LEAN ... NOT On My Own Understanding? How Is That Even Possible?

 

In order to create a situation where any of that is even something to worry about, ... 

First,
I must let other fallible humans define the word g/God for me. 

Next, I must arbitrarily decide such a thing totally, definitely, for sure exists.

 [Helpful advice:
If the religion you've emotionally chosen to psych yourself into believing is based on the preachments found in Christian bibles, or Jewish Bibles, or the Quran, ...

 Try ~very badly~ understanding various fields of science, so that the pseudoscience of Genesis Creationism seems legit.

Or, if this works better for you,
just let your emotions be tampered with by the manipulations of whatever religious culture you happen to be surrounded by. 

 Let your heart (and other people's heart) be your guide!

 -except also totally don't do that, because the heart is wicked and can lead you astray.

-except also totally DO do that, because that's what leads to God.]

Next, I must let other fallible humans decide FOR ME that "There Can Be Only One" (of whatever a god is). 
[For this step, it helps to avoid learning that Polytheism predates all Abrahamic religions, 
and that the "Biblical" Hebrews (including the people who wrote the Torah) were ALL polytheists.]

From here. ... 

~My understanding of what God wants~

is exactly that.

It's my understanding.

It's the same for anyone.

We can rely on what some other fallible human thinks God wants.

But if we do that, then we are:
~Leaning on our own understanding~
of
~the other person's understanding~
of
~what God wants~.

--
--
Adding even more fallible humans to that chain
would only compound that problem.

Although, that is what happened with Bibles.

1. Reader leans on ~their own understanding~
of ...

2. any random fallible text-explainer's understanding.

Those teachers, in turn, are leaning on:
~their own understanding~
of ...

3. Whatever random fallible text-explainer they were "taught" by.

And they TOO were
~leaning on their own understanding~
of ...

4. What some other random fallible text-explainer said; 
 based on ~HIS own understanding~
- etc etc;

going back many centuries,
all the way back to:

5. Randomly chosen OR intentionally cherry-picked bible versions (each of which teaches something different).

But who wrote those? 

6. Random fallible translators;
all of which relied heavily on:

~THEIR own understandings~
of:
What their subjectively preferred/cherry-picked source texts "probably meant";

All the while,
those men were assuming those texts accurately convey what the unavailable/lost first drafts of every letter "probably said".
--

Going back even further in this unbroken chain, ...

We find (or, actually, we DON'T FIND) the first drafts.

Not any.
Not even one.  

Meanwhile, ... what even counts as "canon"?

Random fallible men decided that.
--

When it comes to the "Christian" texts, ... 

Those men nominated which books are "true"
via heated (and sometimes violent) COMPETITIONS.

Each rival church competed for the "right" to decide which stories, letters, etc to consider "inspired by God". 
-based entirely on their own selfish interests 
and ~their own understandings~. 

Some stories survived that POLITICAL warfare.

Some didn't. 

Of those that did, ...
some later became "canon" in the eyes of dominant churches.

Some didn't. 

But when the 1st and 2nd century Christians were writing letters (later called "books"). 
they were NOT trying to create "scripture". 

They were just random fallible men
in various churches (sometimes rival churches) 
~leaning on their own understanding~ of what their "God" thinks. 

It wasn't until centuries later that some very enterprising man 
came up with a brilliant way
for HIS religious clan
to climb to the top of that ongoing competition ... for:
who gets to tell everyone else "what God thinks";

- based entirely on ~their own understandings~.

To LEVERAGE for dominance,
he would need to "declare" a canon of scripture. 

He would get to pick what goes into it
and how it gets interpreted.

That, in turn, would set him up with PRESTIGE and
AUTHORITY for defining what it really means to be a Christian. 

But the Catholics found out about it.

And then they realized that idea would probably work.

So then they set out to ~beat him to it~. 

But "The Bible" they came up with 
was very different than the canon that Marcion chose. 

The Catholic Church (as a well-established religious mafia) simply had more power.
So they easily won that competition. 

Today's Protestant churches, doctrines, and Bibles
wouldn't even exist
if not for the Catholic Church. 
--
--

Going back to BEFORE that chapter in Christianity's cultural and ideological evolution, ...

Saul/Paul started the whole thing.

 -all based on ~his understandings~ of what God wants.

Now, we can SAY that he got all of it straight from God. 
But we have to DECIDE to think that; based on faith in ~our own understanding~ OF ~his own understandings~ of what a GOD wants. 

Going back further, ...

IF we ~lean on our own understanding~ about what a "God" surely thought, said, and did, ...

We can just decide (with arbitrary faith) that the gospel writers did a pretty good job of capturing the true beliefs of Jesus. 

But that creates a new problem, because:

According to those stories, ..

Jesus:

* was a Jew (born, lived, and died a Jew),

* preached only about Judaism,

* preached only about the coming kingdom OF the Jews
[ Even later writings which spoke of a hope for gentiles...
 was about grafting them INTO the Jewish kingdom; as second-class citizens of that prophesied kingdom. 
Their God was NOT abandoning his PLAN for the Jewish Kingdom. 
There was no mention of a not-Jewish Kingdom]

* insisted the Mosaic Law Covenant would remain in effect (in its entirety) forever, 

* NEVER even HINTED at planning, predicting, or authorizing a new religion, 

in fact
* prevented that idea
by presenting a worldview where there would not be enough TIME to issue a new bible or a new religion,
because:

 * (according to the stories) 
 The literal end of this world's earthly kingdoms (all of them) would happen in THOSE followers' lifetime. 
--
--

Prophecy failed.

But Saul saw a way to RESCUE that doomed Jewish sect from the trash-bin of failed apocalyptic cults;

-by taking it over and then re-inventing what it was all about. 
---
---

But we can just ignore all that, plug our ears, and calmly proclaim "But Bibles are the words of the only true God".

Ok.

Fine.

But we still haven't figured out a way to avoid ~leaning on our own understanding~
along with ~leaning on other people's understanding~. 

Instead,
we can try to cut out the middleman.
That seems more efficient.
It certainly simplified things.
But then we are still:
~leaning on our own understanding~
about
~what God wants~.

Also, THAT's literally what it means to
~invent a brand new religion~.

--

We could also try to remove our SELF from that equation,
to simplify things even further.

FINALLY,
we
are  NOT ~leaning on any understanding~
 at all
about
~what God wants~.

But that leaves us without any religious doctrines at all;

-which limits us to either:
deism
or
no theism at all. 

---
This is quite a paradox.

I don't see a way to solve it.

Although to be fair, I have seen many believers attempt to solve it. 

But they failed to.

They say things like "Just pray for the Holy Spirit's guidance". 

That sounds pretty nifty! 

But it doesn't really work. 

We still end up
 ~relying on our own understanding~.

At this point,
we've just added the extra step of:
 pretending that our understandings were magically beamed into our respective heads. 

Those are still ~our understandings~. 

And if you don't believe me, just ask them.

Just ask the billions of people who tried that ... and got mutually incompatible "answers".

That method either: 
a.) doesn't work for ANYONE 
or
b.) only works for a random few people. 
And then we'd have no way to verify which people it worked for. 

Meanwhile,
those theoretically lucky few people ...
would STILL be
~relying on their own understanding~
of what they were told by the Holy Ghost;

a Ghost who just directed their hands, eyes, and heads to reveal the "real answers";
- eerily similar to how Ouija boards work. 

Churches may as well just be handing out Magic 8 Balls and just telling their members which questions to ask. 

They could even include the disclaimer:

"You'll know when GOD was directing you to those real answers ... whenever it matches what we say. 

The rest of the time, it's just the Devil.

If this sounds like a con, that means you are ~leaning on your own understanding~".