Fresh Perspectives

Fresh Perspectives

For far too long, I have been bombarded with countless re-tellings of the Holy Bible as literal fact, and it is because of these unilateral explanations that I could never feel whole within any denomination of any church despite being raised to believe in Christian ideals. Throughout most of my lifetime, I have simply lived without any real faith or belief in a deity, preferring to live a rather agnostic existence. However, my faith in God and the Bible was renewed after I experienced a life-altering miracle in the year 2006. Through prayers, deep introspection, pure love and hope, my words helped to comfort and save the life of a fellow human being who was attempting to throw away God's greatest gift. Ever since that moment, I have felt a spiritual rebirth and have slowly explored different aspects of the Bible from new and fresh perspectives.

I believe that perspectives are like camera angles in a film or television series; they exist to add greater dimension, clarity, and understanding of what is occurring on-screen without destroying the intentions of the actors and directors. I believe that the Holy Bible was meant not as a literal account of life and history, but more or less as a metaphorical guide for explaining ideals that cannot be touched, tasted, smelled, or heard. With that in mind, I introspected upon the contents of such sections of, for example, the New Testament that discussed Jesus' miracles in Judea.
In one such example, it is stated that Jesus could perform the miracle of transforming water into wine. After recently hearing an almost violent argument between an Evangelical Christian and a non-Christian regarding this act, I reached down deep inside my soul and brought forth the fruits of my life lessons and experiences to help alleviate this situation and possibly gain better insight as well.

Calmly implying that I wished to state something, both individuals turned to me to hear whether or not I would support one side of the argument or the other; instead, I chose a different path. I stated something to the effect that I believed the act of turning water into wine did not literally occur, but more or less, a metaphorical account did. The water, to me, represented bad or unpleasant situations, while the wine represented good or positive situations. To that end, the act of converting water into wine could be symbolized as Jesus taking the bad aspects of life and turning them into positive ones. My intentions were not to sound like a heretic, but simply to acknowledge that there are always different ways to interpret situations and not necessarily be "wrong." Both men stopped shouting for a second, and the Evangelical Christian turned towards me and said that this was a fascinating way to look at such an age old tale.

As the days went by, the three of us met up again, and once more, an academic argument broke out about the nature of the Bible. Taking in both side's points, I sat quietly until something new proverbially switched on within my head. After waiting several minutes for both men to cool down, I said that I had a sort of revelation regarding another miracle of Jesus'. I explained that the miracle of "walking on water" is like the opening battle of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring when the Dark Lord Sauron threatened to engulf all of Middle Earth. Furthermore, when all hope seemed lost, and all of the soldiers before him either gave up, died, or fled, one man stood his ground to fight a seemingly lost cause; that man was Isildor, the man who vanquished the Dark Lord of Mordor. Pausing to let this pop cultural reference sink in, I explained that when all others were afraid of the seemingly invincible, all-powerful Dark Lord, they fell, and in the case of walking on water, they fell through the waves. However, Isildor, and in the aforementioned example, Jesus, did not fall through the waves due to faith, will power, and believing in his goals. Both men just looked at me as if I had said something in an alien tongue before pausing to reflect on what I had said; the non-Christian turned to me and said that was one of the most interesting interpretations he'd ever heard, and with or without the Lord of the Rings analogy, it makes sense.

My goal is not to corrupt the youth of the world with off-base or seemingly outlandish non-Biblical tales. In reality, my goal is to analyze passages of the Holy Bible through seemingly new eyes and slowly understand the subtleties of life. I am not condoning the behaviors of the heretic, but I am promoting the ability to creatively look at things such as the Bible and walk away feeling spiritually whole and mentally whole as well.