Interpreting Theology

Spawning from the Theology thread, how do you interpret various theology?

Note that ‘you’ as in yourself and not how it’s supposed to be interpreted.

I grew up in a religion-less family. I was never indoctrinated with any religion. At the same time however, I wasn’t instructed to be against any particular religion either. My parents basically just helped me make sense of my own understandings. Be the observer. Therefore, any understanding of any religion I’ve read or discussed doesn’t assume that the theology is right literally but rather but is viewed by me as creative concepts expressed in an embellished manner. As we all know however, you can interpret the same concept in two extremely different ways. Example: Note that I’m not even concerned with being biblically accurate.


“Jesus will come back from the dead.”

A Literal Way = A man named Jesus will physically resurrect and live again.

A Symbolic Way = The ‘message’ that Jesus preached will become a dominate way of acting/thinking once again at some point a time among most people and thus ‘he’ as in ‘his message’ will become alive again.


”You will go to hell”

A Literal Way = Assumes you as in your current way of consciousness or even your physical self will actually go to a place named hell.

A Symbolic Way = Since you’re dead, your ‘life’ so to speak, is represented - literally - as more so your legacy. Such as, “he’s with us in our hearts.” Hell is represented as something that’s really really not good, basically. If you do wrong, the only thing you will leave behind (life) will be bad (hell). Therefore ‘you’ will ‘burn’ in ‘hell.’


You can also express the same concept in two completely different ways.


I got the holy spirit!

A Literal Way = An entity has actually possessed me causing the happiness I’m feeling.

A Symbolic Way = My mind (spirit) is in an elevated state of comfort and happiness, referenced with “holy” because holy notates the mind with “extremely good.”


I have a hard time emulating how some religious people thought process works because I can never tell the difference between literal interpretation/expressions and metaphoric/symbolic ones.

For example, in the theology thread Alice told me that how you refer to god – whether it’s “he” “she” “it” or whatever is irrelevant. Which is ridiculous of course, because as someone who attempts to look at religion objectively like I do, I have no idea how your mind is conceptualizing “god.” If you say “he” you’re communicating to me that you’re conceptualizing a human-like man, physically and/or metaphysically. Not to mention that I’ve came across many people that actually do conceptualize many biblical concepts literally, such as god resembling an actual man, physically/metaphysically.

So in essence, upon interpreting theology, do you take it mostly literal or mostly symbolic? If so, what do you interpret as literal and what as symbolic? For any symbolism, do interpret it as divine or no different than messages in something like a book of proverbs. (Which do contain mature, useful points by the way.)

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Sassafrass

I just see the entire thing as an overly-obvious control device.

Same here. Though, I don't really blame the bible as much as I blame corrupt churches and ignorant people.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I mean church as in whatever church institute had power in it's time. Weren't they ones doing translating/editing?

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Minion

Impossible according to whom? I mean, why would people assume these things. Copying the Bible was something a lot of poeple were wroking on independently. If two people copy something independently and you compare their copies and they agree, chances are, it's right. It doesn't take a lot of proof to show this. We use this kind of proof to put people in jail and on death row all the time. It's called corroborative evidence.

Because if the people doing the analysis have similar mind sets, then corroborative evidence isn't very reliable. Now, if you take people across totally different cultures and extremely different ways of thinking and understanding, and they still reach the same conclusion, then you’re on to something outside of perspective and interpretation. That's how I see it.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by Minion

Nope. Since this thread is about debating, I don't think we're gonna stop doing that anytime soon. It's not like you can claim we're off topic.

Actually, the thread was suppose to be about discussing your interpretation of theological ideology because I have no idea how people are conceptualizing these things. Not that I didn't know debates were bound to happen, but whatever.

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