In regards to the Bible, how far does your dedication and faith extend to? Are there things in the Bible that you reject or personally don't agree with, or are there things you take literally verses figuratively?Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to understand the Bible, and um, but I definitely don't put it on the same pedestal that I used to. You know, where I'd say, "this is the word of God that I'm holding in my hand and this is infallible and perfect, and there's no contradictions and is scientifically accurate," and all the rest. I look at it now as, these are writings from the Jewish prophets about the coming of the messiah. They're poems and songs, and there's little biographical accounts of Jesus Christ and his life, and there's letters of advice and encouragement, and discouragement, the rebuking from Paul to specific churches, and other people like James and Peter are writing, and some visions from John. This is all collected into a book. It doesn't say the same thing all the time. It doesn't all line up. There's certain things...you read where it says, alright, there's Gospel saying that Judas hung himself. There's Gospel saying he threw himself off a cliff. You try and reconcile that like, "oh, he hung himself and then the branch broke and he fell off a cliff." There's so many examples of that where I'd rather...I reached a point where I felt like I was enslaved to defending every word or every story or every concept in there. And I looked around like, "man, nobody takes all this literally." Like, Paul says women should keep silent in church. I don't know a single church where they say women can't ask questions or talk in church. You could say, "oh, that was for that culture or that time," so you get to a different point where you're like, "these are the things that I think are essential." When Jesus said to love your enemies, that's not just for that time, that applies to everybody. And I don't know how I make those decisions. There's just some things that I pray to God to guide me in the right way and to guide me to the truth in the best way. To me, it seems like it would be hurtful or oppressive to tell a women that she couldn't talk in a church meeting. When I see that put into practice, I see women talk in church meetings that I attend, and it's cool. It's smooth. It doesn't seem to cause any trouble. But, when I hold on to anger or bitterness, or I gossip about people, or I indulge in sexual thoughts, or any of these other things that are forbidden by the Bible, I see the trouble that comes from that. So I think the verse that says, "taste and see that the Lord is good," there's like, this experiencial aspect where I don't believe the things that Jesus said because it's written in the Bible, but put them into practice and you see the freedom that comes from not worrying about tomorrow or from forgiving everybody or for caring at people. For praying to God. The things that Jesus said to do bring life. There's certain things where, you look at things from the Old Testament where war was prescribed, like, "go and wipe out this village and kill everybody." And Jesus has since then, taught us a better way.
So what do I think when I look at those old things? I think, "well, maybe that was necessary at that time. I don't know. I wasn't there. But I'm glad Jesus told me this because that feels right." That works when you live that out. That makes the world paradise, whereas if you go and kill people in the village where they live, that doesn't feel like paradise to me. That seems wrong. I don't know, I don't want to pick and choose based on convenience, like, "I don't feel like giving my stuff away so I'm going to ignore where Jesus says to sell your possessions." It's more like, what's the best? What's going to bring about the most goodness and beauty in the world? That's how I think is the way I want to look at it, and not on the one hand, ignoring what's inconvenient or that I can't understand. Or to just accept it all and say, "no, I have to believe this literally, every word of it." Nobody believes that Jesus was a lamb with white and curly wool. But he's called the lamb of God. So you have to say that some of this is symbolic, it's just how much of it is and how much do we need to accept. I don't know. I heard somebody say that we should read the Bible the way we eat fish. Carefully. Pick out the meat and throw the bones and just try to be careful with it.
Last question, probably a little simpler than the other ones, but what are your personal plans for 2007? What do you hope to accomplish before the year ends?I just got done telling you not to worry about tomorrow and here you are asking me about...
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