The church should be about educating people about the whole history of religion, the history of western philosophy, comparative religion, the current state of play in the battle between orthodox and sceptical Bible scholarship. Theology verses Atheology.
The church should be about examining questions of morality and ethics. It should be about educating people about what the current U.K 2011 law is, emphasising that that is the one which is current and relevant to us, and also looking at the ancient law codes like in the Bible and Hammurabis code and doing a compare and contrast excercise and examining the reasons why in the uk we have arrived at the law we have and the benefits & disadvantages of the current law in comparison to the old laws. It is about understanding why we do things. It is about getting people to think through the real life consequences in terms of health and happiness on earth. It is about looking through all the reasons for and against each behaviour, It is about looking at health and safety considerations.
Part of this is to start from the position that the Bible is just guesses. You need to be able to criticise the Bible characters and say where you think they acted unethically and suggest how they might have been better to deal with that situation. Part of having a healthy view of the Bible is to acknowledge that there are immoral and unethical and mistaken ideas in it. It is not an e-mail from any God. None of holy writ is faxes. That does not mean to say that it is worthless or that we should abandon reading it or that there isn't good ideas in it.
It is an important question to ask what a perfect manager of the world might want, what would a perfectly good, loving, caring God want or decree, what is the ideal way to behave, what would a perfect, good god be like if there was one. What is the model for getting through life best, what is the best route through life, how should i live. Does it matter ? Is one way better than another if I live within the law.
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