The writers of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John claim to be accurately repeating the acts and words of Jesus.  Other New Testament writers, on the other hand, such as Paul, never even met Jesus, they only take his words and come up with their own interpretations of how those words should be applied.  Just as the Jews took what was considered to be the actual words of God, and made their own interpretations by codifying the oral Law as the Mishnah and the commentaries on it in the Talmud, writers other than Jesus took his words and wrote their own interpretations.

Jesus said there are only two commandments:  Love God, and Love your Neighbor.  He then leaves it up to us to decide how to do that.

Most people don't realize that the Bible takes a little historical fact, fabricates some wild stories, and then incorporates a lot of man's opinion and calls it God's Law.  They claim every word of it to be "inspired" when almost none of it is.

Most people, especially Christians, know very little about the history of their faith or the actual origins of their teachings and doctrine.  For instance, the first four books of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, were NOT written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  The original manuscripts of these writings bear NO NAMES of the authors.  It is not known who wrote them, or whether or not that person is inspired or even reliable.  The Catholic Church is the one who gave the apostles names as the authors, to try to engender confidence that the writings were authoritative.  I fail to see how a writing can be considered authoritative when it is not known who wrote it.

When Paul said, "All Scripture is inspired of God" he could not have been referring to his own letters, as most of them had not been written yet, and they were only considered letters, not books or scripture.  Also, during the first and second century, the books of Revelation, 2nd and 3rd John, Jude, and 2nd Peter were considered to be spurious, not authoritative.  So how did all these books end up in the Bible?  The Catholic Church chose them because it supported their position and doctrines, the ones they wanted to be accepted as orthodox.

Also, Constantine paid the Catholic Church to write a Bible of which 50 copies were made.  Many of the doctrines in this Bible were crafted so as to support his position as emperor.  For instance, the question of whether or not Jesus was God, or had divinity bestowed upon him as a result of his own virtue.  There was a split in the Roman Catholic church because of this issue.  The split created the Eastern Orthodox Church.  Specifically, the Roman Catholic church believed Jesus was God, and the Eastern Orthodox believed he became divine as a result of his own virtue. It is clear from reading early church documents that there was a serious debate about this issue.  Constantine needed to elevate Jesus to the level of a deity to help solidify his control of the Roman Empire.  Until the Council of Nicea in 325, Jesus was just a devout and enlightened human being.  After the Council, he was elevated to the position of God.  Vicious debates occurred and many people lost their lives for the sake of this debate. 

   I recommend the book "When Jesus Became God" for a factual look at all existing historical documents
   regarding this controversy.  Click on the picture at left to purchase this book through Amazon.com

I love Jesus' teachings, and strive to live by them every day.  I also read the spiritual writings of others, because they often have merit, and it is easy to tell when a teaching is from God and represents spiritual truth:  you get that inner feeling of rightness, an inner witness that it is a universal truth.  Sadly, when reading the writings of Paul and others, many of the teachings raise more questions than they answer, because they do not represent universal spiritual truth, they reek of lawkeeping rather than spirit.  When you read a passage, and the simple spiritual truth of it does not shine through, it is not a true spiritual teaching.

First Corinthians Chapter 7 is one example of human legal doubletalk being represented as scripture.  The chapter starts out stating some universal truths, and then diverges into manmade arguments.

"Now for the matters you wrote about: It is good for a man not to marry.  But since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband."  (7:1-2).

This is a universal truth.  Simple and straightforward.  Marriage is not necessary; but if one marries, monogamy, in Paul's opinion, should be observed.

"The wife's body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband's body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife.  Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.   I say this as a concession, not as a command" (7:4-6).

Right here, Paul states that this is not a command from God, but an "allowance" he has made for some.  Also, it gets into some dangerous territory.  Telling someone that their body belongs to someone else is tantamount to slavery.  It is a universal spiritual truth that a person has free will and is in control of his or her own body and life.  If something is a universal spiritual truth, you won't be able to think of an instance where it doesn't apply.  When Paul starts having to make rules about when this teaching does or does not apply, we know it is HIS teaching, not God's.  You won't get that inner feeling of rightness when you read his rules, you will get the feeling that something is wrong, or you will have questions in your mind about how this could be applied, and why would God expect this of us.  When you have those kind of questions, reject that statement as having no universal spiritual merit.

"Now about virgins: I have no command from the Lord, but I give a judgment as one who by the Lord's mercy is
trustworthy" (7:25).

Here Paul admits that the things he is writing are his own opinion, and he even has the audacity to imply that his judgments speak for God.   Once again, his judgments involve tedious rules which apply in one instance and not in others....not a universal spiritual truth.

So, when I read the actual words of Jesus, I get that inner feeling of rightness, and I know the teachings are from God.

Now, we must understand that not every word supposedly spoken by Jesus actually came out of his mouth.  You can read the Gospels, and the writers did a very good job, but they are only men, and NOT infallible, and some of what they wrote reflects the political and social conditions of the time.  However, the TRUE teachings of Jesus shine through, pure and simple.  Evaluate each teaching separately, according to the inner feeling of rightness they convey to you.

We must also understand that some spiritual truths are still contained in the writings of all men, and some error.  For that reason, the reading of any spiritual writings is encouraged, and one can use the same test to evaluate them as one does for the words of Jesus in the Gospels....do they represent universal spiritual truth....do you get that inner feeling of rightness?  The writings of Nag Hammadi, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the writings of the Buddha, the Book of Mormon, the Koran, the writings of the Indian Vedas, Native American writings, the teachings of the Druids and Celtics, and many more, represent documents which contain spiritual truths.  Also, the writings of the early church Fathers (early Catholic church documents), while fraught with error, also contain some spiritual truths which are valuable.  I would read the early Catholic documents not only to obtain spiritual truths, but also to instruct myself in the errors which were made official church doctrine and how those evolved into a place where they were given status as real spiritual truth.  Many of those same doctrines are accepted as truth in Protestant churches today as well.

One might ask the question, "You are telling each person to evaluate spiritual truth according to their own feeling of rightness.  What if my feeling of rightness differs from someone elses?  Isn't there some standard that we can go by?"

"No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, `Know the Lord,' because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest" (Hebrews 8:11).

"I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts" (Hebrews 8:10).

"But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth" (John 16:13).

"But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you" (John 14:26).

"As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you"
(I John 2:27).

These verses indicate that each person has a Spiritual Guide that helps him/her decide what truth is.  This is much safer, and much preferred to giving only one leader the information, because when too much power is vested in one person or group of people, you get things like the Spanish Inquisition, with one person or group deciding the fates of thousands of others.

Every person is responsible for his/her own life and spiritual condition.  When you look into your own heart and consult the Spirit, you will get an inner feeling of rightness about what you are evaluating.  Your personal experience of spirituality is the standard for your own life.  Asking someone else to set up a standard by which you measure your life is to not take responsibility for it yourself.  You evaluate what is truth, and you live by that.  You are responsible.

Joan of Arc is an example of someone who listened to her inner voice and lived by it.  The rest of the church didn't understand this, and burned her as a heretic, simply because she held the belief that God can speak to anyone, not just church leaders, and that this communication is just as true and binding as any church doctrine, sometimes more so.

Someone still might ask, "But doesn't God set down rules for us to live by that are our standard?"  Yes, absolutely.  But the problem comes in determining which of the writings of men actually represent the true spiritual truths that God has set down.  That's why you have to evaluate each one for the inner feeling of rightness which identifies universal spiritual truth.  This helps you to weed out those writings or teachings that are simply someone's interpretation or opinion.

The words of Jesus are to be unconditionally accepted because Jesus was the most spiritually evolved entity to ever live upon the earth.  There have been others that were also spiritually evolved, but not as highly evolved as Jesus.  He is a very old soul, having lived through many lives and ascending to a higher spiritual plane.  We are all children of God, just as Jesus is, but he holds a higher position by virtue of his level of spiritual knowledge.  He should be highly respected and honored.

I can feel that there is one last question on your mind.  "What if two people evaluate a particular teaching using the inner feeling of rightness, and each of them comes to a different conclusion about it.  Which of them is right?"  The answer is, both of them are right.  If you get an inner feeling of rightness about a particular teaching, there can be a couple of reasons why:

Because you are a  conscious creator of your own reality, as Jesus taught us, you have created a reality in which the belief you are evaluating is central to the maintainence of that reality.

Before you came into this incarnation, you created a plan in which you decided the purpose of your life, what challenges you would face, and what spiritual lessons you wanted to learn.  Acceptance of a certain belief or belief system may have been central to the fulfilling of your plan.

In either of these cases, your reality is different from your neighbor's and so two people can evaluate the same belief, come to opposing decisions regarding it, and still have those decisions be right, because each person creates their own reality and their own chart, and is here to learn different lessons and fulfill different purposes.  Neither way is right or wrong.  You are responsible for living according to the beliefs you have evaluated for inner rightness, and which have been confirmed to you as true.  You are not responsible for living someone else's idea of what truth is.

In the Bible, in Matthew 20:1-16, is the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard.  In this story, workers are hired by an employer to work in the vineyard.  Each worker is paid the same amount.  But not every worker worked the same amount of time.  If a worker came at 9:00 in the morning, the employer made a deal to pay him one denarius at the end of the day.  If the worker came at 2:00 in the afternoon, the employer also made a deal with that worker to pay him one denarius at the end of the day.  Some people have commented, "Then, he made the same deal with everyone."  WRONG.  If he had made the same deal with everyone, then everyone would have had to start working at 9:00 to get one denarius.  But he didn't.  He made a separate, special deal with each worker.  Each worker worked a different number of hours to get his pay.

This represents the idea that God makes a separate agreement with each one of us.  There is NOT one set of rules for everyone, because we are all here to learn different lessons and must have different experiences to learn those lessons.  Your reality is different from your neighbor's, and your understanding of truth is different because the deal God makes with you is different from the one that he makes with everyone else.  We are not all subject to the same rules.

On that note, we can even conclude that Paul's teachings were part of the maintenance of his own reality and were central and necessary parts to the continuance of that reality. Anyone who accepts Paul's teachings obviously needed to do so because for one reason or another, their purpose for being on earth at this time required those teachings to maintain their reality. However, it does not mean that they have to continue to accept those teachings. As they evolve and grow spiritually, they can renounce those teachings and embrace a more spiritually-evolved belief system.