I am a fairly new Christian so I cannot relate. I know who John the apostle is but I don’t know about the evangelist or apocalypse fever dream John lol. Never heard those terms. I’ve been reading the Bible consistently for about a year. I still have a lot to learn in order to properly debate anything about it. For some reason I worked backwards. I read revelations first and tried to make sense of it by them reading the gospel and parts of the old testament. I still skip around but never do I take the Bible literally. I mean some commands are straight forward but I cannot wrap my head around the fact that Job was just whipped out of nowhere by the devil and it doesn’t show him like freaking out because the devil either showed up or was whipping him somehow from the spirit world. It was the first book I really connected with.
Take Noah. Two different stories, two different boats, and both with differing writing styles. Some people seem to believe that the text provides accurate building instructions. Which leads to the issue of which one to follow, and needing steel, because building it from any of those texts with wood and reed in that size is a folly undertaking.
Or take the Gospels. You can basically condense the Gospels to a few lines of text along the lines “God loves you, regardless of who you are, and wants you to do the same”. That some people don’t get this “regardless of who you are” and that some televangelists shamelessly exploit people on the line of “Give away your riches and follow me” are the most painful failures of American Christianity.
I recently had a discussion about the bible with someone who actually took the book literally. At least the bits he considered “good”.
He did not even understand simple concepts like “John the Apostle” is neither “John the Evangelist” nor “Apocalyse Fever Dream John”.
I am a fairly new Christian so I cannot relate. I know who John the apostle is but I don’t know about the evangelist or apocalypse fever dream John lol. Never heard those terms. I’ve been reading the Bible consistently for about a year. I still have a lot to learn in order to properly debate anything about it. For some reason I worked backwards. I read revelations first and tried to make sense of it by them reading the gospel and parts of the old testament. I still skip around but never do I take the Bible literally. I mean some commands are straight forward but I cannot wrap my head around the fact that Job was just whipped out of nowhere by the devil and it doesn’t show him like freaking out because the devil either showed up or was whipping him somehow from the spirit world. It was the first book I really connected with.
It is about getting the message out of the text.
Take Noah. Two different stories, two different boats, and both with differing writing styles. Some people seem to believe that the text provides accurate building instructions. Which leads to the issue of which one to follow, and needing steel, because building it from any of those texts with wood and reed in that size is a folly undertaking.
Or take the Gospels. You can basically condense the Gospels to a few lines of text along the lines “God loves you, regardless of who you are, and wants you to do the same”. That some people don’t get this “regardless of who you are” and that some televangelists shamelessly exploit people on the line of “Give away your riches and follow me” are the most painful failures of American Christianity.