“If Atheism is a religion, then health is a disease.” – Clark Adams

Atheist is a relative term used to describe ‘non-belief’ in relation to a particular god ‘theism’, religion, or belief system. It’s a term that gets a bad rap due to it connotations and usage. It’s a relative term however. If I don’t believe in Scientology (which I don’t), then I could be considered an atheist with respect to Scientology (Check out a former Scientologist’s eye opening statements http://footbullet.net/2009/11/21/aarons-story/ . If I don’t believe in Zeus, then I could be considered an atheist with respect to Zeus. Do you believe in Brahman, the Absolute God? No? Me neither. We’re both atheists in the eyes of over 900 million Hindus!

From the collected comments on this discussion, I conclude that, indeed, we are all atheists with respect to the vast majority of gods ( http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/bl/bl_myth_gods_index.htm ). Except for Cupid, right? We all hail to Cupid, the god of love right? I’m sure we can find some common ground with Cupid. No??? Never celebrated Valentine’s Day? I feel sorry for your significant others Are there any female readers on this blog?

If there are any Cupid atheists out there, I’d be interested in learning your views, if you can find some time in your video gaming schedule.

In one of Charlie’s sermons, I learned that in the time of the Roman Empire, early Christian groups were called “Atheists” by the Romans since they were not following the Roman throne. So, the argument can be made that out of all the many gods that man has defined, we are all atheists to most of them. I just happen to include Yahweh, the god of the Bible, in my list. Judging by the doubt that many of us, including Scot McKnight, have regarding the God of the Bible, I could argue that we have at least some atheistic tendencies towards the God presented in the Bible. It would be irrational not to. Conclusion = we are all atheists except on Valentine’s Day.

The Bible’s contents are what drove me to doubt Jesus, Yahweh, and the entire story from beginning to end. If there’s any evidence of a good “father god” Yahweh and risen-from-the-dead Jesus unrelated to the Bible texts, I’d be happy to view it. I’ve been told by many who went through religious education that they too doubted more after studying the Bible than they did before. Some even dropped out of Christianity entirely.

“No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.” – George Bernard Shaw

“Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand.” – Mark Twain

“Which religion to I profess to follow? None! And why? Because of religion” – Friedrich von Schiller (1795-1805), German poet. Author of Ode to Joy, which Beethoven set to music in the final movement of his Ninth Symphony.

“How we approach the Bible”?
We’ll have to make this a topic of our coffee chat. I take the Bible for what it says and have a difficult time seeing other interpretations. I am interested in hearing your views on this.

“Religiously justified violence is first and foremost a problem of “sacred texts” and not a problem of misinterpretation of texts.” – Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer. Lutheran Theologian.

Good Things
Are there some positive things that religion has done? Yes. Humanistic and socialist efforts to help our neighbors show great kindness. A sense of community can be found. We get a strong sense of humanity from coming together, even if we don’t believe the text word for word. People can do good, with or without religion, with or without God. It’s an internal personal choice to be kind. If a person is kind and generous merely to fulfill Jesus’ commands and secure a spot in the Bible’s Heaven, it would be a false, non-virtuous, and disingenuous act. If kindness, generosity, and ethics don’t come natural without the enforcement of a supernatural watchdog, then one better go back to kindergarten and learn some manners.

Hitler, Stalin, Pol-Pot:
I have not studied Pol-Pot, but I’ve done extensive research on Hitler and Stalin in my college years. Hitler was a self proclaimed Christian and had a Catholic upbringing. His highly successful genocide was driven by deep anti-semitic view (like Mel Gibson to the tenth power), an atheistic view for the Jewish. He did not directly kill the victims of the holocaust. His blind, faithful followers did. And many, including the church, supported it. Conservative Christianity was at a peak in Germany at the time and Hitler took advantage of Christian blindness and hatred. The millions were killed by the thousands who followed Hitler and Stalin as if they were religious figures.

“The Holocaust was, of course, the bitter fruit of long centuries of Christian teaching about the Jewish people.” Dr. Franklin Littlell, Chairman of the Department of Religion, Temple University.

‘My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter.’ – Adolph Hitler. My New Order

Hitler and the Holocaust is obviously a big blue parakeet for me.

That was WWII. Let’s step back to WWI.

“Before August, 1914, it was the correct thing to proclaim Christ as the Prince of Peace and Christianity as the religion of love… Lip-service was paid to Peace from thousands of pulpits. After August, 1914, these same pulpits resounded with praises of the Lord as a man of was (Exodus, xv.3) and declarations that the great European War was a Christian was, sent directly by Almighty God himself.” Hypatia Bonner (1858-1934), English peace activist and Justice of the Peace for London (1922-1934). Named after Hypatia of Alexandria, a fourth-century pagan philosopher who was hacked to death in a church, during Lent, by a Christian mob led by a preacher and urged on by Saint Cyril, apostle to the Slavs and creator of the Cyrillic alphabet.

Treatment of Women
To the Christian theologian, the Council of Nicaea, sometime around 325 C.E., was where the belief started to come together and take shape. This was the first documented conference of Christian leaders or bishops. Do you know that they actually took a vote on whether to declare woman to be “human” or not? By a single vote it was decided that woman were actually human. Why didn’t they put that in the creed?

Women are below men in the pecking order in 1 Corinthians 11:13 where it is made crystal clear that God over Christ, Christ is over man, and man is over woman. After all man was not created for woman, but woman was created for man.
These views are unacceptable in our society today, but in the rest of the world these views are perpetuated by these texts.

Women are not allowed to talk in church, in fact the idea of them speaking in church is shameful. This is made very clear in 1 Corinthians 14:34-35. Women are to remain silent, and if they have any questions they are to ask their husbands at home after church. Even in the U.S. the oppression of women in religious organizations continues due to these texts.

The title of this post is ‘Authority v. Love’ and the Bible is clear on the Authority of a man over a woman. It never seems to focus on actually loving your wife as an equal. 1st Timothy chapter 2 is dedicated to saying women are below men, and also says women are to dress plainly. But let’s take a harder look at where women stand in this chapter. It says that women are to learn in silence without subjection… they cannot teach nor “usurp authority over the man”. The Catholic Church and many other Christian denominations have built a hierarchy based on this blueprint (blue parakeet) found in the Bible.

Spend some time reading Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Samuel and you’ll see that the Bible treats women as subservient to man. If we are to “approach” these blue parakeets in some other way in order to rationalize this view of women, it’s really a stretch of my morals to do so. If we are to “approach” these blue parakeets with our “that was then, this is now” glasses, then why keep the texts now?

Even Jesus, who is revered as the source of family values, treats women and his own mother rudely and with contempt many times throughout the bible. The Bible’s views towards women began with the early fathers of the church and the texts they put together; Paul, Augustine, Ambrose, Aquinas, Clement of Alexandria, and others. There position towards woman would be considered extreme sexism and misogyny by today’s standards, yet the text remains.

“What is it that the New Testament teaches us? To believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married…” – Thomas Paine (1737-1809) English borne American author and Deist.

Slaves and the treatment of people
“Eskimo: “If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?” Priest: “No, not if you did not know.” Eskimo: “Then why did you tell me?”" – Anne Dillard

“When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again. But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her. And if the slave girl’s owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave girl, but he must treat her as his daughter. If he himself marries her and then takes another wife, he may not reduce her food or clothing or fail to sleep with her as his wife. If he fails in any of these three ways, she may leave as a free woman without making any payment.” (Exodus 21:7-11 NLT)

“When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property.” (Exodus 21:20-21 NAB)

“I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.” Frederick Douglass. African-American abolitionist leader. Pretty good feedback on the effectivity of prayer.

“They came with a Bible and their religion, stole our land, crushed our spirit, and now tell us we should be thankful to the Lord for being saved.” – Pontiac (1718-1769) Ottawa Indian Leader.

So it’s clear that I am not a fan of the Bible, nor the God presented in the Bible. As suggested in Ryan’s comment, perhaps “God is not found in the Bible”. And many have said that they find God through their own personal experiences. To say that the God found outside the Bible is the same Yahweh of the Bible would be preposterous. When we see a beautiful sunrise or hold a newborn in our arms, the sense of wonder and love we feel is not the chauvinistic, blood thirsty Yahweh of the Bible. It’s something else. If someone wants to call that God, that is fine. It’s not a very good description though. If not in the Bible, where we find our own ‘God’?

“I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.” – Frank Lloyd Wright.

Some of you are avid bikers. I am too. If love and devotion are constituents of a religion, then biking has been one of my great ‘religions’. Biking gives a sense of freedom. Trail riding is a refreshing break from the classroom or office and helps reconnect with nature (with $60 pedals and spandex pants!) The combination of new grips and fresh dirt provides one with a sense of wonder, but for me it has absolutely nothing to do with the Bible.

Here’s one final quote from a fellow biker:

“If there was a God, I’d still have both nuts.” – Lance Armstrong

So on this secular day of thanks, be thankful for your wives and show them respect. Charlie, I’m sure you’ll be doing a fair amount of cooking! If you can’t cook, then pitch in in some way. Remember those that have to work today. Thanks to them for working while we celebrate. Thanks to you for reading this far and abiding in a respectful spirit of conversation and ideas. We’ll have coffee soon.

Each of you have brought significant insights to the table. Thank you.

I’ve been silently following the conversation. My reticence has mostly been due to the fact that I get “stuck” in these kinds of conversations somewhere along the lines of Michael’s last post. That is to say, we all have our own a priori assumptions that we bring to the conversation – notions of the existence of God, notions about the relationship between faith and reason, ideas about what is justice, ideas about the nature of the Bible, etc.

However, I do want to respond personally. I appreciate your dedication, Keith, to following the logic where it leads you. However, at the end of the day (or is it the beginning?), I am a man of faith. I believe, again a priori, that the existence of God better explains the evidence than the alternatives. I believe this to the extent that I’ve given my life to the pursuit of God. And while I don’t have all the answers, and even though the “blue parakeets” are more like huge, 900 lb. blue gorillas, with big teeth, I still believe that God does exists, and that he does want to reconcile everything to himself and make all things new.

I think you know that I’m not blind to the injustices of the Bible, or to the injustices of Christians through the ages. But, my thinking in reference to the Bible lies along the same lines as Michael.

Furthermore, I guess I’m not as optimistic as you are about a world without God. Haven’t the greatest injustices of all time – I’m thinking Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Hitler, Paul Pot, et. al. — been done in the name of atheism. This isn’t to let the injustices done in the name of religion off the hook (I too love the Pascal quote from further up the page…it’s a somber reminder for me to be humble in interpretation.), but, when considering ways of living, one can’t simply say that we’d be better off without God & religion without addressing all the injustice in the world. Or, for that matter, what about all the good done in the name of God/religion — that too, cannot be simply dismissed as irrelevant or unimportant to the discussion.

Well…I’ve probably stirred the pot again…just as it was starting to die down.

Keith, we need to have another evening coffee! (Maybe we’ll invite Michael. Or I’ll invite Michael, just to make it even! LOL!)

Ryan – I miss you bro! I wish you lived here, and the four of us would go to One World and hash it all out — arguing and laughing!

Thanks guys!

Why are the authors of the Biblical narratives any different? They wrote down stories to try to capture, as best they knew it, the reality that they experienced. Is it perfect? No, but why does it have to be? The Bible never claims perfection for itself. Inspiration, yes, perfection, no. The belief that perfection and control are necessary parts of what it means to be God (or God inspired) are Hellenistic not Hebrew. The Bible is what I would expect from people who are trying to explain their encounter with God. It’s inconsistent, ragged, disjunctive, and sometimes incoherent. It also presents a way of living ~ loving God and loving others~ that if lived leads to life and shalom.

How would the world be different if Charles Darwin never wrote The Origin of Species? How would the world be different if Marx never wrote The Communist Manifesto? How would the world be different if Adam Smith never wrote about capitalism? Remove any meta-narrative from existence and things will change. But the reality is, we don’t know what we would come up with if the narratives that give our life purpose and direction were removed. Given what we know through anthropology, I’d bet most people would look up to the sky and say, “There’s something bigger than us.” Most people don’t default to nihilism, they default to faith. If the people are well schooled in the narrative of secular humanism, they may say what you suggest. But don’t forget… that thought is just as influenced by a narrative passed down from other storytellers as the Christian faith. So I turn to a collection of Hebrew stories and poems that point to Jesus. Someone else turns to Descartes who points them to their own intellect and reason as the foundation of all being. They aren’t really that different. We just trust different communities to point us to some measure of truth…not perfection, but truth. Truth is just as present in a poem (if not more so) than a history or science text. Fiction, even thought it isn’t “true” can elucidate Truths that lead to life.

This brings me back to the simple notion that the problem with the Bible today isn’t what people believe, but how they believe what they believe. Fundamentalism (be it religious or secular) isn’t helpful, it’s destructive. The prejudice of love leads to life more times than not. That’s the way of Jesus ~ not always his followers!

Good stuff Keith! I, too, appreciate the conversation.

Michael, Ryan, Charlie, Jeff, and Eric,

Welcome to the wilderness!

Out here there are no ‘city lights’ of the evangelical mega churches veiling the reality of the night sky. The ‘heavens’ are crisp and clear above us.

There is no Catholic incense to cover up fresh air of the earth around us.
No blessed wine-turned-blood to cloud up our judgement. Just the cool, clean spring water of reality. The same fresh water that swept away the relics of my religious past.

You’re right Ryan, there are no guardrails to keep us safe. We have our minds and or senses as our headlights. It’s Man vs. Wild, but with no helicopter ride home at the end of the show.

Yahweh, the God of Abraham, the God of Moses, the supernatural father of Jesus, and murderer of millions, is the God in the Bible. Where else is he so named? Is there any other God to be found in the Christian Bible?Is the Bible just a partial newspaper clipping of the real God’s doings? With more news to come? FYI, his next world tour appears to be scheduled for 2012. He cancelled on us in 2000, so I’d wait to buy tickets.

Out here in the wilderness there is no Yahweh. In fact, there is no Jesus. There is no holy ghost. 2+2=4.

Suppose the Christian Bible stories had never been written.., er, I mean copied from previous dead religions. Would you know the story of Jesus? Would you teach children about Genesis Creation, about Adam & Eve’s sin, about Yahweh’s test of Abraham, about Jesus’ immaculate birth, about Jesus returning from the dead and ascending to heaven to be at the right hand of his father Yahweh?

These stories would not exist if the Bible had not been written, bloody blue parakeets and all. Without the Bible, would you have been indoctrinated with those relics of Yahweh’s story? Would you teach children of a goal of heaven and the rules to attain it? Would you teach children to pray? If so, to whom or what would you teach them to pray?
Would you teach children to Love with all their hearts, the Yahweh God? Would you make up a lie “they’re with God now” to comfort them when a loved one dies?

Or, would you look up at the clear night sky and say, “Here we are. We have each other, and that is all we know for now”.

I thank you sincerely for your conversation. Thanks to Charlie for posting the discussion.

Keith writes, “Like it or not, the Bible is the text at the foundation of the faith.” I would argue that the Bible is not the foundation of the faith. The foundation of the faith has always been an encounter with God in all its immanence and transcendence. The Bible is a collection of stories about such encounters. Theology is an atempt to put such encounters into words. But all of these things come after the encounter, not before. To believe that the Bible is the foundation of the faith is to elevate the Bible to a position that is higher than God. God, if properly to be God, can do whatever God wants. God can even do other than what the Bible says. God cannot be contained within the words of the Bible. I get a chuckle out of well intentioned folks who say, “God can never change because the Bible says so.” I think wow! what a mighty God we serve. Some humans wrote a book, inspired or not, that has effectively put God in a cage. Think about the absurdity of that comment. “God cannot change because the Bible says so.”

Keith also writes, ” If I delete or ignore some of the text, I’ve started a new, variation of the faith.” If the Christian faith was dependent upon ones fidelity to every word of the text, then, once again, the text would be god.

I agree, Keith, that McKnight lacks the courage to really believe what he believes. Or perhaps he should stop telling himself he doesn’t believe what he believes. He seems to want to push a particular view of scripture that he is not fully willing and able to follow to its logical conclusion. But the problem with the Bible, as I see it, isn’t with the Bible at all but with how people have approached the Bible (in search of propositional truths that are certain). Until we jettison the doctrine of inerrency the tension will continue.

My contribution to heresy for the day.

“During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after doing its duty in but a lazy and indolent way for eight hundred years, gathered up its halters, thumbscrews, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood.

Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry. Who discovered that there was no such thing as a witch–the priest, the parson? No, these never discover anything. . . .

There are no witches. The witch text remains; only the practice has changed. Hell fire is gone, but the text remains. Infant damnation is gone, but the text remains. More than two hundred death penalties are gone from the law books, but the texts that authorized them remain.”
– Mark Twain, “Bible Teaching and Religious Practice,” Europe and Elsewhere (1923)

For me, the point of the book is to help the reader understand that two people can read the Bible and have two different opinions of what it says. To say “I follow the God of the bible” is an empty statement. We really mean “I follow the God I think I find in the bible”. His blue parakeet statements are his way to help the reader understand we all choose to ignore passages in the bible that don’t fit into our understanding of God. It is in this way that two people can both follow the “God of the bible” and be completely different (we cannot yet get into value statements of who is right and wrong). We get stuck into a trap here because if there is no definitive God of the bible, then God is just subjective to whomever we want Him to be.

The step out of this that he takes is to say that God is not contained in the bible. Those of us (I speak from my experience) who pour all of our time only into the bible looking for God find that we end up knowing a lot about God, but are hardly closer to our goal. The bible contains stories about what God has done. These are not all the stories about God, and God exists outside of the bible (He would not cease to exist if we lost all copies of the bible).

As we walk down this path, we are moving away from the sola scriptura path into unpaved areas. These ways are well worn, but there are no guard rails to keep us safe. God is often found in the wilderness.

Maybe I’m way off but the quote shows that McKnight is circling around the issue. Not satisfied with the conflicts in the Bible, questioning those conflicts, looking to the love of God for answers, and then looks back to the Bible for the God he is trying to love, beginning the cycle again.

Blue Parakeet quote

“…without denying the legitimacy of the various terms in the authority approach, those who have a proper relationship to the Bible never need to speak of the bible as their authority nor do they speak of their submission to the Bible. They are so in tune with God, so in love with him, that the word ‘authority’ is swallowed up in loving God. Even more, the word ’submission’ is engulfed in the disposition of listening to God speak through the Bible and in the practice of doing what God calls us to do.”
Note: I’ve learned that McKnight’s Blue Parakeet is a metaphor for the things we tend to delete, overlook, rationalize, or ignore in the Bible. The things that are bad for Yahweh’s (and Jesus’) evangelical street cred.

At first glance, his quote sounds profound. But it really means nothing new.
The argument that McKnight makes is:
1. To have a proper relationship to the Bible, don’t get caught up focusing on what the Bible says
2. Instead, focus all your efforts on loving God.
3. To love God we need to listen to God.
4. To listen to God, however, we need to look in the Bible.
5. To practice doing God’s calling, we need to listen to God through the Bible teachings.
Which takes us back to #1, “don’t get caught up with what the Bible actually says.”

Do you see the circular logic and the fallacy in this argument? I suggest breaking this cycle in #2 by focusing on love, not a love for the God of the bible, not a supernatural god, but a love for humanity, a love for one’s self, and the little world we find ourselves on; a speck of dust in a vast universe.

Let’s examine the quote in a little more detail. I want to focus on his choice of two words: swallowed and engulfed.

“those who have a proper relationship to the bible”. McKnight’s statement here indicates his judgment on what is the proper relationship to the Bible. I think that the purpose of McKnight’s conclusion here is that he personally struggles with rationalizing the Bible and making it fit in with his belief and concept of “God”. Like many Christians (and non-Christians), his concept of “God” does not match the Jehovah found in the words of the Bible. It’s evident Scot McKnight’s morals and rules for living today don’t match the laws that Jehovah (and Jesus) puts forth in the Bible. Yet, he still struggles to patch the two together because of the incompatibility between the Bible and the good & loving “father god” that he wishes to exist. He, like many Christians, really desires and hopes the ‘loving Father God’ to be in there somewhere. But there’s all these damn Blue Parakeets crapping all over the place in the Bible. He doesn’t have the balls to say “hey, my view/concept/understanding of “God” is just not found in the Bible.” In addition, his argument falls short and, more importantly, is logically false.

Let’s examine the statements!
“the word ‘authority’ is swallowed up in loving God”. Word & grammar semantics here: If he meant to say that loving God erases or is devoid of authority, then he should choose his words more carefully. If something is swallowed up it is still contained within that which swallowed it. Breaking this sentence down into subject-predicate structure we have “the word ‘authority’ is in loving God”. This sentence is the opposite of “authority is NOT part of loving God”. So, if the sentence “authority is swallowed up in loving God” is true, then “authority is part of loving God” is also true. According to McKnight’s quote, authority is still part of loving God. It may not be on the surface. But it is still within, as if swallowed. If what he really meant was that “in loving God, there is NO authoritarian relationship” then he chose a very opposite & false way to say it.

“the word ’submission’ is engulfed in the disposition of listening to God speak through the Bible”. Back to grammar and word choice … the key words here are “the word submission” “is” “in” “listening”. “Engulfed in” again is very similar to swallowed, both show containment not exclusion. He doesn’t say “‘submission’ is NOT in listening to God”. In other words it could be said that ‘in listening to God speak through the Bible, the word ‘submission’ is found’. It’s ‘engulfed in it’ according to McKnight. It is contained within.

McKnight acknowledges, perhaps unconsciously, that without the Bible, the Yahweh God concept would not exist. The two are inseparable, and the only real evidence of what Yahweh “speaks” is in the Judeo-Christian Bible. He admits it. “God speaks through the Bible” he says.

“the word ’submission’ is engulfed in… the practice of doing what God calls us to do” So the key words here are “the word ‘submission’ “is” “in” “doing what God calls us to do”. If he meant that submission is NOT part of doing “what God calls us to do” he chose the opposite. He says ‘submission’ is found within the act of doing what God calls us to do, which is quite literally true.

I sense this is a struggle for McKnight and the structure of his conclusion reveals that he hasn’t resolved his struggle at all. He wants to believe that he is doing what God calls him to do. But he cannot bring himself to the conclusion that the God of the Bible is not his God. He knows he, and many others, does not submit to the Bible and all the horrific ‘Blue Parakeets’ it contains. He makes an illogical argument and uses weak word choices and therefore unconvincing conclusion. I suspect that it works for some people because it seems like he’s saying something profound, while at the same time it makes us feel more at ease for not following the Bible but still clinging to the Christian faith. Without the Bible, and its stories of Yahweh, Jesus, and Heaven, the faith loses its foundation. Like it or not, the Bible is the text at the foundation of the faith. If I delete or ignore some of the text, I’ve started a new, variation of the faith. If I lose the Yahweh of the Old testament (which I am personally in favor of), I’ve got a new concept of ‘God’ (or none at all, as is the case). If I want to delete the bad things that Yahweh calls me to do through the Bible, while still clinging to a few good things, I might drive myself crazy trying to live with it. The more I pull back the curtain, the more difficult it is to ignore the realities.

McKnight, like many Christians that struggle with this, have a good heart, want to do good, and be a good person. He equates this desire with the doing of “God’s” will rather than in the context of normal, ethical human kindness. He still surrenders to the Bible to find his God’s will. He has to construct complex interpretations rather than just reading it straight and honest. I think he’s too weak to go the distance and say “The Bible contains Yahweh’s will. My view of ‘God’ does not match the God of the Bible, and therefore I just can’t say that the Bible and Yahweh represent the way I live my life and the ‘God’ I want to believe.” Instead, he comes up with a rationalization to the horrors of the Bible and the Bible-based activity around us by metaphorically calling them Blue Parakeets. It’s a fool’s trick though. It makes a person feel good doesn’t it?

Cute little parakeets.
Millions of people tortured and killed in the name of the Bible & the God within = Blue Parakeet.

“If you dishonor your parents, the punishment is death” = cute little Blue Parakeet.

“women shall submit to their husbands, as men submit to God” = cute little Blue Parakeet.

A Christian, bible-following man in Africa pours acid down his son’s throat to exercise the demons within. The son soon dies. Cute. Little. Blue. Parakeet.

I’ll suggest a subtitle for his book: How to Find Yahweh/God’s Instruction Through the Bible Despite What the Bible Actually Says

McKnight is making a some good attempts at understanding what he believes and will challenge the reader to do the same. His book starts to face the facts, the idea that no one follows the Bible to each and every letter, and IT IS OK. Everyday people are straying away from the Bible and going back to ‘god’.