Broken Friendships

In the twists and turns of the journey of life, many people have been my friends along the way.  At the least, friends share common interests; they are supporters, allies, chosen family.

As far as word meanings go, a friend is a lover, literally.  The definition and word history of ‘friend’ is:

Latin: amicus (friend) and amo (I love)

Greek: philos (friend) and phileo (I love)

Old English: freond (friend) and freon (love)

The wounds from a friend then, can be harsh because you have let them into your life as a trusted one, as a ‘lover’ in that sense.  Betrayal isn’t expected.

The closer you feel to a friend, the more wrenching the sense of betrayal.

The most devastating betrayals in my life have been those by ‘christian’ friends.  These friends presented themselves as special, as family; as trustworthy, implying permanence in the relationship. The sense was that of a special, deeper, more real relationship, fully worthy of trust, one in which betrayal was not even considered.

Why then, did these ‘christian’ friends reject the relationship?  Cool the communication?  Break the bond?

None of them has ever said why, though I’ve asked.  Response has been vague, noncommittal, unexplained. 

Which makes it even harder.

So here’s my attempt at answering my own question:

You are fearful that my own search for truth might expose the deception you live in.  It’s a wonderful deception that gives you comfort and hope, but it’s not explainable because it’s not real.  You’re fearful that my questioning might somehow infect your own belief with doubt.  Your beliefs aren’t based in evidence but in wish and hope and what someone wrote in letters long, long ago.  

Maybe you try to convince me of your sense of danger in or discomfort with my questioning, but you can’t communicate.  It seems like we’re speaking two different languages.  So without words to explain your fear, words that are yours and not simply parroted from ‘holy writings’, words that can be understood as simple, logical, factual, you simply turn away and turn off.  

Why are christians so afraid of what’s real?  Why do they need to hide behind belief?

The definition of belief is ‘an acceptance that something exists or is true, especially one without proof’.  Especially without proof.  Something that has evidence for it doesn’t require belief. If you live your life on evidence, that’s quite different from living your life on ‘belief’. There’s a sense of grounding, of connectedness, of reality in evidence that is missing in belief.

To live on evidence is hard.  It’s gritty, it’s messy, and it’s often painful.  It’s no accident that many people in the world hold to one belief system or another. Real life is pretty raw.

Christians in particular seem to travel through life guarding their hope of belief for another life to come, one in which they will be surrounded by people who think as they do, one in which all their ‘enemies’ will have been destroyed, one in which all their dreams will come true.  That’s a big hope to defend.  What happens if they lose it, if their mindset changes to one that’s no longer satisfied with belief, but seeks truth? It’s a big fall from such a place. 

I don’t blame my beloved friends for protecting themselves, for holding onto their dream.  I just wish they didn’t have to hurt me so much while doing it.

Truth, Reason, Doubt and Faith - Part 3 of 3

Belief: if I accept and hold to a religious mindset, then after death I’ll be rewarded with heaven.  If I reject this mindset, I’ll be punished forever in hell.                                                 

Truth: this life is truth.  The opportunity to do what either benefits or harms creation and humanity is truth. The opportunity to live in gratitude for what has been received is truth.  Once someone dies, that person no longer remains a member of humanity, and isn’t seen again, that too is truth.  Life therefore, is incredibly precious; it’s an opportunity without equal.  Life is precious for everyone, not just a select few. 

We don’t know how we got here…we don’t know what happens after we die.  This too is truth.  It’s a really big truth, and somewhat uncomfortable not to know.  If I surround myself with more comforting ‘beliefs’ that insulate me from others, from the state of the world, and from making a real difference here and now, then I have walled myself into that prison or fortress.

If I face my fear, acknowledge that I don’t know how I got here, nor where I go after, and then get about the business of paying attention to what I have to work with, and applying reason, compassion, logic, and love to whatever situation I find myself in…wouldn’t I be doing something positive and wouldn’t that be a grateful response to the opportunity of life that I’ve received?

Nobody within humanity has ever claimed to have created the world and itself.  There is, at least to date, more evidence that something outside of this creation put everything together, than there is for some sort of cosmic accident being the origin of what we see all around us.  Therefore there is at least the appearance of some concrete evidence for a Creator, even if some of that evidence is the lack of anything against it. 

We have the evidence of creation itself as testimony to the character of a Creator.  We see that creation is provided for; we see an interconnectedness, and interdependency between remarkably different creatures.  We see that mankind is somehow different.  Creation doesn’t need mankind; it can manage on its own.  Mankind is unique, with tremendous capacity to cultivate great good or to inflict great evil.  What is mankind's purpose?

To paraphrase Ecclesiastes 12:13...perhaps the whole point of life is this:  be grateful for being here, with honour and thankfulness, and employing reason and thoughtfulness, both enjoy and care for what you have been entrusted with, leave it as you found it, ready for the next person to enjoy, for this is the whole duty of man.

Truth, Reason, Doubt and Faith - Part 2 of 3

Belief is opposed to truth.  To ‘believe in’ something means to have faith that something is so when there’s no factual evidence for it.  Put another way, if there’s evidence of something, if it’s true and verifiable, there’s no need to ‘believe’. 

To hold to ‘belief’ when it separates you from others, when it sets you apart in your mind as special or different, effectively walls you off in a prison of your own thoughts. A prison or a fortress, but a separator nonetheless.

This prison’s keeper is fear and ignorance.  It traps and holds some otherwise very intelligent people.  It causes endless divisions and quarrels.  It sets some apart in their thinking that they’re better than others; not because of anything they’ve actually contributed to the world, but because of what they believe in their own minds. 

For example:  a person believes fervently that they are saved from eternal destruction because they ‘believe in’ God/Jesus/Allah.  Because of this belief, they hold they will go to heaven but everyone who doesn’t believe as they do will go to hell.  They believe there’s nothing they can do to earn heaven, it’s a ‘free gift’, but they do have to believe and not doubt.  It doesn’t seem to register that acceptance of this ‘gift’ constitutes an action; that one has indeed ‘earned’ it because of a specific action taken.  Most maintain that it’s ‘God’s grace’ (and their action of acceptance) that sets them apart and destines them to ‘eternal life’ in ‘heaven’, that those who’ve ‘rejected God’s grace’ and not ‘believed’ are destined for ‘eternal torment in hell’. 

This is somewhat simplified, of course.  Many believers hold that your actions in life matter, though there’s great leeway in exactly how much they matter.  Some hold that you must faithfully observe various rituals through life, others that you must do ‘good works’ though what those are is usually open to interpretation; others insist you must submit to authourity (usually theirs) and not question or rebel but patiently accept in faith. 

The grand motivator for this belief and its lifestyle is the ultimate goal of heaven, or the punishment of hell.  Now there is NO proof of either heaven or hell of course. If there was, there wouldn’t need to be ‘belief’ because there would be proof.  See how belief is opposed to truth?  Hold tight to your belief; if you can do so all the way to death, then the prize is yours!  If this sounds silly, it is.  It’s ludicrous. It’s a deception, but a powerful one.  

Belief is a dead end unless it motivates one to act in ways that don’t destroy or harm, but instead build up, cultivate and encourage.  To leave the world as you found it is a high calling indeed.  It’s quite debatable whether you need belief to do this, its possible it may hinder more than help.

Truth, Reason, Doubt and Faith - Part 1 of 3

Most people think of religious faith in positive terms, such as:

trust in God and in his actions and promises.

This sounds good, but it’s kind of a dead end.  What remains in the mind only has no real benefit to anyone.

If trust in God is further defined as something that motivates loving, caring behaviour in the truster, that’s good, right?  If trust had a clear purpose or direction, it could be good.

The word ‘faith’ actually means:

any set of firmly held principles or beliefs; a system of religious belief  

strong or unshakeable belief in something especially without proof or evidence

conviction of the truth of certain doctrines of religion, especially when this is not based on reason.

Note that none of these definitions have anything to do with actions.  They describe a mindset only.  And it’s a mindset that's quite deliberately opposed to reason and grounded in nothing! 

I’ve had much discussion with people very firmly grounded in their faith. Often, they’re quite deliberately opposed to reason, they see it as a ‘destroyer of faith’.  They will, in what they consider a strong act of faith, actually shut out reason!  If faith is opposed to reason and not based on evidence, what are they really grounded in? 

They’re grounded in their own mindset.  They’re grounded in a system which is opposed to truth!  Yes, they are!

This is the definition of truth:

the actual state of a matter, actual existence, the state or character of being true

conformity with fact or reality, precision, exactness; an obvious fact

verified or indisputable fact; the quality of being true, genuine, actual, or factual

Religious belief that’s opposed to reason is opposed to truth.  Period.  It’s a prison of one’s own making.

Dark Night of the Soul

Lately I’ve been hearing of struggles people have been having with their faith, many of them refer to the experience as a ‘dark night of the soul’.  Mostly the opinion is that this is a negative thing to be feared, though some who’ve come through it claim it’s strengthened their faith. 

So what is faith?  It’s defined in general as ‘complete trust or confidence in someone or something’ and more specifically as ‘strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof’.  I think the second half of the definition is more applicable to the most common understanding of the word.

Interesting choice of words…’based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof’.  The definition of apprehension is not a positive one: anxiety or fear that something bad or unpleasant will happen.  The definition says that it’s this apprehension, this fear of something bad happening, that’s the foundation of one’s belief…rather than proof or reason being the foundation.

This is wrong.  Just plain wrong.  We are reasoning, thinking beings, each of us capable of leadership and co-operation for common good. And for cultivating and drawing out great things from creation, ourselves and each other.  Yet on the whole, we don’t use our individual and community reasoning capacity to test and evaluate and choose the best way, with both short and long term vision in mind.   

We separate, divide, bicker, follow, ignore…and fear.  Instead of facing our fear, both individually and together in community, we retreat into ‘faith’, holding it up like a shield against reason.  Yet in doing so, we remain in a prison of our own making.  A prison of apprehension. 

Of course, we are reasoning beings, and every so often the need to reason things out becomes a driving force within us.  And we look at our faith with open eyes.  It’s at that time that we face a crossroads within ourselves.

For most, they struggle through this dark time of doubt, and reaffirm their ‘faith’ even more strongly.  But for some…there’s light on the other side.  It’s hard to lay down the shield of this kind of faith, and instead pick up the two edged sword of reason and trust.  It involves looking honestly and without motive at what truth really is.  And isn’t.

If you’re facing such a dark night, or want to be prepared for one…start by looking around you in creation.  The evidence of the Creator’s character is there.  Stop just taking people’s word for things, do your own honest investigating.  Examine yourself for motives…especially hidden ones.  When you hear something, or read something about the Creator…examine and test it against what is already evidenced in creation.  Hold your beliefs loosely…truth doesn’t need you to hold on to it or defend it.  It’s outside of you.  Your beliefs, on the other hand, are a human invention that can be damaged or lost.  Or given up for something better.

Two goats...

You’ve got a goat inside. It has two sides. On the one hand, you can’t live without it, and it’s not at all bad. Maybe it’s like one of those nice goats that provides milk, wool and playfulness. On the other hand, it can get into some awful habits that can prove pretty embarrassing in your relationship with others. Even more embarrassing when it comes to your Creator.

So, you need to split that goat into two goats. And then send one of them away.
There’s a caveat here, something you really have to know: You can’t send a goat away unless you first take ownership of it. You gotta know, “This is my goat. It’s part of me. What it did, I did. I take full responsibility.”

Once you’ve done that, you can wave goodbye, close the door, and never let it back in again. Then get to work on raising up the other goat into a truly divine offering.

That sounds pretty simple, but I have to bring it up because most people seem to find it real hard. We tend to think the scapegoat is our mother, father, fourth-grade school teacher, wife, husband, job, employer, rush-hour traffic, pharmaceuticals, condition, or some crazy rabbi who gives nutty advice.

You can’t send the goat away as long as you deny that it’s your goat.

(Slightly edited article originally on www.chabad.org, written by Tzvi Freeman)

Drive Out: Part 3

What follows is a standard definition of 'genocide': The term 'drive out' as used in the Hebrew Scripture (though not necessarily as translated) absolutely does not mean genocide.

The crime of genocide is defined in international law in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. 

"Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: 

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

The Genocide Convention was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 9 December 1948. The Convention entered into force on 12 January 1951. More than 130 nations have ratified the Genocide Convention and over 70 nations have made provisions for the punishment of genocide in domestic criminal law. The text of Article II of the Genocide Convention was included as a crime in Article 6 of the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Drive Out: Part 2

In the verses of Part One, ‘drive out’ absolutely does not mean to kill.  What is very evident is the possession by the ‘driver’ of an authourity that will accomplish the ‘driving out’.  There is NO hint of bloodshed, and the identical word is used in the following verses. Keep this in mind.                                                                                           

I will send hornets ahead of you so that they will drive out (expatriate, expel, drive out from a possession) the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites before you. Exodus 23:28

In any event, it is not the Israelites who will do the driving out; it is the ‘hornets’ who will accomplish this. This is confirmed after the fact:

Then I (God) sent the hornet before you and it (the ‘hornet’) drove out the two kings of the Amorites from before you, not by your sword or your bow. Joshua 24:12

Moreover, the LORD your God will send the hornet against them, until those who are left and hide themselves from you and perish. Deuteronomy 7:20

This verse is not usually rendered as a faithful translation of the Hebrew, which more literally says ‘God will send the ‘stinger’ against them (notice it is God doing this, not the Israelites), you will not see any who remain because they will all wander away (be like Cain in Genesis 4:14).

Drive Out : Part 1

This phrase appears often in the Hebrew Scriptures.


Garash Strong’s Concordance #H1644: to thrust out, cast away, expel, to drive out from a possession, to expatriate or divorce, dislodge

So He drove out (expel, drive out from a possession) the man…Gen 3:24

Behold, You have driven (expel, drive out from a possession) me this day from the face of the earth; and from Your face I will be hidden. I will be a homeless wanderer on the earth… Genesis 4:14

Notice it doesn’t mean Cain will be killed.

So she said to Abraham, “Banish (drive out, divorce, expel) that slave woman and her son, for the son of that slave woman will not be an heir along with my son Isaac!” Gen 21:10

Then the LORD said to Moses, “Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh; for under compulsion he will let them go, and under compulsion he will drive them out (expel, thrust out) of his land.” Exodus 6:1 
  
Not so! Go now, the men among you, and serve the LORD, for that is what you desire.” So they were driven out (thrust out, expelled) from Pharaoh’s presence. Exodus 10:11  

They baked the dough which they had brought out of Egypt into cakes of unleavened bread. For it had not become  leavened, since they were driven out (expel, drive out from a possession,expatriate) of Egypt and could not delay, nor had they prepared any provisions for themselves. Exodus 12:39

Again, none of these people were killed. Was it possible that they might have died or have an increased risk of death because they were driven out?  Certainly.  We read in Genesis 4:14 that Cain feared someone might kill him because he was a homeless wanderer; and in Genesis 21, Hagar and Ishmael appear to be near death because of their banishment.  In both these cases it’s important to note that they were not in a group, they were alone, and it’s their ‘aloneness’ that’s a factor in the increased risk. 

You Shall Surely Die...Part 3 of 3

‘You shall surely die’ isn’t defined by the text as the breath leaving the body.  Instead, the text defines this phrase as a form of exile from nearness to the el (God...mighty one), from being in a state of affinity with the el.  This is another place where bias clouds what is actually written, most people think that ‘you shall surely die’ means the breath leaves your body. Or worse, is forcibly taken from your body by one more righteous than you!  This is the basis for many ‘holy wars’.


This bias, this misunderstanding of how this phrase is defined by the text, also extends to how most people interpret how Israel was to punish its members who defiantly rejected the boundaries … according to the definition God gave at the beginning, it meant they were to be driven away like Cain was driven away, it didn't mean they were to be executed.   As well, the Canaanites were to be driven off the land, not executed.  Exodus 23:28-31; 33:2; 34:11; Numbers 32:21; 33:52, 55; Deuteronomy 11:23; Joshua 3:10; 13:6 … and more all say this.  Stop right here and look it up!

God punished Cain for his murder of Abel with this kind of 'death'.  To Cain, this was a punishment almost too hard to bear.  The teaching is: if you observe the boundaries, you remain within the community influenced by ‘el’, the one who purposed it.  If you reject the boundaries, you are rejected by the life-enhancing community, you are exiled, consigned to wander.

Reading through the history of Israel as recorded in the Prophets…it seems that the purpose of this exile wasn’t a final cutting off (death as we usually understand it), but instead an opportunity to repent and be restored.

It’s interesting that Israel rarely did this.  Adam and Eve are never recorded as being repentant, and neither is Cain, though he certainly does seem upset by the punishment. 

Doesn’t it fit within the context that the purpose of exile (the punishment of ‘death’) is to restrict rebellion from contaminating the community, as well as to provide opportunity for the exiled one to repent and be restored?

And when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the LORD your God has driven you, and return to the LORD your God, you and your children, and obey his voice in all that I command you today, with all your heart and with all your soul, then the LORD your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you, and he will gather you again from all the peoples where the LORD your God has scattered (exiled) you. Deuteronomy 30:1-3

What Does the Bible Teach? Part 2 of 3

The short answer is: a lot!  It's not too complicated or difficult to understand ... really!

It’s important to let the words of the Bible speak for themselves; to read and study it outside of a dogmatic (meaning holding certain principles as incontrovertibly true) perspective, otherwise you may be adding bias.   Christianity has certain foundational beliefs that influence how a christian perceives what s/he reads, even what s/he considers ‘the Bible’.  Judaism does too.  Even humanism and atheism can be dogmatic, as they also include a bias. 

It’s really hard to read without a bias!  It’s pretty much human nature to want to believe we have things quite figured out, and so we tend to read looking more for confirmation for our own beliefs, than reading to discover.

Here are some things I’ve discovered in my own study, that I didn’t know before:

Genesis 1 doesn’t actually say that God created the world out of nothing.  It uses language to say he ‘formed and filled’ a shapeless mass.  It neither says God made the original mass … nor does it say he doesn’t.  Its focus is instead that God’s word (think ‘law’) caused actions, which made something formerly without use or purpose … useful and purposeful.  It can be seen as a teaching that this is what mankind (who carries the ‘image’ of God) is also to do … to act according to God’s word, to ‘cultivate’ what was received, to keep and maintain it, to bring out its purpose.

These first few chapters of Genesis also teach that God gives freedom (you may eat of any tree in the garden…this included the ‘tree of life) yet within boundaries (but not of the tree that is in the middle of the garden).  This wasn’t a hard thing to do.  It didn’t require ‘faith’ or ‘belief’ it required trust that God meant what he said, the kind of trust that would result in an action of voluntarily remaining within the boundary.  The ‘six days work, seventh day rest’ is also a boundary, this one on time and authourity.

It’s not hard to understand, in looking around us at creation, that we didn’t make it; that instead we received it.  It came from outside us.  In reading through history, there are no claims that mankind or any other creature created itself or anything else.  Neither historical or current evidence offers anything  different.

The idea that creation ‘evolved’ through a process requires too much blind faith, faith that isn’t supported by evidence.  If someone leaves a mess in a room, even many years later, it’s still a mess in a room.  What is in the room is more likely to have ‘devolved’ into more basic components than ‘evolved’ into something greater.  It requires even blinder faith to believe that somehow a process of ‘evolution’ also just happened to end up with a creation that works together so marvelously. And not only works together, but acts according to some sort of pattern, some sort of predetermined order.  There is significant and logical evidence for a Creator.

So what’s written in these first few chapters of Genesis as a ‘given’ makes logical sense.  A power (an ‘el’ in Hebrew, a mighty one) formed and filled and ordered things to run the way they do, according to a planned purpose. To me, this makes the most sense, that this writing is referring to that mighty power outside ‘us’, outside even the universe (as even the universe is subject to it).  One way to understand these chapters is to see the point primarily as being to introduce the order of creation, the purpose within which things are intended to be managed.

Mankind is intended to be the ruler of creation, as the ‘el’ is the ruler of mankind.  If the purpose of the el is to produce, to cultivate and to enhance, to manage benevolently, then this should be the purpose of mankind.

But there is a choice given to humanity, that isn’t given to any of the other creatures.  This choice is to willingly submit to this order … or not to.  Consequences are given for both actions.  ‘You shall surely die’ if you turn away.  And instead of trusting the el, humanity trusted in the interpretation of a created being.  And they ‘died’.  More on that in the next post…

Who Wrote the Bible? Part 1 of 3

God did not write either the Hebrew or the Christian Bible!

People did.  Moses is said to have written the Torah, and prophets, teachers and historians wrote most of the rest.  Interestingly, no claim is ever made that Jesus wrote anything (except on sand…John 8:6). 

It is recorded in the letter of 2 Peter (though the verses where this phrase is included are difficult to translate) that ‘holy men of old’ were ‘carried along by the Holy Spirit (of God)’, but its not said even here that God gave the words to write.  Instead, it’s claimed that the prophets were ‘moved’ or ‘carried’ (Greek phero G5342) by the spirit of God, to ‘use words to describe their thoughts’ (Greek laleo G2980). 

Did God write any of it?  Well, it says this in Exodus 31:18:

He (God) gave Moses two tablets of testimony when he had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, tablets of stone written by the finger of God.

This appears to be a strong expression claiming that the Law came directly from God.  This is further reinforced by Exodus 24:12, 32:16 and Deuteronomy 4:13 and 5:22:

The LORD said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain and wait there, that I may give you the tablets of stone, with the law and the commandment, which I have written for their instruction.”

The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets.

And he (God) declared to you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, that is, the Ten Commandments, and he wrote them on two tablets of stone.

(Note that the covenant is the ‘ten words’ or commandments…this is what was written on the tablets)

These words the LORD spoke to all your assembly at the mountain out of the midst of the fire, the cloud, and the thick darkness, with a loud voice; and he added no more. And he wrote them on two tablets of stone and gave them to me.

Did you notice the phrase 'and he added no more'?  That's often somehow overlooked...

These are the only claims to God writing anything, and they all refer to what people today call the ‘ten commandments’, though in Hebrew it is the ten dabar, meaning ‘words’ or ‘utterances’ (a commandment is a different word - mitsvah)

So if God didn’t write the Bible, where did it come from?  Who put it together?  The simple answer is people wrote down teachings, interpretations, history, warnings, accounts…far more than just what is included in ‘the Bible’. 

According to Moses, God gave him legal rulings on these ten utterances (ten commandments) that is, the ways to apply God’s Law to situations that would come up.  Much of what Moses is said to have written includes such rulings; rulings on what constituted idolatry, adultery, murder, lying etc. 

Over time, whatever Moses originally wrote has been lost.  We have copies of copies…and these don’t exactly match other copies of copies (though they are remarkably close).  And of course, the originals weren’t written in English, they’ve been translated, so we are even further away from the ‘original’ words and their meanings. 

(It’s not hopeless though!  God’s teachings can be quite clearly understood from reading the ‘whole thing’, from the beginning.  More on that in the next blog entry…)

The Torah was ‘canonized’ (officially declared Scripture, or ‘holy writing’) about 500 BC, the writings of the Prophets were canonized about 350 BC and the ‘Writings’ (including Psalms, Proverbs) not fully till about 100 AD.  The Christian ‘New Testament’ was canonized about 350 AD, and eventually added to a modified Hebrew Bible (some books were removed). 

So read whatever you call your Bible, cover to cover, its good reading and great teaching.  But be careful not to ascribe qualities to it that it doesn’t even claim for itself

Psalm 23 - verse 5

You prepare a table before me, in the presence of my enemies...

After carefully examining this segment, I was so overwhelmed by the 'word picture' it formed, that its taken weeks of patiently mulling it over in an effort to phrase it in English.  And I still can't really do it. 

There are several remarkable words used here, and they both play off of each other and work together.  The whole verse is clumsily translated, and the reason might be because its difficult to communicate.

The words are 'arak' (translated 'prepare'), 'shulchan (translated 'table'), 'neged' (translated 'in the presence of'), and 'tsarar' (translated 'enemies'),

Arak: lay out a case, set out arguments, prepare for battle, draw up battle lines, furnish, equip

Shulchan: to spread out, its translated as 'table' by implication, because that is a place that something is 'spread out' on, but the meaning of the word is 'spread out'.  In combination with 'arak' it is saying that the 'case' is laid out or set out as if on a table, its visible, ordered, arranged.  The root of this word is 'shalach' which means 'sent out'...and that's translated as messenger or angel (a sent out one).  The root to keep in mind is 'spreading out', and spreading out with a sense of purpose

Neged: right in front of, consipicuous, to make known

Tsarar: bound, in distress, cramped, shut up, pressed hard upon

You see the word play between God's action, which is to spread out, to make known, to equip?  And David's cramped state of being pressed hard upon?  

Remember the traditional setting for this Psalm?  It's said to be written about David's being in the cave when Saul comes in.  David was shut up, bound up in a sense, hunted by Saul, quite possibly oppressed or at least assaulted by fears and doubts, and definitely being pushed by the 'advice' of his men...insisting that this was a chance provided by God to dispose of his enemy Saul, and take the crown of Israel for himself.

Now what's the next part of the verse?

YOU anoint my head with oil...

Not David's men, not Israel, not David himself...but GOD anoints David to rule.  God sets out His case, is true to His word, spreads out what is needed.  David can't do this.  He is bound, cramped, pressed hard upon.  

In a sense he's pressed hard by the temptation to take for himself, isn't he?  Yet he is reassured by the rod and staff of God's will and way, he is comforted that though things look entirely different from his (cramped) perspective...God sees everything laid out in its proper order.  And GOD anoints David in His time.

My cup overflows...

I am satisfied, content, as if saturated, I am in a place of abundance, a full, rich, wide open space!

Warning: think before believing!

The church teaches:

• the only way to be saved is through Jesus

• Jesus is God (most commonly taught as part of a trinity of one god yet three separate people, not three separate parts; if that seems illogical or confusing, its because it’s a mystery)

• if you’re not saved by believing in Jesus then you’re going to hell

• hell is where Satan and demons are, some believe it is their dominion under their rulership

• Satan is a being that is lord over demons, who are in opposition to God over the eternal souls of humankind

• some believe that Satan has been given rulership over creation

• hell is a place of constant torment (either in and of itself or because the demons torment residents)

• Satan and God are in a battle (though God has won outside of time, the effects are being felt within time) 

• one day Jesus (that part/person of God) will return to put everything right through a battle with Satan

• the purpose of being saved is to gain eternal life and to go to heaven instead of hell, which is where humankind is going if they’re not saved from it

The Bible on the other hand, doesn’t teach any of this!  Yes, you can find some verses that seem to be referring to it, though not if they’re read without bias and/or in context and/or by examining the words and their use in the original language. 

The Torah contains the instructions of God as close as they come.  He is said to have written His ‘ten words’ with His own ‘finger’, and the rulings on those words were given to and recorded by Moses.  The prophets consistently uphold this Torah and warn of punishment for turning away from it and blessing for observing it.

The Torah contains NO teaching on:

• Jesus (at least as taught by the church)
• heaven
• hell
• Satan (as a specific named being)
• demons
• future eternal life (the way its taught by the church)

There are some verses that seem to be referring to some of these words, which can be understood when read in context, without bias and/or by examining the use of key words throughout the text. 

 

The Prophets also don’t contain teaching on any of these things.

There are a few places where it may be seen that the ‘New Testament’ may teach about these things, but again, they are understood when read without bias, in context and sometimes by referring to the original meanings of key words.  The book of John contains most if not all the references used to support divinity of Jesus.   Yet this book isn't written in a literal, factual style like the others, which means it shouldn't be understood that way either.

If God, who teaches us with compassion and mercy, wanting us to know all the things He considers important, and not desiring any to perish, didn’t teach these things; and if the rest of the christian bible doesn’t really contain teaching on these (not references, but teaching) then where did these ideas come from and how did they get so firmly entrenched in modern day religious doctrine among christians?

That’s a good question.  A better one is why would you base your entire faith on things that aren’t taught by God?