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> I suppose reading those quotes from Sagan, I wonder why holding to a purpose or a provident last word in all reality is necessarily anthropocentric. It seems to me that God has to be much, much bigger than that.

I think Sagan would agree with you:

> How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, "This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed"? Instead they say, "No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way."

--Pale Blue Dot, page 50

This is not the view of the sort of theologians this group appreciates, but it is by far the majority view, and the one Sagan stood against. The claims of the religions of Western culture have in fact been highly anthropocentric, at least in the majority of their popular forms. It's mostly been focused on this tiny slice of recorded human history, with the end projected out only a few thousand years perhaps, and a few thousand years really visible behind us. And the view the gospels attributes to Jesus as well as the early writings of his followers is even smaller: All of history was to come to a close within one generation. (See The Human Faces of God, chapter 8 for a thoroughgoing argument on this).

Sagan's argument (as I understand it) ultimately was not for an abolition of a Mythos or even necessarily teleology, but that our beliefs should live up to our knowledge, and we should be cautions if we are considering a belief to be some sort of revelation from the divine when it so closely fits the character of the culture that recorded it.

In his conclusion to his Gifford Lectures, he made this statement about the search:

> We kill each other, or threaten to kill each other, in part, I think, because we are afraid we might not ourselves know the truth, that someone else with a different doctrine might have a closer approximation to the truth. Out history in part is a battle to the death of inadequate myths. If I can't convince you, I must kill you. That will change your mind. You are a threat to my version of the truth, especially the truth of who I am and what my nature is. That thought that I may have dedicated my life to a lie, that I might have accepted a conventional wisdom that no longer, if it ever did, corresponds to the external reality, that is a very painful realization. I will tend to resist it to the last. I will go to almost any lengths to prevent myself from seeing that the worldview that I have dedicated my life to is inadequate. I'm putting this in personal terms so that I don't say "you," so that I'm not accusing anyone of an attitude, but you understand that this is not a mea culpa; I'm trying to describe a psychological dynamic that I think exists, and it's important and worrisome.

> Instead of this, what we need is a honing of the skills of explication, of dialogue, of what used to be called logic and rhetoric and what used to be essential to every college education, a honing of the skills of compassion, which just like intellectual abilities, need practice to be perfected. If we are to understand another's belief, then we must also understand the deficiencies and inadequacies of our own. And those deficiencies and inadequacies are very major. This is true whichever political or ideological or ethnic or cultural tradition we come from. In a complex universe, in a society undergoing unprecedented change, how can we find truth if we are not willing to question everything and and to give a fair hearing to everything? There is a worldview close-mindedness that imperils the species. It was always with us, but the risks weren't as grave, because weapons of mass destruction were not then available.

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> I think if we ever reach the point where we think we thoroughly understand who we are and where we come from, we will have failed. I think this search does not lead to complacent satisfaction that we know the answer, not an arrogant sense that the answer is before us and we need do only one more experiment to find it out. It goes with courageous intent to greet the universe as it really is, not to foist out emotional predispositions on it but to courageously accept what our explorations tell us.

I think these are things few people here would argue with, as it is this openness to learning that comes from admitting that just maybe we might be wrong that the best of both science and religion take to heart.

Sagan understood and appreciated religion and the sacred far more than he gets credit for. (His open letter to religious individuals on environmentalism is a good example.) That much of his work speaks against high-certainty forms of religion is only because they are the most prevalent and one of out largest existential risks.

I think I've answered the question behind your question that I wanted to answer, but I'm not sure if I've actually answered your question, so I'll ask another question instead ;-)

> Of course the endeavor of theology is going to focus on the how humanity might fit into such teleology, but can't such inquiry exist with an acknowledgement that we're dealing with a small corner of a great mystery?

Of course there is mystery. The bigger question is, given our place in the universe is there realistically any certainty?

Relevantly, I'm interested in knowing if your understanding is truly a belief or a hope. Hopes can often be useful, but when we tighten our grip around our hopes and call them beliefs, it seems to me that something changes in us, and often not for the better.

Personally, I'm a naturalist by belief, but I must admit at least partially a theist in terms of hope. For me personally, in relation to the things I currently know, that seems the most honest way to live.

Honestly, years of cultural anthropological study into the ancient Mediterranean. It all started back when I asked myself what the bible really was and how to read it. A lot of people want to believe that when you become a Christian you can just read the bible and that God will make it all make sense to you. I find that to be pretty inaccurate, given all the division in Christianity and biblical interpretations through history. So I decided to study the bible as if it were any other ancient group of documents.

And given the preface that the bible was written by specific people to specific people(s) in a specific time and context for specific reasons, I decided to jump into learning as much as I can about how the culture of the ancient world thought. It changed the way I looked at the bible as a whole and really lead me to completely different beliefs than I had held before. It also had the fun side effect of shifting and clarifying a lot of the weird parts that had never made sense to me before.

If you're interested in learning more, I'd recommend starting with a book by David deSilva called "honor patronage kinship & purity: unlocking new testament culture" for some of the bigger core themes, and then The New Testament World by Bruce Malina for a much broader and refined picture. From there you can find other great authors who write on the subject from N.T. Wright, Richard Rohrbaugh, Stanley Hauerwas, Walter Brueggemann, and John Howard Yoder

To the statements specifically:

• God creates a system that takes care of people: (Deuteronomy 15:4) as well as multiple other places and examples
  
• God wants us to see ourselves as more than units of production: God didn't just save the Israelites from Egypt but too a new way of life. It's thought that the sabbath was meant as a way to psychologically recondition those freed slaves into understanding that life wasn't just about work and that rest and enjoyment were important too.
  
• God doesn't like endless debt, and prohibits charging interest: See Leviticus 25 for more on the Sabbath year and Jubilee year where all debts were supposed to be forgiven to prevent prolonged indenturedness, and usury laws (Exodus 22:24 and Leviticus 25:36)
  
• God allowed private ownership: This was written a little sloppily. The concept really is that God owns everything, but that he grants stewardship to individuals, and they are help responsible for the things they are put in charge of.
  
• God focused more on empowering people over powering a single state or governmental body, and warned against putting a powerful person in charge: Initially God called all Israelites to be Priests, instead of having a hierarchical temple system. It wasn't until the failure with the Golden Calf where the Levites obeyed Moses command that they were set aside as special intercessors to God. Then later through Jesus the need for a priestly intercessor was done away with. This all implies that God wanted to work with and empower each person. The warning is in reference to the warning God gave Samuel regarding what would happen when the Israelites got a king. (1 Samuel 8:10-22)
  
• God believes in redistribution based on need: Again see Leviticus 25 for more on the Sabbath year and Jubilee year rules

Your post makes so much sense to me. I would really recommend anything by Greg Boyd; he's not afraid to tackle the fundamentalist images of a vindictive/spiteful God head on, but he doesn't lapse into a kind of "it's all a mystery" unsatisfactory fluff. If you're having trouble envisioning God as loving, or even generally "nice", then you could start with Seeing is Believing, which is a guide to the ancient contemplative practice of imaginative prayer. It really helped me quite a bit.

Also, there's a book by a 14th/15th century Christian mystic called Revelations of Divine Love. It explains God's joy and compassion in a really beautiful way, and offers a pretty optimistic view of the world as an antidote to Calvin. ;)

>Is there a "best" bible printing/translation to read and is there a best order to read the books in for a first time reader?

The best translation, according to many scholarly types, is the NRSV (New Revised Standard Version). It is used by Catholic, Anglican and the UCC (at least). I would probably begin with the Gospels: I'd start with Luke, as it tends to be the most political. After Luke I would read acts – it is written by the same person, and serves as a account of the ministry after Christ's resurrection; I'd then read Mark, as it is serves as a reference material to Matthew and Luke; I'd read Matthew 3rd (it is a book focused on grace); I'd close the gospel reading with John (you can probably skip over John, for now). From there you can really go where ever you choose. A good linear background would be to go through Genesis and Exodus, with perhaps Deuteronomy, then Joshua, Judges, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings, followed by Daniel. This brings you into the captivity in Babylon. It would probably do you well to look up good reading lists.


>Is there a good companion reader with some theology, "radical" questions or prompts (death of god, liberation theology, etc), relevant philosophical questions, etc?

Not a companion reader, but there are many good introductory texts, within different areas. Others have given good suggestions. I'd recommend beginning with Tillich's The Courage to Be followed by Peter Rollins Insurrection followed by something like Radical Theology and the Death of God as good introductions to Death of God Theology. I'm not up on liberation theology, so I can't really help you too much there.

>What are the best theological interpretations/arguments for accepting queer people into Christianity's fold?

If you want a longer look at the subject, Ted Jennings has a number of books of the topic including The Man Jesus Loved. This article looks at how biblical translation distorts Christianity's relationship with the LGBTQ+ community, and Walter Wink has an essay called "Homosexuality and The Bible" which is also a good resource.

I have recently discovered the podcast, “Two Feminists Annotate the Bible”, which I’m really enjoying - they go through story-by-story (so the actual length of reading varies depending on how the story is told) and just kind of comment on their interpretations, various scholarly or traditional contexts related to the passage, etc. If you’re a podcast person, I think this podcast would be a good supplement to reading the Bible. That said, I would say it’s not strictly a “beginners” podcast in the sense that sometimes they reference other parts of the Bible in ways that won’t totally make sense if you haven’t read that part yet. Even so I think it would still be useful.

I also read The Path: A Journey Through the Bible in a Bible study last year. It attempts to synthesize the narratives of the Bible such that it can be read sort of like a novel and capture the main narrative arc of the Bible. The main text of the book is all directly from the Bible (with a few interludes to explain context or recap content that was skipped), but a lot is omitted; the point was to have one continuous narrative compared to the way the Bible sometimes skips around or retells the same story multiple times. Obviously since this book omits lots of stuff it’s not the same as reading the whole Bible, but I think it’s a good approach to try to read the main storyline first, and then go back and study the Bible in more detail once you have the gist of the story.

All that said, personally, my first exploration into the Bible, I started with the Gospels and Acts, and then read the Pentateuch, and then attempted to read other sections like the wisdom literature, some of the prophets, and the epistles. (And I admit, 2+ years after being baptized I still haven’t read the whole Bible although I’m chipping away at those more opaque sections over time). I think this ended up being a pretty good approach. The Gospels and the Pentateuch (particularly Genesis and Exodus) really serve as the central story of each testament, so I would highly recommend prioritizing those. The rest can be seen as further elucidation on those stories, as well as the “and then what happened?” sections that inevitably follow the main plot of any story.

I'm glad it was useful! I've spent a long time following internet rabbit holes and searching dusty library corners for these folks, so I'm glad to pass it along. There are, regrettably, not very many books collecting all these fascinating figures, but I know of a couple. Copleston's famous history of philosophy includes a volume on them. There's a several volume set which serves as kind of an anthology of writings from a variety of schools in that period (here's the link to the second volume, which contains stuff on nihilism and populism). There's also a good biography in English on Pavel Florensky, which digs a bit into the details of this time (and Florensky is worth taking the time to read--just ask /u/blazingtruth).

A few of the Russians who made it to Paris wrote their own surveys, histories, and reflections, but they are of course quite biased (most of these guys are from the Solovyov strand, though, so you'll get a lot of good stuff on his lineage). On this, see Berdyaev's The Russian Idea, Dream and Reality (which is his autobiography), Lossky's History of Russian Philosophy, and others.

As for Solovyov's stuff, Eerdmans publishing has been putting out some of his material in English over the years (they've also translated Bulgakov's works). I know of only two in print right now (find them here). I've read the book on the Good which is nice because you don't have to commit from start to finish--you can sort of skip around--and it introduces Solovyov's metaphysics and his social thought. The second half of it is more practical application of his philosophy/theology.

As you can see, the field is a bit sparse in terms of secondary engagement. You can find articles here and there if you have access to library databases. For anyone looking for research interests or grad school work, learning Russian could be a ticket to a niche area of reading and thinking (it's one I'm thinking of pursuing in Ph.D. work).

Hello. I can't really comment on what you are going through; however, I think I have a book you may be interested in.

[Radical Love - Introduction to Queer Theology by Patrick Chen]
(http://www.amazon.com/Radical-Love-Introduction-Queer-Theology/dp/1596271329)

Chen has a great start to looking at a 'Queer Theology' (technical term) and what all it entails. By reading this short book you will find a variety of authors you can then bounce off of to get more information. You mentioned having a 'messed up' theology. I think you may find yourself walking down a path others have indeed tread. Hopefully they can give you a hand along the way.

I wish you the best.

The problem with pain and evil is that we don't really know.

I firmly believe that the Creator didn't intend for any of this, yet that unhinges a whole bunch of presuppositions about what the Creator is like; such as immutability, impassibility, even omniscience.

For me the root question was "If GOD knew the outcome of creation before creation, doesn't that make GOD ultimately responsible?"

There are no definitive answers for theodicy. There are guesses and suggestions, frameworks and world views.

Our conception of GOD; that primary view of GOD's attributes will influence so much of how we understand suffering and pain.

The best framework for me is Open Theism.

Here are some awesome resources for what has proved so vital for my faith regarding pain and suffering:

1)The Crucified GOD - Jurgen Moltmann - an awesome book (if not a little on the academic end) thinking through Jesus and suffering.

2) Is GOD to Blame? - Greg Boyd - a much easier to read book exploring these very questions.

3)The Openness of GOD - Pinnock et. al. - for me this is the gold standard. It isn't too dry and heady but isn't weak on research either.

Awesome question and I love that quote from your brother.

I haven't read any of these sources, but I'm interested in the questions you ask, and these are some books that have been on my list that I haven't had time to read yet.

Resisting Empire: Rethinking the Purpose of the Letter to "the Hebrews" by Jason A. Whitlark

A Short History of the New Testament by Halvor Moxnes evidently has a chapter considering Acts & Apocalypse from the POV of post-colonial theory.

For an argument that would probably work against your thesis (and I have NO idea how it was received by other academics), you could check out Operation Messiah: St. Paul, Roman Intelligence and the Birth of Christianity, which is written by an espionage expert who thinks that Paul was some kind of Roman spy? That thesis was so entertaining that it made me note the book but I haven't actually read it or got a feel for how BS or not it might be.

It seems with Paul in particular that there's a wide variety of opinions as to his relation to empire. I have no conclusions here, but I think your question is awesome and I hope you share if you come across something cool. :)

Kingdom of God is a bit dense, and not very enjoyable. I strongly recommend reading Tolstoy's short stories instead. They're fun, easy to read, and pack a huge radical punch.

I personally have Walk in the Light and 23 Tales but I'm sure any collection is just as good.

Edit: Also, I recommend checking out the stories by Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy. They hung out with Dorthy Day and the Catholic Workers, but emphasized their theology through telling stories. If you can't tell, I like stories :)

This is a great question, and a very relevant one as you are recognizing. The Four Views book already mentioned is probably a great place to start (I haven't read that one specifically, but other "four views" books are great for capturing the different perspectives on a particular issue).

I would also recommend "In God's Time" by Craig Hill. He does a good job of looking at many of the passages often cited by those with a fundamentalist view, and putting them in their proper context (examining genre, cultural context, language issues, etc).

http://www.amazon.com/In-Gods-Time-Bible-Future/dp/0802860907

It only covers the sayings of Jesus, but I consult The Five Gospels whenever I am puzzled by something Jesus said. It is often interesting, and sometimes helpful!

There is a woman who is both a Zen roshi AND a Catholic nun. Her book is amazing.


https://www.amazon.com/Zen-Contemplation-Christians-Elaine-MacInnes/dp/1580511333/ref=sr_1_1?crid=PATLY1RGYSQ7&keywords=elaine+macinnes&qid=1558247420&s=gateway&sprefix=elaine+macinne%2Caps%2C191&sr=8-1