Who wrote the script I’ve been living by?
For billions, that script is the Bible...a revered, dissected, quoted, and worshipped book. But we must strip away the incense and dogma, the choir robes and cathedral echoes, and examine the truth: the Bible is not the direct download from the heavens that so many have been led to believe. It is, fundamentally, an anthology...a curated collection of writings assembled by men with ink-stained hands and very human agendas.
This compilation includes everything from laws and lineages to erotic poetry and battle songs. It carries the hymns of hope, yes, but also the justifications of conquest. It includes historical accounts steeped in theological bias, parables wrapped in metaphor, and prophecies written with one eye on heaven and the other on empire. It is sacred literature for some...but literature nonetheless. A product of its time, shaped by the politics, prejudices, and perspectives of those who penned and preserved it.
The structure we now accept as The Holy Bible did not descend from the clouds in leather-bound form. No, it was collated in 325 CE during the First Council of Nicaea, under the direction of Emperor Constantine... a Roman ruler with more interest in unifying his empire than in capturing divine truth. This council selected which writings were in and which were out, discarding gospels that didn’t fit the political narrative. It wasn’t divine revelation. It was religious curation. And what many Christians call “God’s Word” is, in fact, Rome’s editorial decision.
Fast forward to the 13th century, when an English cardinal named Stephen Langton divided the Bible into chapters. Langton, a man of considerable influence within the Roman Catholic Church, brought a structural clarity to the text, but that structure was not divinely ordained. It was designed for convenience, for preaching, for control.
Then, in the 16th century, French printer Robert Estienne (once Catholic, later a Protestant) took it a step further and divided the Bible into verses. His work, although practical, was met with fierce resistance from Catholic theologians at the Sorbonne, who feared the implications of making scripture too accessible to the masses. Estienne, pushed out by censorship and prejudice, fled to Geneva, where he printed freely under the wing of John Calvin’s reformist fervor.
Let us be honest with ourselves: this book is not celestial. It is not a miracle. It is not dictated by the voice of the Eternal. It is the handiwork of men...some wise, some manipulative, some sincere, and some self-serving. It has been translated, edited, redacted, rearranged, and repackaged countless times over millennia.
Yet billions cling to it as the only map to salvation.
What Carlton Pearson came to understand...and what got him shunned by the very religious machine he once served, is that God doesn’t need a book to reach you. Love doesn’t require ink. Spirit doesn’t need a footnote. Heaven isn’t reserved for those who recite scriptures... it’s already within you. The Divine is not hiding in verses or veiled behind doctrinal walls. The Divine is in your breath, your heartbeat, your intuition. The Divine is that still small voice that religion too often tries to drown out with dogma.
Now, some will hear these truths and respond not with curiosity, but with condemnation. They’ll say this is heresy. They’ll call it blasphemy. But truth has never been popular with institutions built on fear. The Bible apologists—the ones shouting about sin while ignoring slavery, patriarchy, and genocide within their “holy” book...need to wake up. You are defending a document that was built, brick by brick, from the ruins of empires and the remnants of older myths. Much of its theology borrows from Egyptian spirituality, Babylonian cosmology, and Greco-Roman power structures.
To claim it is “inspired by God” is to ignore the centuries of hands it passed through...politicians, scribes, warriors, and theologians...all leaving fingerprints, all adding or subtracting, all shaping it for their own ends.
And yet, even now, some will shout: “But it’s the Word of God!”And I respond...not in anger, but in love: Which God? Yours, or Constantine’s?
Which word? The one chosen by men at Nicaea or the one silenced and burned by inquisitions?
People don’t want this conversation because it threatens the foundation they’ve built their lives on. But if your foundation crumbles at the first breath of truth, was it ever sacred?
I know this message might be dismissed. Deleted. Denied. That’s the risk of telling the truth in a world more loyal to tradition than to liberation. But so be it. The truth has never needed permission. The truth stands even when the steeples fall.
Let it be known: You are not broken if you question. You are not damned if you doubt. The Divine does not sit in judgment, waiting to strike you for your curiosity. That is not God. That is the ghost of empire, whispering through pulpits.
You don’t need a Bible to be whole.
You don’t need a verse to be loved.
You don’t need a religion to be connected.
You need only the courage to listen to the Spirit within.
Because that—that—is where heaven begins.
And unlike the book, that story was written before time, and it can never be erased.
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