Last week, Pope Francis made headlines after “endorsing same-sex civil unions” during an interview for a documentary. The Pope declared that “they are children of God and have the right to have a family,” adding that “no one should be expelled or feel miserable because of it.” Even though the comments were revered by the LGBT community and critics praised it as a “tremendous step,” for me this statement provoked mixed thoughts. Not because he is against same-sex unions, on the contrary, but because of the religious implications of Pope's statement.
First, Pope Francis states that, “what we have to create is a law of civil union”, if we consider that he is a person with the right to give his opinion, that is more than perfect, however, he is the head of the Catholic Church, a religious organization that condemns same-sex unions. So, having the Pope “suggesting” what to do outside the scope of his (civil) domain and avoiding proposing changes within his (religious) domain, is like having a flat earther recommending improving modern cartography. And you might ask how much it can change? Please remember that Pope's encyclicals have become canon law in the past, so yes, he has the power to implement changes...unless it contradicts the Bible?
And this is the second point I want to cover, the contradictions generated by the Pope's statement when confronted with the Bible, the sacred book that contains "the will of God." The text in Corinthians 6:9-10 says:
⁹ Do you not know that evildoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be fooled! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, prostitutes (apparently prostitutes didn't make the list?), sodomites, ¹⁰ thieves, covetous, drunkards, revilers, robbers, none of these will inherit the kingdom of God.
And it is precisely the “sodomites” (a term derived from Sodom, the biblical city destroyed by God along with Gomorrah) that the Bible uses to identify homosexuals, who are listed for eternal damnation. So, Pope's statement contradicts the “divine commandments of God declared in his book.”
And like the Catholic Church, this is a problem that most religions face when trying to adapt to modern times: they have conferred a “divine” status on the words written by men some millennia ago in their sacred texts. .
I believe that the Bible is probably the greatest recollection of knowledge I have ever read, however, I also believe that, like most sacred texts, it was written by men and not dictated by God, so it calls into question the divine quality, let me explain why.
The major monotheistic religions received their sacred text through an intermediary, a prophet, to whom the manuscript was revealed by an angel or by God himself in an apparition. Interestingly, no one else around these prophets can confirm such events, one could argue that Moses was alone on the mountain, but in the case of Muhammad, he was surrounded by people during several of the apparitions, and no one could see or hear anything but Muhammad.
We may consider an apparition to be an act of faith, but the byproduct of the apparition, the text itself, is tangible, and this is where the real problem lies. The conception of God in most religions is that of an Omniscient and Omnipresent being, which means that he knows everything and is everywhere at the same time. These two characteristics make God a timeless being, so for God the moment of his birth and his judgment (after his death) occur at the same time. God basically already knows what sins you will commit during your life, even before breathing life into his inert clay self. For God, there is no linear perception of time, but everything is grouped together in a single moment.
So let's imagine for a second that you could create a machine to travel back in time and talk to your younger self, most likely you would use that opportunity to warn yourself about the mistakes you will make and in doing so, affect your future self. You'll be able to provide specific details about that unsuccessful business he needs to avoid investing in or how to avoid destroying his marriage to the woman he loves. And even going further, specifying about the road trip that his younger self must avoid, so as not to crash and lose a leg, just like we see happen in time travel movies.
And using this hypothetical case, the word I want to discuss is specificity. If you can travel through time, the information you possess travels with you and can provide a detailed account of events, at least the more memorable ones.
Now imagine that you are an Omniscient and Omnipresent God who knows everything and is everywhere at the same time and when you select a Prophet to dictate your manifesto suddenly you only remember what is happening in that era, only the present and the past, not the future. All knowledge of the future is gone and you cannot warn your people of what will happen. No flying cars and other things. Wouldn't that be strange? Wouldn't knowledge feel more human than divine?
You can argue, “that is why God dictated the book of Revelation to John,” but that is precisely what I am trying to convey. The sacred texts only contain ambiguous prophecies, too vague considering their “divine” origin. And since it was written, humanity has done one thing over the millennia: paraphrase them.
That's right, religious men and women around the world continue to paraphrase an ancient book in the hope of finding God's will in it and struggle to adapt it to modernity, despite the fact that at its core there is no proof of the text's divinity. as I showed with a simple exercise of logic.
With this I am not refuting the value of the information in sacred texts, as I said at the beginning of my post, I do believe that it is a wealth of knowledge, but we must recognize its human origin, prone to mistakes and the passage of time, and From that perspective, books become more valuable.
There is a saying that says: “God is never late, but always on time”, and this line is not contained in the Bible, which means that it was made by man and honestly conveys in a clearer way the message of faith that most of the biblical passages that address the topic.
I would like to ask you, if one day we could confirm that Jesus was not the son of God, would his parables lose meaning? I think no, on the contrary, they would become more powerful, because the aspirational aspect of being like Jesus would make more sense to us, when he was deprived of his title of divinity. A business owner who gives himself the same salary as the company's lowest-paid employee is not an example of humility.
Religions must stop holding as truth a text written by men three thousand years ago, but invite the study of the texts within a historical context, to know the achievements of the ancestors of that time, and to the same degree avoid committing the same mistakes.
M. Ch. Landa
