Leftist Christian

In reading through (listening to) the Bible (I'm three books in), a few things have occurred to me: - It's allegorical. I've for a while had the feeling that the Book of Job could not be literal--God sort of making a bet with the devil. In reading such things as the creation account and Abraham's sacrifice (widely and correctly viewed as a foreshadowing of Christ's sacrifice), it occurred to me that these things are understandably figurative as well, I think. I mean, I'm okay if they are. Things were created, maybe across epochs. Doesn't have to be days. I think it could be true that man is made of the same stuff as the rest of nature. But you know, the tempting of Eve... One can see places where pains are taken to detail something's historicity--these we can take as literal. Of course, it's this or it's man's account of his experience, divinely sanctioned. - This must show our evolution. Right now I'm in the middle of lengthy d...

Who would I kid to pretend I would read the Bible in a year? (I hate new year's resolutions anyway.) So I got this idea to download an audio version and make it what I listen to as I drive around. Usually I am listening to the political station and music on commercial breaks. First off, I only have the Pentateuch lined up, and it's already ten CDs. I want to be open-minded as I "read" it. I want to see whether it is saying something more radical than contemporary Christianity would attribute to it. I also have skepticism in my wondering, what if I don't like what I encounter? What if it just seems like a mythology like any other? What if it presents a brutal or illogical God? Of course, God could be real and be unlikeable, but then I have to weed out what is the culture of the time of writing. Anyway, the central topic here is the despair that I feel when I look at the modern world, and that is not primarily for the same reasons that fellow Christians mi...