Going To Church, For Comfort and Inspiration

TODAY IN CHURCH there were ten people in the building, including the minister, the organist, the liturgist, and, I, poor I, the bell ringer. I ring it five times five minutes before the service, by pulling hard on a long rope leading up to the steeple. I love the sound it makes, as does everyone else. A lady asked me whether I might ring it more than merely five times, so enthralled is she with it. I told her I can't, or won't, or should'n't. I have a torn rotator cuff, and it takes both arms. I am fortunate not to have made the injury worse with five tugs each Sunday. Don't get greedy. I can imagine myself being lifted into the air by the rope, and movng up and down, like a carnival ride, like in the movies. The sermon, as always, was excellent by my standards. We are all imperfect. We are all forgiven, if we want to be, if we ask to be. Doctrine says that we must ask God, or Jesus, or both, and therefrom derives the forgiveness. As far as I'm concerned, the forgiveness comes from myself, from within, from the God within me. Its all the same to me. When they say that the Presbyterian church is "liberal", I can see it. It suits me just fine, despite my contempt for organized religion. People need to gather together to share comfort and inspiration; religion fills the bill. Snake handling, screeching in tongues, demonic possession, washing away sins with the blood of Christ, I abhore. Like a good songwriter said in a lyric: "You can keep the cross, just give us Jesus". The sermon concerned in part the historical origins of the gospels. Not the legendary, supernatural origins, but the real, historical, factual ones. And now for a few facts. Nobody knows who wrote them., the four goepels. Probably it was four different, well educated men in Corinth, Greece. All of them first appeared written in ancient "high" educated, literate Greek. Mark appeared first, about forty years after Jesus died for three days. It is considered the most authoritative, although any book written forty years after the death of a person who is the subject of the book but who never met the author, which uses no "promary source" material, is inherently, by definition, Unreliable. Then came Mathew and Luke, based heavily on Mark. Last came came John, the craziest of the lot. All four tell a very differnt story about Jesus. Jesus has a different personality in all four. In a couple of them, you can't get the taciturn Jesus to say much. In John, you can't get him to stop talking. Nothing other can be expected from four different authors writing about the same person, particularly in ancient times. The New Testament was canonized at the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D.. Fifty seven versions of the gospel were up for consideration. All but four, including the gospels of Barnabus, Thomas, and Mary Magdalene were voted out; fifty three rejected in all. If all had been included, we would now doubtless have fifty seven distinctly different versions of the life of Christ. Maybe some would include descriptions of his entire life, without eighteen years of it missing. Maybe that would be more interesting. All four of the chosen have been written, rewritten, edited heavily, and changed over the centuries, so as to only resemble somewhat their original versions. Maybe they chose the wrong ones at Nicea, Turkey. We don't know what the fifty three rejects contained. (If only we did). But to me none of that matters, other than as a matter of historical truth and accuracy. One ought, it seems to me, to know how his or her sacred scriptures came into being. Most Christians settle by simply believing that God wrote or inspired the Holy Bible, and that's that. Whatever works, as we like to say. To me, it matters not, since I am not a Christian, but merely, like Socrates, an ignorant man asking questions, who like most people loves most of the messages of Jesus, but not all of them. You can keep the cross, just give me Jesus.