Questioning the Bible as the absolute source of truth

A gay Christian opinion

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

It’s been over a whole year since I wrote something in my journal. I’ve been reading it lately, and damn, that’s good poetry. Today is not a special day at all. Thousands of new cases and hundreds of deaths due to COVID in Brazil, where I live. That’s our daily routine. I’m gonna work this afternoon, teaching english, as usual. And I’m trying to rearrange my stuff in my bedroom.

I posted a video this week on my Instagram. I watched Boy Erased and took the time to talk about the movie and my story to the camera and whoever would take the time to watch it. I shot it very intimately, as a personal experience about accepting oneself as a Christian gay man, whatever that means.

By now, many people have watched and commented on it, and I got some amazing responses all around. And then, one of my oldest and closest friends sent me an eight-minute audio talking about it. It was only a seven-minute video, for crying out loud.

He was careful enough to state several times that he still considers me his friend, even though we don’t see each other or talk for over a year as well, probably longer than the last time I wrote in my journal. He remembered me about how “God doesn't change neither his concepts and ideas of sin” and other shit, and I’m honestly not discussing God’s concept, but rather the religious concept, and I think we should review it.

When I say that we need to review the concepts of religion, I’m not saying that God has changed. I’m saying that humans can be often wrong and stating that someone is in possession of some absolute truth is ludicrous to me.

I’m not questioning the existence of God or whatever, and even if I am, there's nothing wrong with it. But I've never felt that God himself was telling me not to be who I am. People were. And surprisingly, the Bible was too.

And I’ll be honest: I’ve learned that we’re supposed to read the bible as the many pieces of literature in it, and that is exactly why I’ll question the Bible as a book that contains absolute truth. It’s a book that features historical facts, poetry, songs, metaphors, personal letters and so much more, written through the span of hundreds of years by over forty writers. A book that I can’t as a responsible reader nor scholar read it as the only truth, even as beautiful as it can be sometimes.

For as long as we know, a bunch of men put the book together, favoring some stories over many others, segregating and excluding the voices and stories of many characters and writers through millennia that had different or conflicting points of view or beliefs of what came to be understood as absolute truth. And the real extent of that we’ll never know. What we do know is that it allowed the perfect scenario for these same men to lead authoritative power over masses in religious history, live single-handed relationships where the man — them — would have the decision and lawful power over the woman and their children, and yet, taking away and devaluing all other expressions of the divine in a multi-cultural society, basing them all on European views of the world and God in it.

So, the Bible was the foundation of a flawed religion that was based on another flawed religion that was denounced by the Messiah himself.

A flawed religion that was used to back up and justify several attacks on human rights throughout history, like the Nazi movement, slavery, and indoctrination of native people in America, Asia, and Africa, and destitution of democratic regimes all over the world.

And yet, people claim it is inerrant. It barely allows us to connect personally directly with God, and even when it does, we’re supposed to do it by following a set of steps. In religious terms, basically going to church and putting some offer into a cashbox.

And worse than that: religion gave people human idols to follow unquestionably through a throne game that destroys everyone who dares to think differently.

I find it difficult to see myself as a rebel in society, but I can totally see myself as a rebel not only in the church and religion but against it.

And I’m not pledging against God here. God is dead, but I’m not the only one who killed him.

Embracing that would be the hardest and truest thing I've ever done. That I’m living an honest life, devoid of guilt and yet responsible towards me and others.

It led me to think about how single-minded I was before. Before I questioned and chose to live through my own understanding. And yet, my friend’s audio today hit me. What he says matters to me, always has. But I’m not changing the course of the happy and much-fulfilled life I’m living now because of what he said, through his single-minded biblically-based point of view.

I found God. He loves me, even though people said he wouldn't. He cares for me, accepts me, embraces me. And it’s not an old-male-driven book that is going to change that.

For He is the expression we find by ourselves,

and by ourselves only

As personal as a mother relates to her many chrildren