(July 4, 2018 at 4:18 am)robvalue Wrote: As to the question of people trying to find their own meaning in scripture, there's really no parameters anyone can set. Anyone can find anything in it. They may find certain parts happen to correlate with how they view reality, or cause them to think about it in new ways.
Stimulating thinking and finding inspiration, I approve of. Looking for factual information about reality in such a book I would discourage, further than perhaps a little unreliable mundane history.
You're right, we could examine the intentions of many people involved. The authors, the compilers and the "editors" as time passes. God's intentions... sure, to someone who thinks there's something more than just a man-made book to be examined, perhaps they'll find something.
I'm confused now about what I'm trying to do. For some reason I wanted to get comments on my idea. Now I feel like I need to say more about it, for people to have something substantial to comment on. I'll just try saying whatever comes to my mind at random, and see what happens.
This idea is all new to me, and it answers some questions and solves some puzzles that I've wondered about for decades. It looks so simple and obvious to me now that I can't believe it took me 50 years to see it. Of course it isn't going to mean anything to anyone who hasn't been wondering about the same questions and puzzles.
I'll try thinking about this as if I'm talking about a book that no one has ever heard of before. It has a lot of stories in it, and all through them there's some kind of someone or something that it calls "God." Actually there might be more than one of the same kind of someone or something, or else there are different names for the same thing. The stories say that he/she/it/they created the universe, but they say in some places that he lived on earth as a human being, which makes him a part of the universe he created?
Sometimes they also say that there's nothing whatsoever that anyone can ever know about him, but then again they say that his whole purpose in creating the universe is for us to know him and love him. 
"It rained all night the day I left; the weather it was dry. Sun so hot I froze to death; Susannah don't you cry." They also talk about a lot of things he has said and done all through history, and promises and threats about what he's going to do in the future, besides what he did/does/will do/ as a human being. I can't tell how much of the book is fact and how much is fiction, or even how much it's claiming to be fact, but believe it or not, I've actually learned some things from it that have done me a lot of good. It reminds me of the Celestine Prophecy where I learned to get energy without draining it from others, by looking for beauty all around me. That was pure fiction (I think), but I got a lot of good out of it. This book I'm talking about also reminds me of some fiction novels dressed up as true stories without ever saying otherwise, but we know that they're fiction anyway. Or do we? 
Anyway, I've found a possible meaning for the word "God" in this book, that has done a lot to clear up my confusion about what the stories might be trying to say about this god or these gods. It's the simplest, most obvious solution, which I should have seen fifty years ago: it means different things at different times and in different contexts. Sometimes it means one or another of a few of the humans in the stories, and/or all of them together. Sometimes it means that nonexistent -- oops, I mean unknowable first creator of the universe. Sometimes it means some kinds of power and influence besides human ones that, according to the stories, help people live better lives, for their benefit and the benefit of others. Some times it might be some combination of those.
- Jim
