Scripture
While scripture, prophecy, and other religious texts are essential to building a respectful relationship with God, you must remember their limitations as well as their many strengths. Using the Bible as an example, there are many steps between God and you, the modern reader, even if we start from the assumption that Jesus was an aspect of God, as opposed to a prophet with an imperfect connection to God’s infinite Truth and subject to human failings.
First, God chose what limited portion of His infinite Truth to share within the Bible’s finite page count. There are places where God explicitly tells us He is withholding information. This is especially common in prophecy which cannot be explicit without warping our behavior. After all, if God told us the devil’s right and left hands on earth would be named Muhammad and Karl Marx, no one would ever use those names again.
Second, He had to convert His perfect Truth into an imperfect human language.
Third, the imperfect mortals listening to Jesus had to understand his words.
Fourth, fallible human memory had to retain what was heard since not everything was written down immediately and some may have been forgotten.
Fifth, many copies and translations of these writings were made, and not all of them were correct, either due to mistake or malice.
Sixth, these writings persisted in unorganized form for centuries, introducing uncertainty about transmission between generations.
Seventh, language, including the usage of words and understanding of nuance changes over time, potentially causing these holy writings to be misunderstood.
Eighth, Christianity became Rome’s state religion, and was thus subject to political machinations to help the emperor control the people.
Ninth, a subset of these writings were selected for canonization by fallible church elders whose personal and political interests may have colored their choices.
Tenth, the selected texts were translated into Latin on numerous occasions, potentially introducing more errors, both unintentional and deliberate.
Eleventh, the translations were standardized by fallible church elders, introducing yet more opportunity for mortal interests to influence the Bible.
Twelfth, the Bible was carried forward for more than a millennium, introducing yet more opportunity for language to shift under it.
Thirteenth, the Bible was translated yet again, this time into English, introducing yet more errors, both out of necessity and mortal interest.
Fourteenth, the English language shifted, changing the meanings of words and creating yet more misunderstandings.
Fifteenth, you, the reader, have to understand what is written in the Bible, especially the deeper layers of meaning which is where the true value lies, not the surface-level details.
While much of the meaning and value of the Bible, or any other religious text for that matter, has unarguably been retained despite this process, it is folly to ignore these limitations. Even if Jesus was an aspect of God, the book you hold in your hand is not the literal word of God, but an echo imperfectly passed down through the ages by fallible mortal hands. Thus, you should look past the surface-level wording and focus on the deeper meaning since that’s where the true value lies.