Psalm 18;29 says:
You, O LORD, keep my lamp burning; my God turns my darkness into light. With your help I can advance against a troop ; with my God I can scale a wall. As for God, his way is perfect; the word of the LORD is flawless. He is a shield for all who take refuge in him.
Who is the "God" and the "Lord" who keeps the "lamp burning" for the author of this line, since it surely cannot be God himself, even though God is said to have inspired the author to write such lines?
Who is the "God" who enables the author to "scale a wall"? Who is the "him" that the author of these lines is saying they can rely on like "a shield for all (to) take refuge in ..."?
Answer: truth.
But the believers idea of what they mean by "truth" is not simply evidence that directs us to test and question so we can reach some kind of verifiable conclusion, with the understanding that because "we can never know anything for certain," as the Bible repeatedly points out, that conclusion is never "infallible."
Instead, believers simply anthropomorphize the whole idea of "truth" into their God, and then give that "God" names like Jesus, Yahweh, and Allah, and demand that people worship "him," which is to turn "God" and thus "truth" into a worship of an image of man himself.
From this perspective, "truth" is placed under a bushel of an image of man, dressed in the robes of ideologies about "Gods" that think and act like men. Such a God, however, is always enslaved by the chains of language held by those claiming they alone have the authority to interpret holy scriptures and flogging and crucifying anyone who dares to say otherwise.
And in this way, Religion turns "truth" into the false idol of one ideology or another, that looks and acts with all of the prejudices of men, and despises the limitless capacity of humanity to design something better for itself.
You, O LORD, keep my lamp burning; my God turns my darkness into light. With your help I can advance against a troop ; with my God I can scale a wall. As for God, his way is perfect; the word of the LORD is flawless. He is a shield for all who take refuge in him.
Who is the "God" and the "Lord" who keeps the "lamp burning" for the author of this line, since it surely cannot be God himself, even though God is said to have inspired the author to write such lines?
Who is the "God" who enables the author to "scale a wall"? Who is the "him" that the author of these lines is saying they can rely on like "a shield for all (to) take refuge in ..."?
Answer: truth.
But the believers idea of what they mean by "truth" is not simply evidence that directs us to test and question so we can reach some kind of verifiable conclusion, with the understanding that because "we can never know anything for certain," as the Bible repeatedly points out, that conclusion is never "infallible."
Instead, believers simply anthropomorphize the whole idea of "truth" into their God, and then give that "God" names like Jesus, Yahweh, and Allah, and demand that people worship "him," which is to turn "God" and thus "truth" into a worship of an image of man himself.
From this perspective, "truth" is placed under a bushel of an image of man, dressed in the robes of ideologies about "Gods" that think and act like men. Such a God, however, is always enslaved by the chains of language held by those claiming they alone have the authority to interpret holy scriptures and flogging and crucifying anyone who dares to say otherwise.
And in this way, Religion turns "truth" into the false idol of one ideology or another, that looks and acts with all of the prejudices of men, and despises the limitless capacity of humanity to design something better for itself.
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