What is Living by the Logos?

Disclaimer: Living by the Logos is not affiliated with any religion, faith, denomination, or ministry. It is a personal, informative blog dedicated to understanding the Hebrew and Greek Testaments as a literary source and not for the purpose of promoting any particular set of beliefs.

Thank you for visiting Living by the Logos! Living by the Logos is a personal, informative blog devoted to understanding the Bible in its original context. We live in a world where the Bible is controlled by capitalistic Christianity. What do I mean by this? The church is a business. What was founded as a revolution has become a way for sinister people to capitalize on the vulnerability and convictions of its congregants.

The contemporary church controls our beliefs regarding the Bible. This is truly a terrifying thought. We are told that God has selected specific people to interpret the Bible for us; that we do not have the power or right to interpret the Bible on our own. And we are caught in a world of control. We are trapped in a world of suffering. The suffering of this world is only intensified by the fabrications the church has created surrounding the Bible.

Some time ago, the philosopher David Hume brought the problem of evil to the public eye. The problem of evil is a philosophical concept often used to reject the notion of an all-loving, omnipotent God. Although Living by the Logos deals heavily with such philosophical conceptions, the goal is not to disprove the existence of God. The goal is to show how religion has increased suffering in our world and what we can do about it.

Within the problem of evil, we find the problem of suffering. The problem of suffering is the real heart of this blog. It grapples with the most important question posed by Scriptures: if God is all-loving and all-powerful, then why does his creation suffer? Better yet, why is it that this world contains such extreme levels of pain and chaos? The problem of suffering begs a response to this question. The basic set up of this logical problem is as follows:

• God is omnipotent.
• God is omnibenevolent.
• There is suffering in the world.

The Judeo-Christian worldview posits that each of these statements is true. However, when you put the three together, it forms a striking contradiction. If God is all-powerful, why can’t He do something about the tremendous suffering in the world? Maybe He can, but if He is all-loving, then why doesn’t he? For the most part, humans can agree on one of the three truths. There is suffering in this world; there is, indeed, a lot! Some might argue there is too much.

How do we defend our beliefs when presented with such a problem? To do so, conventional Christian beliefs must be ditched. The reason for this is that most Judeo-Christian doctrines are found nowhere in the Bible. Hell is not in the Bible. The Trinity is not in the Bible. These are just a few examples of how Christianity has added to the text and forced us to accept lies as truth. It is time for us to stop listening to lies pastors spew and get our answers from our only true source.

I have not set out to disprove God. I have not set out to disprove Christianity. I have set out to correct the falsehoods that are astronomically presented every Sunday morning around the world.

If you are like me, you have experienced suffering to a degree at some point in your life, or you know someone who has. Be it a paper cut, a lethal disease, the death of a loved one, you name it! Simply, it is foolish to deny that there is suffering in the world and that it is a problem. You have probably asked this question yourself. Your Sunday school teacher told you it is because of free-will. Your pastor told you it is because in the end, all things will be made right. They might even tell you if you give a certain amount of money to the church, God will bless you during your trials! But these answers, in truth, have little to do with what Scripture tells us. In fact, the Bible has a lot to say about suffering and it likely is not what you think.

Who am I?

Well, for the most part, I like to stay anonymous. But you can call me Luke. I will give as much background information as possible so that you can see where I am coming from with all of this. I am from the southeastern United States, or what you might call the Bible Belt. I was raised in a large, Christian family and attended church my entire life. I was homeschooled by my loving mother, who was diagnosed with stage 4 liver cancer during the summer of 2018. At the time, I had just graduated high school; I was accepted into my dream school’s political science program; I was hired as a coach for the swim team I had belonged to for several years; that same year, I received statewide recognition for my role in the local swimming community. But as you might imagine, I was also struck by a season of utter hopelessness. I tried my best to become a devout Christian, or as I now like to think, “churchgoer,” but something simply was not right.

After quickly discovering I hate politics and want nothing to do with them, I was prepared to drop out of school. I was ready to give up on the dream I had for many years. My mother would not let that happen. After spending a great deal of time in self-reflection, I decided I would study the most important thing in my life: the Bible. Mom was suffering. My family was suffering. I was suffering. And I could not wrap my mind around how the God I always knew could allow such despair. I had quite a few questions. Before I even knew it, I was trying to understand the problem of suffering. I needed answers, and as I was progressively finding, the church is not the place for answers.

Over the course of this years-long adventure, I have found that I cannot consider myself a Christian. While there is much of Christian theology that I still place my faith in, I lost faith and trust in the church years ago. I maintain a spiritual relationship with the God of my understanding, the Judeo-Christian God. And for the record, I do not personally hold that “God’s Word,” as we call it, is inerrant or perfect; my purpose here is to show how the Bible succeeds and often fails at responding to the problem of suffering. Again, I am not a Christian, nor am I religious. I do, however, consider myself a student of Scripture and someone who believes that, like Israel during the later portion of the Old Testament, the church has failed to do what God commanded. As a result, millions have suffered or had their suffering increased to the multitudes by the church. It’s time for a wake-up call. And it starts here at Living by the Logos.