your-god-is-too-small May. 2016 | Page 142

The key to the Reformation was breaking the control of the Catholic Church and its central iron grip on regulation of doctrine. During this era, translating the Bible into a common language, along with the invention of the printing press, finally broke the spell of scriptural ignorance the Latin Vulgate had cast over the non-Latin speaking congregants. A major thrust of the Protestant Reformation was to allow individuals to interpret the Bible for themselves and follow the dictates of their own conscience. This freedom to read and interpret the Bible for one’s self is what sparked the explosion of Christian denominations. What do we learn from this aside from our cherished hope that humanity can and often does break free from religious oppression? If you allow people to actually read the Bible, no one will be able to agree on what it actually means! It is not a clear revelation in any sense of the word. God’s Poor Communication Skills If the Bible is indeed god's inerrant inspired word, his unintelligible, stogy publication leads to this undeniable fact: NO ONE can agree on what he actually said or meant. One would think if the Bible was actually an omniscient being’s personal biography providing everyone an opportunity to know and worship him, then beliefs based on the Bible should converge. Some still argue it is god’s inspired word and he simply wrote through the style, language and vantage point of the human authors, in order to be vague, so it would require faith to find the truth. If so, must we then conclude he is a sadist who likes to play with our minds and delights in deceiving us? According to his own (supposed) words he is quite proud of the right path being very narrow and very difficult to find. He obviously doesn't want very many to find it. (Matthew 7:14) P a g e | 142