ost Christians I’ve ever known view the Bible as an authoritative compendium of knowledge handed down to humans directly from god himself. For this reason, anything contained in the book(s) is deemed “good enough” for them. One of my very first exposures to this mindset was the following:
In Genesis 1:1 the Bible says, “In the beginning God.” That’s good enough for me! God created the heavens and the Earth; god created man; god is, was, and forever will be. That’s good enough for me!
This illustrates — to me — the Christian’s willingness to swallow the words in the Bible whole without really doing any substantial chewing. Instead of pondering god’s motivation for creating everything, his methods of doing so, or his inability to create everything perfectly the average Christian just revels in the bliss of being created and leaves it at that. The Christian calls this “faith.” I was guilty of the same thing when I was a Christian. I never asked, “why?” I just accepted what I was told without even putting much thought into it. I did this because I was taught that questioning god was wrong. God does what god does and you’re not worthy of an explanation. After all, you’re just a flawed human with a flawed brain.
While I was a practicing Christian I sneered at people who used logic to discredit the fantastical stories in the Bible. I would simply wave away any reasonable objections by saying something to the effect of, “I have faith that the Bible is the inspired word of god and god cannot possibly be wrong. Therefore, your question is invalid.” I was trained to take this defense against questions and because I was trained not to question my faith I also didn’t question my training. It’s a vicious cycle in which people are still willingly trapped.
The “good enough for me” mentality is the embodiment of ignorance. It’s rampant in circles where people are too lazy to really do any of their own research. I’d love to see it go away but I know it won’t. I can only be glad that my “good enough for me” mentality went away once I was out from under the influence of a religious household and started asking questions. While one can be blissfully ignorant with “good enough for me” I find it much more fulfilling to be blissfully informed with “why?”
