Blog 3738 – 10.19.2025
All I A.S.K.
Though I no longer believe that The Bible, Old And New Testament, is The Holy Bible “written by holy men of God who spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” nor as Paul writes of the Old Testament or what they the then referred to as The Law and the Prophets:
Some things I do believe about the scriptures:
They were written by men, mere men, who usually had a clear religious and political agenda. They were voted on and selected from a larger group of books that were considered for inclusion into the canons of both the Old and New Testaments by Rabbinical Councils and Roman Catholic Bishop Councils respectively. At best they are both a collection of the greatest sayings of all the religions that preceded them and at worst they are a tool devised by the Roman Emperor in particular to unite his base and control the people. The story of Jesus is especially troubling because it is most likely pure myth as any religious leader addressing crowds as large as he was purported to would have surely been mentioned in the meticulous records kept by the Romans. The Old Testament character Moses is also more than likely purely made up too as the Egyptians also kept pretty good records and absent from them is Moses and the captivity of over two million Jews.
Having said all that there are great “truths” contained in the books of the Bible. One of my favorite ones was said to be part of a lesson that Jesus delivered. In a class called New Testament Survey in Bible College over fifty years ago our professor taught us many techniques for recalling scripture passages. He called this one the A.S.K. or the three step secret to getting everything that you want:
Ask – you will be given
Seek – you shall find
Knock – it shall shall be opened unto you
I put my version of the above into my daily mantra:
“I ask whatsoever I will believing I shall receive, I seek and I shall find, I knock and in shall be opened unto me.”
I know that many of my Christian friends will take issue with me on my remarks about the Bible. I once believed as they do, but somewhere along the way I began to question the beliefs that I had been taught as a child and as a young man primarily because I came to doubt the true motivation of the leaders, teachers, professors, and politicians who pushed those beliefs.
I am not and I have never been a member of the Communist Party. I am proud that I served my country in the U.S. Army from 1968 to 1971. I wear two hats that have Vietnam Veteran on them and license plate brackets on my pickup truck, front and back that do as well. I am proud to have served, but not so proud to have been lied to and manipulated by my government into supporting a war that was based on a myth, the Gulf of Tonkin attack (it never happened, but was a pretext for ramping up our involvement in Vietnam) like years later the second Iraq War was based on the myth of weapons of mass destruction.
Some of my Christian and Conservative Republican friends might consider me a heretic or a turncoat for I once believed as they do. I questioned those beliefs and found them to be based on things that no longer made sense to me. Even the questioning of beliefs is considered heresy or un-American to many today.
I already stated that I have never been a Communist, yet there is a line in Karl Marx Communist Manifesto that says “religion is the opiate of the people” and from my perspective you would have to be high to swallow some of the crap that is put out by politicians and religious leaders today.
The only religion I still believe in is “the old time religion that makes me love everybody.” Sadly, the religion of most people today on both or all sides seems to be a religion of hate, rejection, mistrust, or at the least another myth “we are God’s chosen people.” The Universe has no favorites.
Your friend and fellow traveler,
David James White
Ray Stevens – “Everything Is Beautiful” (Music Video)
theencouragingword 