God’s Own Summary of the Bible

I read a summary of the bible in God’s own words on Mountainman’s fascinating website, but I think it missed the most important point, and that is that both of the commandments that Christ gave are the same one. I explain it here (http://www.askwhy.co.uk/truth/b11fscollins.php) in a criticism of a book by F S Collins:

We will see that Christ gave two answers when asked for the most important commandment, and the reason is that the two commandments he gave are the same one, to Love God and to love your neighbour. It is a clear indication that God, in practical terms, is your neighbour, your fellow human being on this planet. Just in case anyone should doubt it, let them read Christ’s description of the Last Judgement in Matthew 25:33-46. God says to the sheep at his right hand whom He has blessed:

“I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you made me welcome, naked and you clothed me, sick and you visited me, in prison and you came to see me.

The virtuous say to him in reply:

Lord when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and gave you drink? When did we see you a stranger and make you welcome, naked and clothe you, sick or in prison and go to see you?

And God replies:

In so far as you did it to one of the least of my brothers, you did it to me.

To the goats gathered at His left hand God says:

Go away from me, with your curse upon you, to the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you never gave me food. I was thirsty and you never gave me a drink. I was a stranger and you never made me welcome, naked and you never clothed me, sick and in prison and you never visited me.

And they too will ask:

Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty, a stranger or naked, sick or in prison, and did not come to your help.

And again God will answer:

In so far as you neglected to do this this to one of the least of these, you neglected to do it to me.”

If you are a Christian and consider Christ to speak with the authority of God, because he is God, then just what could be clearer than this description of how to be saved. And what could be clearer than that God considered any human being, even the least of them, as being Himself. To abuse or fail to help any human being is to do the same to God, and only by helping your fellow human beings are you displaying your love of God.

So, to get the full meaning of God’s shortest bible, a little more needs to be read, but I cannot see how Christians can miss the interpretation. It shows clearly that most “Christians” are nothing of the kind, particularly those who are most demonstrative of their beliefs like Bush and Blair, the Constantines of the modern day, maybe.

God incarnated as Christ has nothing to say about attending mass, or saying prayers, or having faith, or lighting candles to be saved. It is altogether more moral than all the mumbo jumbo. God is Everyman! You cannot separately love God, you can only love Him through loving people!! He says thou shalt. It is an order. Faith and all the rest might help, but it cannot replace what Christians must do to be saved. They have to love others. Full Stop! Why do Christians confuse this simple message with all the mumbo jumbo?

The Meaning of the Spiritual

Mark Vernon is a journalist with an interesting website about science, religion and human sociabilility, which has in it a test called the “spiritual intelligence test”, bizarrely called the SQ test, not the SIQ test, leaving you wondering where the “intelligence”, the “I”, went! IQ is the abbreviation for intelligence quotient, because it is the mental age divided by the actual age, and so shows whether anyone is ahead or behind the average in mental or intellectual development. It was meant as an educational aid, for testing people as they developed, and so becomes a fixed value in adults simply showing whether they are above or below average intelligence. The SQ or SIQ test is not a quotient, and so there is no need for the Q at all, and it seems to be meant simply to draw attention to the supposed parallel with IQ. When you have done the test, you discover that it is really a test of humility, the scores of 0-100 apparently being on a scale from humble to overweening arrogance. My own score, answered as honestly as possible, which meant several answers could not be given because none of the three choices were adequate, was 45. Answering them all in what I thought was an obsessively scientific way gave me a score of 52, and answering in the way I thought religious believers would answer gave me a score of 72. Doubtless, it is all meant as a bit of fun, and not seriously, but such bits of fun have a way of being taken seriously by half the population, probably the half with IQs below 100. Whether that is so or not, it is true that a large number of people think that spiritual is a meaningful word, and Mark Vernon seems to be among them. It is a word that everyone wants to use, largely to show their anti-reductionist credentials, but few can agree upon when it comes to discussing meaning. A definition from a dictionary has it that spiritual means pertaining to the human spirit as opposed to the material or physical. So, it seems to be equivalent to imaginary, for what is not material or physical other than thoughts in the mind? It is a certain bet that most religious people would not count spiritual as meaning imaginary. No, religious people, think spiritual things are somehow real, even though they are not physical or material. In other words what is spiritual is somehow supernatural. Spirituality, to the believer, is supernaturality. Those who claim not to be religious but nevertheless believe that spiritual things are real in some such supernatural way are secretly religious. There is a feeling, often described as awe, not meaning pure fear as it once meant, but a frightening sense of wonder, that people sometimes get and often when they see something entirely wonderful in nature, such as a stunning vista or spectacle, or a wonderful event, such as the birth of a child, a ferocious storm, and so on. The same feeling can come about unexpectedly, when it is called mystical, and is attributed, for no sound reason, as signifying the nearness of God. The feeling is utterly natural, and most people have had it in its milder form. According to surveys, even about a third of people have had the mystical experience itself. There is absolutely no reason why God or spirituality should be associated with this feeling. It merits attention, certainly, but is much more likely to be the sense of unity suddenly felt of ourselves with the world we live in. Usually, we think purely selfishly. Self is a characteristic which has evolved to help us survive. If we did not have it, we would be much more altruistic if simply because we would realize how unimportant each of us individually is in the vast scheme of things. Self makes us seem more important than anything else, and therefore worth preserving. That is what spirituality is. It is a moment in which the sense of self dissolves leaving us knowing how wonderful the totality of Nature is. It is related in a sense to schizophrenia, when the self breaks down pathologically leaving us unable to even function as ourselves! In a temporary, or better still, if it is possibile, in a controlled, way it is a marvellous feeling that makes us appreciate God in the purely Einsteinian sense of the wonder of Nature. We are truly humbled before this purely natural interpretation of the divine. The opposite is to put yourself, or your beliefs, which are simply part of yourself, before it. Spirituality, then is the sense humans have of kinunity. The whole world is kin. That being so, the spiritual person is the one who does least to harm the world we live in. It is the basis of Adelphiasophism. To harm it is to harm ourselves.

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