Dear Ronnie,

The so-called “religions of the book”, Judaism, Islam and Christianity, are not the first manifestations of human religiosity, nor probably the last. Within the last few thousand years, we have records of Egyptian and then of Hindu religion. We can go back even farther, but how far is clouded in mystery. Neanderthals, whom we can date back to 145,000 BCE, evidenced practices that seem to indicate belief in an afterlife. Our extremely limited knowledge of Denisovans, the other major branch of our hominin branch, offers no basis on which to assume that they were religious. Cave paintings and burial practices from about 50,000 BCE hint that homo sapiens may have believed in a spiritual world of sorts, but, in short, prior to the religions of Egypt and the Indus Valley, we know very little about the development of belief in god. It is generally accepted that the first humans imbued their surroundings with a spirit of sorts, such that all of the world assumed a non-physical dimension. Such animism would offer a perspective that saw everything as interconnected and “alive.”

What’s the point? Quite simply, that the religions of the book are a very recent phenomenon in human history. And also that they represent a transition away from experience and toward belief in the proclamations of an external authority. The Koran, the Books of Moses, and the Bible assume divine status for many. Once that happens, the company of the faithful becomes the army of their god. This is not true of most Christians, Jews and Muslims, but it is true of a significant minority, and it is dangerous.

If we limit our discussion to the Christian church, it is important to recognize that the Bible cannot be taken literally and was never intended to be taken literally. The only literal and historical fact is that Jesus was a human being who positively impacted fellow human beings, calling them to a higher level of awareness and love, and that they, in turn, believed that Jesus was alive in their midst even after his death. Beyond that we honor the book by recognizing its mythological nature and delving into that mythology in order to appreciate the truth of what is being said.

We might suspect that primitive, animistic human beings loved one another and loved their environment, at least in part and on occasion. They encountered the Mystery of Being-Itself, whether they could identify it or not. What Jesus has done, and for those of faith, continues to do, is to lead us on this journey of ever more love and awareness, and that is an anchor that will never be cut loose.

~ Carl Krieg, Ph.D.