This is a good time for a statement of faith; it is my view of spirituality, not someone else's. If anyone disagrees, and unquestionably others will take exception to any number of things, that is their choice to make. All that I want to do here is "put my cards on the table," so to speak, so that, if it matters, there will be no question about my actual views.

      My theology matches no currently well known religious creed or doctrines. Since it is not political in any overt sense it cannot be called s form of Radical Centrism, but many people will see some similarities, especially my willingness to combine religious views derived from a number of otherwise independent faith traditions, and further willingness to take strong positions on a variety of competing religious viewpoints such that, on balance, my outlook combines ideas drawn from the so-called Religious Right and the Religious Left even though I am neither a religious conservative nor a religious liberal.

      Nobody needs to accept anything said here; this is simply an expression of values and deeply held beliefs.  I do not take the position that 'everyone' must become a Christian or be forever doomed, and certainly not the position that my unique view of Christian faith is necessary for salvation.  But this is what works for me and maybe, upon reflection, it could work for other people as well.
     One thing I will not do is to defend the Bible in each and every way; I disagree with Adventists about this, disagree with many Baptists, disagree with a majority of Evangelicals, and so forth. Still, let me stick with a metaphor that I have used several times in the past, namely, that the Bible is unparalleled as sacred scripture but it contains, as a reasonable guess, 500 or so mistakes large and small, including errors of judgment, factual mistakes, deceptions, and empirical flaws. 
     Some of these problems are very serious. However, the Bible also contains a very large number of truths, as another guess, 5000 truths, and for me there is no question about which counts more, the errors or the many truths.

      Something else I will not do is absolutize some teachings that seem to me -after considerable thought and soul searching-  are simply not viable when taken as absolutes.  Those supposed "absolutes" are, instead, false absolutes.

      A false absolute is not something that is always wrong; on the contrary it usually is right, for the best, and easily understandable as basically a good idea. However, in some circumstances to treat a false absolute as a de jure Absolute results in absurdities - and it may lead to amoral or even immoral outcomes.
     The rule to observe, in my  view, is that in every case, or nearly every case, where the Bible is consistent on an issue, and its strong opposition to sodomy is a prime example, there is no possibility of argument. But I regard it as a cop out to insist that the Bible is always consistent on every issue. That viewpoint, as I see it, is some kind of bad joke.  Or was it OK for Joshua to slaughter every man, woman, and child in various cities of Canaan because the land was spoken for on behalf of the Israelites?  For me, such conduct was criminal in character and totally unjustified.  It was not excusable because the  Moabites did something similar elsewhere. However, did this actually happen?  My best guess is that various episodes in Joshua are exaggerations and sometimes the accounts are historical fictions, like the story of the fall of Jericho.
      Besides, as one sermon I heard years ago put it, whatever happened in the time of Joshua we can't say for sure,  but in any case, whatever it was,  was limited to that one era of time, no others, and it does not apply to Christians in our world.  Indeed, the whole thrust of the New Testament is contrary to just about everything in the book of Joshua.  Which might be' an overstatement but to communicate the idea...
      This leaves the question of Joshua's perverse 'morality' very much exposed to public criticism. 
      And it leaves the racial bigotry of Ezra and Nehemiah exposed to public scrutiny.

       Some parts of the Bible simply do not pass elementary moral tests. Hence there is no way whatsoever for me to try and defend the entire book.  I have a conscience and can do no such thing.

       This said, I must take full personal responsibility for my conclusions. But what else is there to do?  Lie to myself about the Bible?  As I see it, a good many Christians do exactly that, and a good many believing Jews as well, but I will not do so. Truth matters in  all areas of life, especially religion, and dishonesty about matters of faith strikes me as the worst kind of sickness   -especially because many Christians can see the problem rationally but their doctrinal beliefs make it impossible for them to be objective in any real world sense.

       The Bible is not a "privileged" book for me.  This is to use the word privilege in the manner of scholars of  ancient history. That is,  if  I am going to criticize various Mesopotamian writings, which I do whenever necessary, or the texts of Zoroastrians or anyone else,  then I must apply the same kind of honest criticisms to the Bible and see where that takes me.  Which, in my opinion, is quite far. The excellence of the Bible is just that, a series of excellences of many kinds, there is nothing like it in ancient literature of any origin. But this is far from saying that the Bible is perfect; '80%' or  '90%' is very good, yet that is not at all the same thing as flawless.  
      I can live with the Bible's imperfections, however, they do not trouble me except insofar as it is important to be alert to various problems - and never take the view that everything I read in the book is guaranteed to be true. Most of it, yes. All of it?  No. And some of the errors, to underscore the point, are grievous.

       But what ancient book is perfect? None of them, Not Aristotle, although he also is very good, not Plato, not Homer, not any of the noble Romans, not the also very good texts of Confucius or Lao Tzu, not the Vedas, or you name it. And as Ibn Warraq's research has shown definitively, certainly not the Koran. Yet the Bible, both the Tanach and the New Testament, not only is good but has extreme importance.  You cannot understand Western history or Western civilization without it. And it is remarkable how much is directly relevant to our concerns in the 21st century, and how much in its pages is beautiful and edifying and worth more then gold or any precious gems.

In many ways it is a masterpiece.

       After all, think of the treasure the Song of Songs is, or Ecclesiastes, or Esther, or Jonah, or, for that matter, the book of Genesis, or Psalms, or Proverbs, in the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament.  Then there is Wisdom of Solomon in the Apocrypha; in the New Testament there are, besides the Gospels, Romans, I Corinthians, Hebrews, and Revelation, to mention the most notable literary creations in the  Judeo-Christian scriptures.
      Also well worth thinking about is Rabbi Harold S. Kushner's1975 book, issued in paperback in 1983, When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Kushner's conclusion was that, when you  think about it, considering that there is real and pervasive evil in the world, evil that cannot be wished away or excused, God is not omnipotent . There are limits to what God can do. And sometimes God simply cannot do everything he might wish he could do to alleviate suffering, to end injustice, to prevent horrible disasters, to stop cruelty, and all the rest.

       That is, to put it in Christian terms, when a terrible event occurs like a devastating hurricane or earthquake, or a massive fire or vast flood, it is not an "act of God" it is an "act of Satan"  -which God, because his powers are not absolute, could not stop.

      This argument makes perfect sense to me and I have not believed in any other view of "God" since reading the book in the mid 1980s.

      As an illustration made by someone about whom I know almost nothing,  what kind of God is it that allows the horrible suffering of a child this man once saw in Africa, a young boy with a worm-like creature, a parasite, which had taken over one of his eyes? The creature every so often appeared on the surface of the eye

before crawling back inside. 
     For me, the God in question is powerless to prevent such a tragedy and is not responsible for the parasite.

      The Zoroastrians have it right, about this kind of issue. Satan has powers of his own and they are significant and must never be minimized and certainly never ridiculed as a fiction.  Satan is all-too-real and all-too-sickening.

And until Satan is finally defeated in battle by the Saoshyant-Savior - in the future, we live in a world that is at war between the forces of Good and the forces of unspeakable evil. 
     And yes, Zoroastrians were saying this about their future savior several centuries before Christians started saying this about Christ.
      Satan also creates evil creatures, nature is not all good, nothing wrong with anything in the great outdoors. About this I am as "Zoroastrian" as anyone gets. Some creatures, rats, mosquitoes, flies, bloodsuckers, hook worms, and so forth, are evil in function and design and I will not for one minute romanticize nature for the sake of any ideology including  ideologies of the environmentalist Left. Nature can be good, that is not in any doubt at all, but it can also be cruel, violent, destructive at unimaginable scale, and -from human perspective - downright evil. Ask the people of Pompeii or Herculaneum.

       In any case...
      Satan is real, Satan has no conscience, Satan is sadistic (sometimes also masochistic), Satan has no reluctance to murder at will, to steal, to cause illness or injury, to lie constantly,  to cause others to lie,  to cause hardships totally unjustifiably, and bring about  many other evils in the world. And some percentage of people have turned their hearts over to Satan and live for Satan and act as surrogates for Satan. 
      Which gets us to the question of forgiveness and repentance.
      Some people, possibly a majority of Christians, define their faith in terms of forgiveness. That is, what characterizes faith for them is willingness to forgive, to turn the other cheek, to reconcile. And there is much to say on behalf of that kind of outlook and  morality. But from my point of view, while forgiveness is an excellent ideal when we are discussing many or most personal relationships, it is a terrible ideal when it is applied universally in all cases   -with no consideration for different kinds of offenders or different kinds of relationships, plus it is

often (often) totally out of place in the political sphere or the realm of business.

      How can I be a Christian and say this? Simply because my definition of Christian faith is not conventional and for which I make no apologies whatsoever.  For me, speaking personally, there can be no faith worth having that is not also based on philosophy. This is to speak of heart and mind as belonging together, as necessary for each other. Indeed, while it is no problem to appreciate what is sometimes called sancta simplisimus, the heartfelt faith of people who do not have a philosophical bone in their bodies, that is not an option for me.  
     Where would the world be without the virtues of simple but heartfelt faith?  
     In a much worse place.  And you have no idea how much I appreciate people like that. But where is truth in this picture? Again and again it simply isn't there and what sometimes is there, is dishonesty. Not in the sense of lying to you or stealing from you, the opposite is usually the case, but in the sense of lying to themselves  -to the effect that the Bible is 100% true when they know perfectly well that is not, to the effect that various Christian absolutes simply do not hold up and can be dysfunctional and need to be set aside even when one's beliefs insist that they are always true and good. Thus internal lying becomes rooted in one's unconscious mind.

      I cannot live that way and I cannot stand it when anyone else rationalizes all of this away making excuse after excuse to "explain" why obvious disconnects and contradictions don't really exist.  That kind of dishonesty makes me ill, if you want to know.

      This, of course, results in a number of problems.  Some people call themselves Christians who really are religiously motivated nationalists, some people identify with Christianity because of what their traditions do for them as members of a family, or as members of a community, and some people call themselves Christians because, while they aren't very religious, this gives them a sense of rootedness and a moral anchor in the world, and so forth.

      None of which are "bad things." Indeed, each such phenomenon might be very good for a large number of people. And in some sense,  maybe I also fit in with this crowd. But the operative word is "some," and in this context it isn't very much. Other approaches to faith are far more important to me, in fact there is no comparison. 

       These other forms of Christianity, at a personal level,  also have the liability that the essence of Christian faith is minimized, sometimes to the point of virtual non-existence. You do remember the movie, The Godfather, don't you?  Michael Corlione is attending religious services in which he renounces Satan and all his works; meanwhile, at this directive, five hit men are busy assassinating rival mob bosses in various locations across the map.  The form of Catholicism is maintained intact from the remote past but nearly all of its moral teachings are rendered moot. This is a rather vivid dramatization of the principle involved that is rarely anywhere nearly as outrageous in the lives of most people but the same principle is in play.  
     The core of one's faith is jettisoned for the sake of  other values, real world values that may never be idealized but that consume people's lives. Which, of course, is hardly limited to Christians.  It applies just as well to Jews,

Hindus, Buddhists, and you-name-it.
     I cannot accept this for myself for one minute.  It is hypocrisy, to be clinically honest, and is unjustifiable no matter how anyone may seek to rationalize things. And isn't it time that we recognized hypocrisy for what it is and got rid of it?
     The pot calling the kettle black?  Who am I to be critical of hypocrisy?  Someone who, whatever else anyone may say about me, is not hypocritical, or not more hypocritical beyond garden variety hypocrisy of the everyday kind, viz, "you look lovely today Mrs. Smith," who happens to be 88 years old and has become a physical wreck. Sort of like Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
      By the way, my animus against Ms. Ginsberg has nothing to do with how she looks; it has everything to do with her diseased and twisted Cultural Marxist values - which she somehow regards as "good" and something that should be shoved down everyone's throats. The least I can do is to insult her appearance to make a point.
      Shouldn't we try to eliminate hypocrisy?  Of course we should. No question about it. Unless, of course, you choose to believe any number of half truths and lies about me that, if true, would make me the prince of hypocrites. About which there is a guaranteed remedy if you thought that any  of these falsehoods were true, namely, confront me with any supposed evidence you may have if, for no other reason, than to smirk at my presumed humiliation. Unless, of course, you are gutless and only give minimal credence to various accusations about me and, therefore, say nothing because you value your current status and wealth and privileges and do not want to jeopardize any of that if you, as you fear, are wrong.
       One learns to live with such things, the lies people tell about me, the cowardice of friends, the bad judgment of people who should know better, and so forth. About which all I can say is that at such time as there finally is a breakthrough I will owe debts of gratitude to very few people and besides this small number who can be counted on my fingers, I will have no debts to anyone, there could be no claims on my time or resources, and to hell with everyone who could have helped but did nothing.

        Nothing.
       Remember the final scene in that Frank Sinatra movie about WWII?  
       Sinatra is running as fast as his legs will carry him to try and reach the last car on a train in Italy that is pulling away, heading for freedom, escaping from the Nazis to go to Switzerland.  But it is too late; the faster he runs the further away the train gets and he collapses in exhaustion on the tracks.  Not long before he had a golden opportunity, but he lost it through his own decision.
      That, dear reader, could easily be you. And I told you so, like it or not.

       Now for the issue of evil people.
Examples of irredeemably evil people include:

Adolf Hitler

Joseph Stalin

Mao Tse Tung

Pol Pot

Idi Amin

Carlos the Jackal
Ayatollah Khomeini
Saddam Hussein

Osama Bin Laden
mass murderers (take your pick) who slaughter boys and girls in school

and who kill any teachers who may be in the vicinity

Charles Manson

Jeffrey Dahmler

John Wayne Gayce

       Which is a very incomplete list. Many more Muslim fanatics could be added. And

many more Communists. Many additional Nazis  could also easily be included. Besides the 'usual suspects'  like Eichman and Mengele, think of Joseph Goebbels and his wife, a twosome that murdered all of their six young children at the end of WWII rather than face the consequences of their complicity in Nazi atrocities.
     "Ordinary evil" is bad enough; sometimes evil is so heinous that it staggers

the imagination.
       What explains such depravity?  For some years, prior to 1975, my view was that evil simply is accumulated error, maybe the product of bad parenting, maybe the result of medical problems, possibly the consequence of psychological issues, and so forth. These factors cannot be dismissed. But evil is conscious, or has a major dimension which is conscious. Evil is premeditated, it usually is planned, there is intention behind evil acts, it is anything but random.  All of which says that it exists in anthropomorphic form, viz, embodied as Satan.  The Devil is not an abstraction that can be reduced to a neat list of principles of "badness."

       None of this says that Satan resembles medieval caricatures  -even if such art does have the virtue of making one think about this nauseous creature.  But a being with a pointed tail, horns, a hooked nose, red in complexion, etc., sometimes with large-scale bat wings, isn't the issue, What is, is a being that exists even if its appearance is laughable; like a circus freak or pasty face overweight creep.  A photogenic Satan is not a requirement. A real world existing Satan is the crux of the matter, in any form: An incarnation of pure evil.

       Which, of course, fits nicely with New Testament descriptions.
      It isn't only Jesus who is capable of incarnation. Satan is a real world creature who materializes when it is to its advantage to do so.  In our terms he is more like a science fiction invention, maybe something that a writer like Harlan Ellsion might dream up, than anything else, but such details are not crucial. What is important is the massive evil caused  by this being. Evil, however, that infiltrates into everything, into private lives not only unjust wars fomented by deranged dictators.
      The point is that we all must confront evil in our lives, sometimes very localized and specific to what is happening within a family, sometimes the effect of geopolitics at grand scale into which we are sucked up despite a desire not to get involved.

        Consider the 1988 presidential election, George HW Bush against Michael Dukakis.  At one point in a debate, Dukakis was asked what he would do if a criminal invaded his home and murdered his wife and children. This was the gist of the question even if my memory of exact details is fuzzy after all the years since that time. What would Dukakis do? The reference was to a pardoned killed named Willie Horton who, shortly after his pardon, official forgiveness for his crime, murdered again.
       Dukakis, proud ACLU 'liberal' that he was, eventually said that he would forgive the killer.  At which, in my opinion anyway, he lost the election.  Few people regarded his answer as anything but defective, a sign of irresponsibility and weakness.  Or choose some other terminology, like spineless and suicidal, or like self-deceived and suffering from poor judgement. However you want to think about it, a "forgiveness" reaction was unacceptable to the electorate. About which I completely agree with the public.

        To paraphrase Ecclesiastes, there is a time for forgiveness and a time not to forgive  -and if you can't tell the difference you do not deserve respect.

        Which  was why Dukakis lost and George HW Bush won; Mr Bush had his flaws, some of them major, but he nonetheless merited respect. A man who would not even stand up for his family or seek hard justice for someone who murdered his wife and kids cannot be respected. That is what it comes down to.  Most Americans, even when they do not know how to articulate the concept, are aware of exactly this.
       Which takes us directly into Christian views of forgiveness.

        I did some web searching to find out what people think about forgiveness, at least to the extent that they think about the subject. As might be expected in a culture that has been highly influenced  by Christian religion, most of the quotes I read and collected expressed some version of sentiments expressed in the Gospels to the effect that Jesus was all-forgiving and that Christians should always, in every case (!) forgive those who sin against them. Indeed, the Lord's Prayer, which Catholics know as the "Our Father," includes words that say we should forgive those who trespass against us.  There is no qualification, there are no explicit exceptions.

       To repeat the point, this usually is a good idea.  If not right away, sooner or later, in good time, when the time is right.  But this principle makes a very bad absolute and someone needs to stand up and be honest and say so. Which, it seems, since no-one else is doing so, means me.

       Let us look at a few quotes on the subject of forgiveness...

       C.S. Lewis understood the difficulty involved in an uncompromising Christian position: “If we really want to learn how to forgive, perhaps we had better start with something easier than the Gestapo.” 
      But the point is that, even if extreme cases present special problems, the same logic applies to lesser problems and these problems won't go away simply because you do not need to deal with violent Nazis or rabid criminals.

      I have no idea who various of the people are, whose words of wisdom I put together on the subject of forgiveness, but these individuals have pointed out some important truths.
       Starting with this comment by Vivian Amis: “If you think you need to forgive anyone....you got it all wrong.” 
      How I read her words, a better way to say it would be that while we sometimes need to forgive, while forgiveness can be therapeutic, while it can be blessed, at other times it is foolhardy and a mistake, even a disastrous mistake.
       Jodi Picoult added this consideration: "What was the point of being able to forgive, when deep down, you both had to admit you'd never forget?”

       The fact is that some damages are irreversible, some damages can ruin lives forever.  And there may well be questions about someone's capacity to 'get' anything from someone else's forgiveness other than permission to do the same thing all over again, to commit yet another crime.

       And what I did not find, although someone surely has said something on the issue, were words about what happens when an offense against you is, simultaneously, an offense against others.  Your forgiveness in that kind of circumstance is an outrage.  To make this clear, let's say that an intruder killed your wife, the mother of your children.  If you forgive the killer, what about  the effect of the murder on your children? What about the lifelong injuries to them?  What about at least some semblance of justice for them?  And you surely

would have no guarantee that, as they grew older and learned how to make

moral distinctions drawn from a variety of sources, one or another child

might come to think of you as a coward. 
      What right do you have to forgive crimes against other people?
      You have no such right.

      The "other sources" that a child might learn from can include some heroic figures we all, as Americans, should want our offspring to learn from, such as Thomas Jefferson. And, for one, while I need to qualify some of what he said, I certainly agree with the spirit in which he wrote   -in a letter of April 13, 1820-  to a certain William Short:  “...it is not to be understood that I am with him [Jesus] in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist, he takes the side of spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance toward forgiveness of sin. I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem it... Among the sayings & discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence: and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being."
     Just how sure are we that everything attributed to Jesus as reported in the Gospels was actually said by him? And as a good number of scholars have said, there is reason to believe that some of what we read by way of Jesus' words in the New Testament were put into his mouth by creative writers we know as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.  Maybe, to put the best possible 'spin' on the issue, we can say that all or nearly all "Jesus quotations" are based on things he actually said;   I am inclined to take this view myself. But all of it, 100% accurately?  I do not think so, especially since the Bible itself admits that we all are imperfect beings and we all sin and otherwise make mistakes.
      Jefferson's conclusion, that some sayings attributed to Jesus are so egregious that they don't make sense when compared to other statements we can all agree are authentic and for the best, that therefore he never said some things that nowadays are used as foundational to an entire Christian ethos, makes  perfect sense to me also.   The logical problems with an absolutist interpretation of the forgiveness principle are so serious that clearly something is very wrong.
      Forgive Hitler? Stalin? Mao?  Osama Bin Laden?  Manson?  Are you out of your mind?  Any such thing is completely out of the question.

      What is entirely unconvincing are attempts to rationalize the problem away saying that its all in God's hands, and a Christian's obligation is to forgive in all cases and all circumstances.  Take this short exposition by a tradi- tionalist Christian believer named Lewis Smedes. “When we forgive evil we do not excuse it, we do not tolerate it, we do not smother it. We look the evil full in the face, call it what it is, let its horror shock and stun and enrage us, and only then do we forgive it.” 

      I'm sorry, but my reaction to this statement when I first read it was to write a little note in the margins that simply said: "horse crap."  This is unmitigated nonsense,  none of which rings true, all of which clearly is the product of psychological denial. And there is not one word in it about justice or the pain that evil has caused not only to one's self but to others affected by a crime, or anything that actually seeks redress for  evil actions and that actually reflects normal human psychological processes and the normal human need for life sustaining values  -as opposed to masochistic values.

      If the Bible is, indeed, wrong at the 10% or 20% level, this is part of that 10% or 20%.
     This said, that leaves 80% or 90% right, worth everything, worth living for and, in cases, worth dying for. Let's not forget the distinction. 
     To say the same thing a little differently, when forgiveness is taken as something that usually is a good idea, usually is the best policy, everything else makes a great deal of sense.  We usually would do well to forgive a friend, a spouse, a child, an otherwise ethical political leader, a well-meaning reporter, and so forth. But what about extreme cases, call them Silence of the Lambs cases? What about  people who, by any reasonable standards of judgement, simply will not reform even when insisting they will, people who are utterly cynical and ill-intentioned?      What about people whose crimes have been so horrible that nothing conceivable can possibly repair any of the damages?
      Forgiveness in such cases is literally insane. Or if this does not rise to the level of clinical insanity, there should be no question that the only conceivable outcome would be self-destructive.  That is, how about some basic honesty on the subject?
      Here is how Martin Luther phrased things:
“The Turk is the rod of the wrath of the Lord our God. . . If the Turk's god, the devil, is not beaten first, there is reason to fear that the Turk will not be so easy to beat. . . Christian weapons and power must do it."
      There really is a time for war, not just a time for peace. And there really is a time for not forgiving anything at all  - and being committed to fighting the good fight until you win or are annihilated.

       For one, I am rather tired of the Evangelical, etc., ploy of presenting us with a false choice, aka forced choice, that simply isn't true, and then expecting you or I to agree with them on the basis of a cheap trick of logic.  You know what I mean, I'm sure. For example... "Either Jesus was the Son of God or he was the worst liar of all time."   

       This approach to the question is utterly dishonest. Obviously (very obviously) there are other options, such as:

Jesus never said something attributed to him, or Jesus may have been mistaken in saying something and if he was wrong it was a simple mistake, or maybe, if we accept Bart Ehrman's research, which seems impeccable, Jesus never claimed to be the Son of God and it wasn't until years after his death that this was attributed to him.  

      We get something similar when Evangelicals discuss forgiveness, viz, either you forgive unconditionally or you necessarily are at war with someone. Uhhh. How does this forced choice compute?  After all: You can forgive provisionally, "if you screw up again my forgiveness will be revoked," or you may become indifferent to the other person and simply write him or her off as a loser, or you may re-evaluate the situation and come to the conclusion that going any further with the matter is a waste of time. viz, "it isn't all that important and I have better things to do with my life."

      Here is another quotation that clarifies the picture:
      “All too often women believe it is a sign of commitment, an expression of love, to endure unkindness or cruelty, to forgive and forget. In actuality, when we love rightly we know that the healthy, loving response to cruelty and abuse is putting ourselves out of harm's way.” ― Bell Hook

      And still another:

       In other words, it is not necessary, in the least, to accept Evangelical terms of debate. Nor do I accept the view that unless you become a true-believer Christian you are on a pathway that takes you to Hell. Not all Evangelicals take this view, by the way, even if most do so, but in any case I do not agree with that assessment.
     Once again the Zoroastrians have it right. What they claim is that their religion is the best religion on Earth. They do not deny that there is value in other religions, they simply say that their way is best.  It seems to me that Christians can make this claim for themselves in good conscience and with a good deal of supporting evidence on their behalf.  And there clearly are a number of Bible verses that can be made use of in this context, for instance:

     2 Corinthians 7:8-10 
“For even if I grieved you with my letter, I do not regret it —even though I did regret it since I saw that the letter grieved you, yet only for a little while. Now I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because your grief led to repentance. For you were grieved as God willed, so that you didn’t experience any loss from us. For godly grief produces a repentance not to be regretted and leading to salvation, but worldly grief produces death.”

     Luke 3:8-14 
“Therefore produce fruit consistent with repentance. And don’t start saying to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you that God is able to raise up children for Abraham from these stones! Even now the ax is ready to strike the root of the trees! Therefore, every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire."

     Parpola also wrote a lengthy article that essentially is an abridgement of his book even though it was written separately but making use of the same title, Assyrian Prophecies. This is available in the Journal of the American Oriental Society for July-September 2000.

    Other important sources include:
Raphael Patai  The Hebrew Goddess, 1967 revised 1990,

Theodore Mullen, The Divine Council in Canaanite and Early Hebrew Literature, 1980,
Savina Teubal, Sarah the Priestess, 1984,

William Dever, Did God Have a Wife?, 2008, and
Robert Wright, The Evolution of God, 2009.

    While not a factor in my specific view of religious faith, mention should also be made of a 2001 opus by Andrew Newberg and Eugene D'Aquili, with Vince Rause, Why God Won't Go Away, Brain Science and the Biology of Belief, a book that explores the relationship of neuroscience and religion;  I am insatiably curious about what religion actually is, why it has the power it does, and how to judge the truth claims of competing faiths.   I want to know, objectively, why I believe what I believe and why I disbelieve other things.
    About the religious history of the ancient Mid East, all of this is absolutely essential for understanding either Judaism or Christianity.  That is, if you want to know what the Bible really says, "between the lines" as it were, there is no substitute for study of the history of religion in Mesopotamia, Canaan, Syria, and Egypt, et. al.  But that is not how most Christians of any denomination understand things. For then the Bible is self-referential and only self-referential. Evangelicals may go one step further and add that you should not even look into the literature about the ancient Mid East because it is all Pagan  - although exceptions can be made if you need to know something about the Magi or various facts about the beliefs of the Canaanites in the time of King David. True-believer Muslims, of course, go still further and say that everything Pagan is, by definition, a product of the 'age of ignorance' and it all is wrong and should be destroyed.
     My views are a million miles removed from any such beliefs.
     Paul Tripp had it right when he said the following:

     Some things, though,  need to be taken literally.

“Sin is a power; wherever it is given room, it will grow in strength, and it will take you where you do not want to go.” ― Colin S. Smith

     This truth comes directly out of the Bible and it is essential in anyone's life. 

     Other truths may not derive from the Bible but help us understand our faith better because these truths simply cannot be denied,

     Twain also said the following:

      The kind of Christian faith I believe in requires that we examine our own beliefs, look at them as objectively as possible, and assume just about nothing. Which is an attitude that is as Buddhist as anything gets. Which is necessary to me since my faith is Buddhist as well as Christian. I do not see any incompatibility. Especially not when thinking about morality. 
     Both Evangelical Christianity and Buddhism are, for example, entirely negative toward homosexuality and abortion.  Both also place the highest possible value on the importance of compassion in our lives as necessary for a healthy society for normal men and women and their families.  
     The point is that we need normal people for there to even be a viable society; which has always been why genuine Buddhists exclude - exile - homosexuals from their former communities. Buddhists know that homosexuals  - homosexual values - poison exactly what a healthy society needs in order to function according to the imperatives of human nature and the laws of nature.
     Which was also the case in ancient Assyria, a society that would not tolerate homosexuals at all.  
     What about forgiveness for homosexuals? Not a chance.

     Certainly not a chance if they remain homosexual and do not purge their same-sex interests from their psyches, certainly not if they continue to associate with homosexuals, and  certainly not if they demand laws to protect homosexual behavior.  None of that is tolerable to any extent whatsoever.
     There is no excuse for toleration of any psychopathology, especially a pathology that is as morally toxic and disgusting as sodomy. Homosexuality is the enemy of everything decent and good and beautiful; it is the enemy of religious faith and of love between men and women. It must be rooted out and eliminated from civilization. The way out for homosexuals is psychotherapy, and everyone should know that this is far more than a prayerful hope promoted by the Religious Right.  
     Perhaps the best solution to the problem can be found in the research of Masters and Johnson in their 1978 book, Homosexuality in Perspective, in their reports of approximately 70% success rates in curing homosexuals of their psychological disorder.  At least that was a good beginning  -even if it came to a sudden end with the onset of the AIDS epidemic and a major shift in homosexual strategy, out of nowhere claiming that homosexuality was genetic (which was and still is a falsehood) and that homosexuals wanted something that for many years they said was debilitating and absurd, marriage.
     With that sudden change the love affair the Left had with Masters and Johnson came to a halt and the two medical doctors became persona non grata to "liberals" everywhere. This might be a good time to rehabilitate their reputations and make productive use of their findings.

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     Most of all, however, my interest is in creating something new, a new form of Christian faith.
     This is directly related to the work of Henri Saint-Simon, the French thinker who, in the year of his death, 1825, published his last book, The New Christianity.
     Basically the text is only a sketch for a project that Saint-Simon did not live long enough to do anything substantial with.   His followers of that era did organize a new religion but it eventually went in a dysfunctional direction due to personality conflicts and less-than-well-conceived ideas about how to do what everyone had originally intended. After a promising start, with maybe 25,000 members at its peak in the early 1830s, it fell apart. Some of its leaders went on to become leaders in the Second Empire of   Louis Napoleon III, but that experiment in politics also fell apart - after twenty years.  
      Louis Bonaparte III , sometimes called "Saint-Simon on horseback," wasn't the only Bonaparte of that period of time, however. A relative lived in America  -Charles  Joseph Bonaparte, a resident of Baltimore who was born in 1851.  Charles was a lawyer who was to argue about 50 cases before the Supreme Court and also someone who kept in touch with family members in France. There is no known connection to the ideas of Saint-Simon but what is certain was that he knew at least something of the movement - and this means he would have understood that, while it was pro-labor and pro-reform, it was also pro-banking and in favor of an activist government that worked on behalf of the citizenry rather than focus on behalf of financial interests. Which , of course, was Saint-Simon's approach to government.
     It is difficult to find much at all online about Charles but there is one site, that of the Maryland Historical Society, that maintains an annotated catalogue of Bonaparte's papers, number MS 141 in their archive. Comments in these descriptions tell us that, through James Brooks and Oakes Ames, Charles was familiar with the Credit Mobilier investment scheme, a plan that made use of some of Saint-Simon's business ideas  -albeit, as people were to find out later, to take advantage of the Frenchman's good name to try and bilk investors. The point being that there is no way that Charles was not informed to some extent about Saint-Simon and his ideas. Especially since the Maryland Historical Society also tells us that Charles had an interest in John Stuart Mill, for a time a proponent of Saint-Simonianism, who wrote a book, entitled Socialism, partly about the subject.
     What is also of interest is that, through Charles, at least something of Saint-Simon's influence reached the highest office in the nation.  Charles was to serve Teddy Roosevelt for most of the time TR was president.  Charles was Secretary of the Navy in 1905-06 and then, in the final years of Roosevelt's term in office, he served as Attorney General and, in that capacity, organized the Bureau of Investigation, later renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1935.
     Charles J. Bonaparte had wide ranging interests and for a time served as a member of the US Board of Indian Commissioners. He also was a proponent of women's political rights and of greater political rights for "Negroes."  And he was a political reformer who developed an idea that became known as Civil Service which, at the time, was meant to end the spoils system in political appointments.
     Charles also was a champion of expanded educational opportunities for both women and black people.
     The point of this information is to make it clear that something of Saint-Simon's ideas are already "native to America" and we are better for it.  Now is the time to think about a next step, to make good on the promise of The New Christianity and actually set out to create a new kind of Christian faith for our own time in history.  This paper should provide some useful ideas toward meeting this challenge. 
     The foundation of this new approach to religious faith is commitment; not belief even though any kind of religious endeavor is unthinkable without belief of some kind, beliefs we might identify as good and true. Necessarily, it seems to me, this means a Christian foundation, or more broadly, a Biblical foundation. But a foundation that is as inclusive as it can be and remain true to Christian values. However, this does not mean a newer and more up-to-date version of Evangelical faith, as much as I respect that faith and have been deeply influenced by it.  But the objective is to transcend Evangelical beliefs of many kinds and, in the process, create something new, a genuine New Christianity.
     Can something like this succeed?  I have no idea but I think it is worth trying and giving everything possible to make it happen.  But I certainly cannot do something like this entirely on my own. Yet if other people want me to do my best, to get this started, I am willing to give it my best efforts as a leader and as someone with many ideas about how to accomplish the goals outlined here. Which is to say in the capacity of organizer, writer, public speaker, prophet after my own fashion,  but  most of all as a teacher.  That is what I do the best, or think I do the best; teaching is the oxygen I breathe.
     In the meantime I will continue to be a part-time 'philosopher,' or anyway, someone with philosophical ideas. There is real satisfaction in philosophy and it is something that I cannot live without.
     This is all about creating a new culture, a new kind of culture, that finally demolishes the culture we have drifted into, featuring an all out war against religion, an all out war against human decency, an all out war against normality, and an all out war against everyone who isn't rich so that monied elites can enrich themselves at everyone else's expense as if this was their God-given right.
      In the past more than 30 years the real income of America's "middle class" has not increased one dime. If this is an exaggeration it isn't by much. This kind of injustice is also intolerable.

     Saint-Simon's New Christianity focuses on the situation in which the non-rich find themselves because of the defective conscience of the rich. But we need to do much, much more, because  - even if you argue the point, there can be little doubt that it is important-  our culture rewards behaviors that allow injustice to flourish. Culture is, it has been said, upstream from politics. That tells us that if we are to make lasting changes we have to get the culture right; everything depends on exactly this.  But the foundation of culture is and has always been religion. Clearly  we need a new kind of religion so that we can remake our culture.

      Cosmetic changes to faith have no chance to make the kind of difference we really need. Everything needs to be re-thought  -beginning with commitment to truth.  Which does not mean being stupid about things but which does mean serious commitment.  Not to the status quo but to creating the kind of future which good and decent values say we should create for ourselves.  Regardless of opposition.
     This also says we need to take a fresh look at the human past, to see where we have come from and to identify and once again make our own any number of values that have been lost along the way but that need to be restored...

      By the WWII era Don West had become thoroughly disillusioned with the Communist Party and walked out, never looking back. When I first met him in the Summer of 1968, it was approximately 25 years since he had anything at all to do with the CP.  By 1968 Don was one thing before all else, an activist for justice for the people of Appalachia. 
      As he told me a few years later, the last time we had a serious conversation, one thing he knew for certain was that although his motivation was centered on Christ, he had no idea how much of what the Bible says about Jesus is true  -except to say that Christ gave everything he had for the people who followed him and trusted in him.  The people Don was serving trusted him and did so in part because of their sincere faith in Jesus. That was good enough for Don.  He could do no less than to put his trust in Jesus also  -but with no thought for any kind of reward in heaven, no thought of a blissful afterlife. For all he knew, none of that was real. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. What mattered was his self-respect, his knowledge that, however far he might be from Goodness, he had sincerely tried, given his all, as much as possible, to the people he loved and cared about. Whatever happened after that, after he was gone, was not up to him anyway. He had done his best and that was that.

      This has been my credo, also, ever since that time. There are NO promises of a beatific future in heaven that I believe in, no false certainty, and nothing like an absolute faith in various heavenly promises that religious people believe in. About such things I am as agnostic as Ingersoll ever was. I just do not know.  
     Maybe this is going too far. But some days, anyway, I do not know and even on days when I feel more certain there never is anything like complete assurance, there cannot be, and I know it.
      But maybe neither did Albert Schweitzer, and he is another hero of mine, a  man who gave his life, decades of it, to Christ by way of organizing and operating a hospital in equatorial Africa for people who measured "wealth"

by the number of goats they owned.  Yet Schweitzer found the time to study Buddhism and Hinduism, he respected Asian religions, and he made no demands on anyone to follow his own faith even though, to be sure, some people did.
     The point being that you cannot find a more dedicated Christian anywhere in the historical record  -yet someone who would not pass muster among Evangelicals,  at least of that era, for his "heretical" beliefs.
     Not that I have any pretension to a Schweitzer-like life. No thanks, that is not for me. But Schweitzer is a reminder that I can do better, and someone who is an inspiration to be at least a  little more caring and compassionate. If, maybe, I can do, say,  .01% as much good, that would be my success.
      My beliefs are related to Schweitzer's anyway, and they are also heretical. Many are not, of course, in some ways I am close to the viewpoint of the Assyrian Orthodox Church, but in others I am completely off the map. 
      But conformity to traditional Christian orthodoxy of any kind  is not a concern of mine. The whole objective is to do my part in helping to bring about the rise of a New Christianity. That's it. No compromise about anything. Take it or leave it.