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I have been a Christian for a while now. I find the practice simple in theory but tough to get right. Periodically I hope to drop a voice podcast here. For some of my visual works along these lines go to https://www.rbcdart.com/tag/christianity/
00:00:00:03 - 00:00:31:03
Speaker 1
Hello, I'm Richard Chao Davis. This is being broadcast on my page. This is my introduction to Christianity. I'm doing this because Maria asked me to tell stories, hopefully in defense against where my art has gone, which is highly sexual. Sometimes. Sometimes not. Anyway, I have been a Christian for many years now.
00:00:31:05 - 00:01:07:07
Speaker 1
I did a lot of talking to priests and stuff as a kid. I did a Bible study as I was driving around as an outside salesman. I have worked in an Episcopal church as a volunteer on their website and various other ways of doing things. So that's my history. And I've even been a prophet in regards to bringing the word about human trafficking to my church.
00:01:07:07 - 00:01:45:12
Speaker 1
In my community. This is all things that I have done and has have shaped my learning. I would like to get some things off my chest first. Okay, first of all, the Bible does not talk when I am in conversation with people and they say the Bible says almost universally, that means their interpretation of something they read in the Bible means this, and they usually have several good justifications why they think that.
00:01:45:14 - 00:02:20:04
Speaker 1
Now, the thing is, there are some branches of Christianity that believe. You verify what's in the Bible by other things that you read in the Bible. This does not work as near as I can tell. The reason being that the Bible is a collection of scriptures or stories that were assembled, and they don't have to be internally consistent to each other.
00:02:20:06 - 00:02:32:03
Speaker 1
Each story has a has a point or something interesting going on independent of the others.
00:02:32:05 - 00:03:03:24
Speaker 1
You see what I'm saying then? That brings up the question about the Bible. It's this a holy book? Is this the Word of God? Frequently people will hold up a Bible and say, this is the Word of God. It's not, there are religious scriptures that are the Word of God. The Book of Mormon comes to mind, and the book followed in Muslim practices.
00:03:03:24 - 00:03:16:09
Speaker 1
Both of these were dictated by God to their perspective people, whether you believe that or not, is your own problem. But.
00:03:16:11 - 00:03:19:15
Speaker 1
The.
00:03:19:17 - 00:03:41:07
Speaker 1
Word of God aspect applies to them because the people are saying, look, this is what God said now in the Christian Bible. God did not dictate. These are collections of stories and parables and actions
00:03:41:07 - 00:03:56:23
Speaker 1
where the main character is God and usually another person. So for me, the Bible is a good description of.
00:03:57:00 - 00:04:02:19
Speaker 1
Relationships with God.
00:04:02:21 - 00:04:19:09
Speaker 1
So instead of saying the Bible is the Word of God, I would say the Bible is a record of relationships with God. And.
00:04:19:11 - 00:04:55:02
Speaker 1
For better or worse, I think I realized after going through the Old Testament many times that really what was going on is you were learning about how human frailty, I mean, Jonah, not wanting to tell people about this thing. God wanted Jonah to tell these people, going to great lengths. It's a great story. I mean, he gets swallowed by a whale.
00:04:55:02 - 00:05:17:18
Speaker 1
What could you ask for? But in the end, he ends up telling him against his will because God's such a softy. And people go, oh, really? Oh thank you. Of course we will correct ourselves immediately. And he goes away pissed.
00:05:17:20 - 00:05:55:00
Speaker 1
I, I would like at some point to go through each of these stories with you because I think that most of the interpretations you hear these days are interpretations that have an agenda. And it's not the agenda of the original story. It's an agenda where someone is trying to prove some point so that they can enforce.
00:05:55:02 - 00:06:01:20
Speaker 1
Their style. On what? On reality.
00:06:01:22 - 00:06:17:10
Speaker 1
In essence, people are lying. My favorite story in the Bible is the story of Adam and Eve's. This story is not.
00:06:17:12 - 00:06:54:09
Speaker 1
A real life situation that happened way back when. The literal interpretation of the story is literally interpreting Christmas stories as being real. 34th Street. Wonderful story, full of import and meaning and heart wrenching stuff. But it wasn't ever real. It talked, it talks to real things and the
00:06:54:11 - 00:07:34:23
Speaker 1
Story of Adam Eve talks about the most real thing. I picture it as a dad and his child, or a mom and their child sitting or both sitting around a fire, and their kid asks them, why are things like this? Why are why are people so bad? You know, why? Why can't we all just get along? And dad says, well, once we did.
00:07:35:00 - 00:07:47:17
Speaker 1
And therein begins the story of Adam and Eve. I'm not going to go into detail right now. I'm just doing this shortly.
00:07:47:19 - 00:08:28:19
Speaker 1
The some of the high points in the story of Adam and Eve is the purpose that God gave man, which was basically a scientific purpose. Go out and name things in the story. And why there is man and woman, the value of of company, the original sin, what Adam and Eve did together and that poor snake, you know, of all of them, he got his legs taken away.
00:08:28:21 - 00:09:11:05
Speaker 1
So there's all sorts of things you can infer, including the coat that Eve wore out of there because she coveted the skin. There's a lot of stuff, but my favorite is approaching the Old Testament as a Christian trained in the New Testament, Jesus gave us several ways of dealing with things that I believe. If Adam and Eve had had that training, they we would still be in the Garden of Eden.
00:09:11:07 - 00:09:48:13
Speaker 1
We could be, if we just. Simple precepts. I mean, if you're spending 20 years working out an elaborate solution of behaviors, you're going way down the wrong track. Anyway, so I believe in approaching the Old Testament as a New Testament Christian and observing where these people went, right and where they went wrong. Much of the Old Testament is a story of where people, even the ones doing good things, didn't do it as well as they could have.
00:09:48:15 - 00:09:54:16
Speaker 1
So if you're interested, I'll be talking about this every once in a while.
00:09:54:18 - 00:09:59:14
Speaker 1
God bless and I hope you have a wonderful day. Take care.