise despicable existence. It is relationship. Relationship is what gives your life meaning! There were times when I was so low I desired to die. I wanted nothing more than for my airplane to crash and burn so that I would not have to face the difficulties of life. I dreaded night because at night I had to contemplate my life. I'm telling you, the victory over such depression and disparity is relationship; it is connection with other people. It wasn't connection to other people alone, but as I established relationships, I began to see a different picture of God than I had ever seen before. I saw God as an experience, a friendship with infinity itself, a friendship withy life. My life began to change as I beheld the ultimate character of a God who created for relationship, a God who created this entire universe to help me understand who He is. It is the revelation that God is not a "He", God is not an "it" either, God is nothing. God does not exist because existence itself is created. God is something more; He occupies that space between relationship. Can you grasp what I am saying? That space that I have created between my fiancé and myself, God occupies the space I call my relationship with Morgan.

Ecclesiastes ends by saying the conclusion of the matter is to fear God and keep his commandments. Why is this important? Why is there a focus on the law here? It is because the law is not a law at all. It is not a command, it is not 10 rules to follow, and it is not the 700 odd commandments found in Leviticus. No, the law of God is relationship. The verse could just as accurately say, " Acknowledge God and establish a relationship with Him." That is the conclusion of the whole matter, to know God on a level that you have never contemplated before. To take all the knowledge and information you have gathered throughout your life and build an understanding of God. You have been searching, but you did not realize that the answers have been coming to you all along, they are found in the experiences and relationships you have established with others. The wisest man in the world discovered the secrete, after an entire lifetime of searching for meaning, Solomon finally found it. Life is relationship. As my brother very wisely pointed out in a recent Facebook post, the sentiment, "Nothing matters but God" is a twisted form of theistic Nihilism. Stuart twisted this sentiment to say rather, "Everything matters...because God." Solomon came full circle, from his original premise that everything is meaningless. No, we are to explore, and enjoy and take pride in life because of relationship, because of ultimately "God". Everything is not meaningless, everything has meaning, because every experience we have, every new bit of information we glean draws us in to a deeper understanding of ourselves and those around us, which ultimately leads to a deeper understanding of God.