Throughout the history of the Christian Church, its members have argued with one another and with the world about a number of issues. I think that some of these arguments are very important. Pursued with civility and respect for one another they need to be lifted up again and again.
For instance, a classic Protestant argument has been between Calvinists and Arminians. The former says that you can do nothing about your eternal salvation because that has been predetermined by God. The latter vigorously assert that your actions can save you. People on each side of this dispute can, and should, learn a great deal from one another.
Other arguments often strike me as unhelpful. A classic one has been where Christians affirm that the Bible is the Word of God and as such should be regarded as the one source of all truth including questions of history and science. Other persons see the Bible simply as religious literature which contains Christian mythology. To me, this is an argument that simply goes in circles without getting us very far. I find it helpful to focus on the Bible as a book of faith which is best read as a collection of stories that function as parables: stories that teach us lessons about God, us, and our relationship with God. It is not a science textbook, nor is it simply a history book.
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Looking at Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29-37) will help make my point. Jesus tells a simple story about a traveler on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho who was attacked by thieves who robbed him, beat him and left him by the side of the road. Three persons come to him, but only one helps him, a Samaritan. The truths of this story do not depend on whether it actually happened. Jesus is not teaching a history lesson. It is intended to teach us truths about life. Jesus had been asked, “Who is my neighbor?” after he told people to love their neighbor. Jesus’ story tells the questioner that he has asked the wrong question. The real question is whether I am a good neighbor. Jesus then complicates that question by saying that the one good neighbor was a Samaritan. His listeners thought that Samaritans were terrible people. So Jesus is nudging his listeners to rethink their prejudices.
Interestingly Bible scholars over the centuries introduced a very different understanding of this story. They read it as an allegory in which the victim was each of us, and the Good Samaritan was Jesus who comes to rescue us, to bind up our wounds and to give us life. Clearly, that was not the intention of Jesus when he told the story. But I see it as the fruit of reading the Bible as a book of faith: when we read it as a book of faith, it has many lessons to teach us including ones that go beyond a literal reading of the text. Reading the Bible needs to be an act of faith in which we invite God to speak to us about the lessons we need to learn.
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From a tour of the holy city of Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque to pilgrimages to the Western Wall and Kaaba at Mecca, worshippers and visitors around the world are able to join virtual reality spiritual trips to some of Earth's most sacred sites. Religious VR explorations are among the many evolving spaces in the immersive virtual world known as the metaverse. "We believe that virtual reality is the new Internet, the new way for people not to watch things passively on the screen, but to actually teleport themselves and can go and travel and explore," said Nimrod Shanit, producer and director of The Holy City virtual reality experience. In 2015 Shanit began constructing The Holy City, an immersive virtual reality experience that allows people to visit Jerusalem's holiest sites. Through the metaverse virtual pilgrims can now follow Orthodox clerics as they emerge from the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in the Holy Fire ceremony, they can tuck a prayer note into a crack of the Western Wall, or follow the steps of thousands of worshippers during Ramadan at the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Similarly in 2015, Ehab Fares, chief executive of the digital agency BSocial, began creating a virtual experience that would allow VR visitors to pilgrimage to and explore some of Islam's most sacred sites including Mecca. He called it Experience Makkah. The latest version can be explored through Google Cardboard, a low-cost cardboard attachment that turns smartphones into virtual reality viewers.
Bill Imes
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