[split] The Symbol of the Bible

[Monica]

It stands by itself as a compilation of horrors.

Absolutely!

Whenever Christians knock on my door to proselytize, I give them a radiant smile and say "I have a strong spiritual faith and I appreciate your dedication to what you believe, but I could never go back to being a bible-believer. I'd have to lower my morals too much!"

It's so funny...they are used to thinking that their book is some sort of moral compass, and it does a number on their head to hear someone say that it's actually immoral.

Then I tell them that I'm a big fan of Jesus, and love his teachings about love and forgiveness, but the rest is just too creepy and violent for me!

I am not suggesting there is NOTHING of value in it, but what may be found of positive value, in my opinion, is so small compared to the horrors it seems absurd to me that a person would use energy trying to make the bible a source of enlightenment. 

I'm completely mystified by that too.

But to take the text as a whole and study it trying to read between the lines or rework it, is not something I would want to spend any time on. I have read some reinterpretations of the bible from a "new age" perspective, but honestly, what is the value of that?

I agree! There are so many other, better spiritual books out there; why waste time on something that's so dark?

 
But what does one do with all the horrible violence? Killing children, babies, animals, pregnant women, sons who talk back to their parents, on and on and on. How does one transform that? Is there any way to see that in an STO light? If one were to use the bible, particularly the old testament and God as a role model, it might work as a guide for STS behavior.

...which was probably its intention.

I feel that anyone—including Carla—who hangs onto the bible must be using an enormous amount of energy to see it in an STO (or as Christians say, God is love) light, or derive much from it that resembles love.

I agree that Carla must have been extremely pure in intention that Ra could actually come through her considering this. I have wondered if there wasn't some duality present with Don, being empirically oriented and Carla, being spiritually oriented, and the binding factor being a high level of intelligence in both of them.

I do know that Carla had a profound spiritual experience with a Being she believed to be Jesus. So, I think her devotion was really more to the intense peace and love she perceived from Jesus, but somehow that got wrapped up with the bible too. Maybe some of it was cultural. I don't remember her talking about going to church as a child, but she certainly did later, and it was apparently a spiritual experience for her.

I had the opposite experience with church. I found it suffocating to be inside a church. I much preferred being outside. I used to get sick in church all the time. My husband said it probably stirred up memories of being burned at the stake or something.

In fairness to Carla, whenever we talked about this on the radio show, she always encouraged people to focus only on the good parts of the bible, and certainly wasn't anything near fundamentalist. But sometimes she'd surprise me by talking about advanced spiritual concepts, and then follow that with "Jesus is my savior" and I never quite understood how she reconciled all that.

So I asked her. And she said that she focused on the words of Jesus, which were all about love and forgiveness. Really, if we could just extract those words and discard the rest, most of his word are profound, except for a few things that were creepy, like telling his followers to abandon their families, and that he came to bring not peace but a sword, and those words really don't jive with the other things he said. Who knows what he really said anyway? The oldest fragment of parchment is dated several decades after his death, and is the size of a credit card!

But ya know, we all are reaping the benefits of the Law of One. Would we feel as confident about the purity of the Material if we'd been in Carla's shoes? Being approached by advanced alien beings, setting herself aside so they could use her body, being endangered by negative entities...WOW Carla was VERY courageous to do what she did!

The bible was an anchor for her...a source of comfort.  Knowing what I know about the creepy stuff in it, I really don't think the whole bible itself was her comfort, but I suspect it was more the cultural attachment from having had positive experiences going to church, and of course her experiences with Jesus. Maybe if she hadn't had that anchor, she would have been more susceptible to being thrown off-center. Maybe it wouldn't have mattered so much what her anchor was, but just that she had some sort of anchor that, to her, represented love...?

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