I’m in favor of searching out a matter within the Bible. That’s how I got to where I am today. However, I believe it is necessary to first have a foundation that is based on what is physically true/real & self-evident before going on any spiritual expeditions.
The Course I Took
When I began to question what I understood about the Bible, I started seeking out answers to specific questions I had concerning what the Bible said, and that journey took me all over the place. And it was exciting! It was like the book was brand new to me.
I started washing myself in it, and I began to read whole books from start to finish.
And eventually, I naturally went back to the beginning and started reading from Genesis forward with a new, open mind.
When I did so, I realized so much of what I was taught in my Christian upbringing was baggage that was hindering me from seeing all that was plainly written on the page. So I began to unload that baggage.
Unloaded Christian Baggage
Whenever I dove into the Bible, trying to understand what was being said, I used my cognitive thinking skills to make sense of what I was reading in light of what should be common sense to all — that is, what we universally observe and experience in the natural world.
I set the New Testament aside for a long while and focused only on reading the Old Testament as if the New Testament was never penned. And that was very freeing.
I didn’t stop “believing in Jesus”, I simply stopped applying all that I had learned about him to what I was reading, so that I could get a clearer understanding of what was being stated on the page.
In time, I became better equipped to understand the New Testament and dove back into it.
Bible Teachers Need to Check their Carry-on Baggage
I’m afraid there are many Bible teachers who have carried a lot of baggage with them when exploring what the Bible has to say, and in their desire to want to share what they have learned, they do so with their baggage in hand.
This is why I have a hard time listening to Bible (to include Torah) teachers online, particularly when they are not available to answer my questions and are not always being held accountable for what they are saying.
Most people operate from a paradigm that has been shaped by premises that have never been questioned by them or sought to be proven as accurate.
And one of those premises when it comes to Messianic Bible teachings is the notion that Jesus was essentially Superman, and that he is the Word of God in some supernatural way.
The problem is that these are foreign notions. They have been blindly accepted, despite the fact that the world fashioned by the “God” of Genesis 1:1 has an established order to it.
The Natural Order: Self-Evident & Universal
The Natural Order was laid out for Bible readers in the verses that follow the initial statement, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” And it is self-evident and universal.
Sons (& daughters) of mankind are the physical offspring of a man and a woman. A man “knows” a woman (sows his seed in her), she conceives (clasps/seizes that seed), and with the help of God (the source of all Life), she brings forth a living, breathing child in due season.
It takes two human beings to produce another human being. Genesis 2:24 essentially says such, and it is demonstrated in Genesis 4:1,25. This is the natural order established by the God of Genesis 1:1.
Furthermore, Genesis 2:7, 21,22 establishes the notion that a human being is formed by God and comes alive when God breathes life into him/her. (Eve clearly understood that it was God who gave her Cain, Abel & Seth.)
This phenomenon of infants developing within a mother’s womb and newborns getting their breath/spirit from a source other than their biological parents is also self-evident and universal, apart from the Bible.
We have to let first things be first.
Let the Natural Order be our basis for understanding anything & everything else in this world, and then let the beginning of the Bible, particularly Genesis, be the basis for understanding everything else that comes after it, especially when the authors who pen their writings have done so.
(SIDE NOTE: The book of John is most emphatically addressing Genesis 1, and more specifically the actions of God speaking our world into existence through the power of His word. Genesis 1 is the foundation of John’s writings, not the other way around.)
