On Thomas Westbrook, The Holy Koolaid: Nothing Fails Like Dealing With History When It Isn't

I am in a bit of a quandary. I do not know if Thomas Westbrook, the Holy Koolaid, is being intentionally deceitful and duplicitous in trying to dissuade the religious from faith, or genuinely just does not know how to read the Christian scriptures. He rips the Bible apart for being historically inaccurate, unscientific, inhumane, riddled with contradictions, unclear and inconsistent. "Nothing fails like Bible history," he says and strives to prove by demonstration.

I doubt the Bible was ever meant to be taken as literal history by its authors. I have to assume that this young man who has been so deeply involved in the Christian religion all his life already knows this about the Bible. But then again, maybe not. Christian education, being what it is, may have failed him - as it has so many others - to a very great extent. We do not get the truth in church, because they do not know how to read the Bible, either.

The authors of the books of the Bible were inspired to utilize many existing myths, legends, and historical events to weave together illuminable illustrations about the Power which is becoming manifest in and through this world. The Power's own manifestation is Its intention and is what It is presently doing, for which this world is the way it is.

Perhaps telling is a statement by Westbrook in one of his videos: "Unless you see the Bible as pure metaphor or allegory, you can approach the Bible...in several of the following ways." With this he sweeps away interpreting the Bible as metaphor and allegory, which is exactly what the Bible is and how it is to be interpreted, and then misleads with: "On one end of the spectrum you can take the stories as pure myth, complete and total fiction without a shred of truth in them...legend...an explanation of natural history...or appeals to the supernatural." In this verbal slight of hand is Thomas' own brand of koolaid: he sweeps away the Bible as being pure metaphor and allegory for reality, which is what it is, and offers instead other pointless alternatives which the scriptures are not. This leaves him free to attack all the fallibilities of the must-fail alternatives without ever addressing the realities and truths the metaphors and allegories illustrate. Super slick if his intention is to deceive; super sad if he really does not know that the Bible is just, ever and only, about the Power. God speaks in illustrations, and He would not have painted the picture if He did not have the subject in mind.

Let me rephrase Westbrook's argument:

"Unless you see the Bible as pure metaphor or allegory (which it is), you can approach the Bible (which is an entirely metaphorical, symbolic, and allegorical representation of the Reality)...in several of the following (pointless) ways (which are error, because the truth the Bible represents is expressed symbolically in metaphorical and allegorical illustration). On one end of the spectrum you can take the stories as pure myth - complete and total fiction without a shred of truth in them...as legend...as an explanation of natural history...or as appeals to the supernatural" (a bit paraphrased, parentheses mine).

Personally, having seen and received responsive miracles, I do not have the luxury of being an atheist, though as a tongue-speaking, God-praising Pentecostal I do appreciate that emotions and stress-induced neurochemicals can cause - and might very well have caused - all the sensational artifacts I enjoyed in my baptism in the Holy Ghost. Yet this does not cause me to doubt that baptism and observed miracles one bit. For I have not found any other cause for the miracles I have witnessed than the Power which is God. God is a power which is a person, the Divine Mind of the Ineffable Being, i.e., Its consciousness. The Power is the sole cause for EVERYTHING.

To see the truth and reality of what the Bible is about, we have to translate the proper names to what the original readers would have understood in their language. "Oh. It turns out that they are not people's proper names after all." We have to dig into the symbolism, stretch our minds and consider the illustration's message, "What does He mean by this?" For this exercise aligns us with His Manifestation, the so-called Kingdom of God. This is the essential point: of all that the Ineffable has thought as possible, Its own desired Manifestation is emerging as it diverges from it. This refined Manifestation of the Ineffable the preferred younger son.

The Bible does not give a rat's hinny about the historicity of the younger sons, save they be found in us. They all represent the emerging image of the Power from the mass of everything God has thought. Hence Abel still speaks; Shem, the youngest son of Noah, covers Japheth, expansion, the eldest; Abraham, the Merciful Father, laughs for Isaac and casts misbegotten Ishmael out. Jacob is our inner man, Esau the older, outer flesh. The younger son, spiritual Israel, is called out of Egypt, the old corrupt flesh, and the End Church out of Blind, Unhearing Israel. The New Jerusalem goes one way, Hades the other. The pattern permeates the whole of scripture (also makes me wonder if 'heaven' in Genesis 1:1 is also the younger manifestation preferred to the older 'earth'; i.e., that God created the universe to draw Himself out of it).

the Bible is all symbolic, metaphor and allegory. There is not a linear history but a process of development. God has a likeness that is becoming. "Think on these things" to go with the part of creation the Ineffable is keeping as Itself. There is a separation going on. I hope for the sake of those who would be there that there is no actual hell of torment (whether short or long). I prefer to think that the hell experienced in near death experiences is a symbolic warning to take this stuff as seriously as God does. And to criticize what is not historical and dismiss it because it is not historical is deceitful and duplicitous and, in my opinion, irresponsible, reprehensible, and (think of all naughty negatives).

Literal history, science, and behavioral instruction are secondary to the purpose of the Bible. Its main purpose is get us to see, to hear, and to believe to become quite literally part of God's Kingdom, His own Being. Do not feel bad if you have not seen the Bible in this way. I as a senior am just now getting a handle on it. But DO repent and see the Bible as a revelation of the Power we all are OF, and strive to align with the good of it.