That's so true. The longevity of Christianity is largely due to the fact that a large majority of it's adherents haven't actually read their holy book. Once one does, the first thing that hits you is the clumsy language resulting from layers of translations that allows a variety of interpretations. Then there are the contradictions, omissions, cultural bias, ancient politics, and bat-shit crazy.

"In the beginning" it was easy to control the narrative - Almost nobody could read besides the priests. They could read whatever passages suited the needs of the Church and/or the State. Even after literacy became prevalent, Christians have avoided reading their heavily edited and redacted ancient texts because it's so haard.

You'd think that they might want to read the book that they claim is the word of almighty Gawd and the ground on which they stand. But lazy Christians everywhere are happy to let their priests and pastors spoon feed them biblical passages according to either their politics or their sloth.

I could have written the same thing. Totally agree.

The "pastor filter" is all people had in the pre-literate, pre-printing press era anyway. I always get a laugh out of inerrantists and Bibliolaters who exult about how lucky we are to have the written word, when no one but the elites actually ever had it for most of human history. And even now that you can buy a copy for two bucks plus tax, it's still no help because the interpretation of it is so subjective. There is no universal hermeneutic, and all Holy Books are basically rough templates on which the clergy of each era projects its needs for hegemony and control of the sheeple.

If you read the Bible from cover to cover you would have not understood it. Did you use a concordance in conjunction, a Hebrew and Greek interlinear texts and commentaries from the early church fathers.

If no, then you missed many aspects of the bible which are essential to understand not only Christianity but the the environment and culture which gave birth to it.

The best of lies are sprinkled with a smidgen of truth.. I’ve listened to many religion pushers plant a rear foot on some truth ..while asserting a lie with their leading leg…

My attempts to read a bible (too many ‘versions’ to give credence to any one) found such convoluted statements as could be either interpreted or twisted into about anything a preacher desired.

A daughter of mine once complained as a child of a game kids played where they could ‘make up super powers.’ “When they can make up anything, there are no limits or rules,” she said.. That’s the way religious writings and their preachers/ interpreters strike me - there are no limits ~

I couldn't read that crap myself. I only read true crime.

It is true with Islam and Christianity that the believers rarely read their religious books.

This is a core reason that the book religions do not work. There is no god that is capable of relating their thoughts through a religious book. That is why there are so many sects of book religions. Every sect thinks it is the "only true way" which makes it obvious that said god does not care how thingsmare interpruted or they simply do not exist and the books are written by men.

If there was a god a book religion would be among the worst ways to communicate with us due to intreptation. As what we get is the opinion of the church member, of the preachers opinion, of the authors opinion, of Jesus's opinion, of Gods opinion. That is too many opinions when the first link in the chain could have gotten it wrong. It is a good indication that said god does not exist or care at all. Either way, god has no bearing on reality.

It's how they control us