Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Our Mission, Should We Choose to Accept It
The greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind. The second is to love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus says, “All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments”. So LOVE is what all righteousness (law) and revelation (prophets) depend upon and stem from, first of God and then of each other. Without this love, we miss the whole point of our creation. It stands to reason that the Holy Spirit wouldn’t inspire one to break these two commandments, so we can assume that any action or thought that breaks these commandments is not inspired by God.
"No one who is speaking by the spirit of God says ‘Jesus be cursed’ and no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the spirit" (1 Corinthians 12:3). That which glorifies God, bearing witness to His supremacy, is of the Spirit, and that which vilifies Him is not. Scripture can be God-glorifying or it can be used (improperly) as a condemnation of God, so it really depends on the context; neither the written word nor the findings of science are of themselves holy or unholy.
Many people, including myself before I became a Christian, see the book of Genesis and its obviously flawed cosmology as a barrier between themselves and Christianity. I found the way through, but the barrier still isolates many people from the message of Christ and the salvation found in Him. This is the greatest of tragedies and must be resolved.
We must realize that adherence to a literal interpretation of Genesis is not central to Christian theology, and isn’t the pill that must be swallowed to be saved. Rather, the divinity of Christ, His sacrifice for the sake of our salvation, His resurrection and ascension are, cumulatively, the pill, and it’s a much smaller pill when one doesn’t have to simultaneously throw up centuries worth of brilliant and honest work from the best scientific minds.
Biblical literalists may want to pick nits and posit stale arguments about some aspect of the scientific perspective on the origins of the universe, but the conflict basically boils down to one group of people that want to hold up a literal interpretation of the Bible and make science adhere to it, and another group of people who want to destroy God and start from scratch. Neither of those positions is satisfactory; we must find a middle ground that moderates on both sides can not only accept, but relish.
In fact I think plenty of people would stand in the center of those two extreme positions, thinking there is a middle ground, knowing that Genesis is not literally true, possibly even suspecting that the story of Jesus is in some ways embellished beyond His own intent. But in spite of all that, they sense a deeper truth that their spirit cannot and will not deny.
These half-Christians may identify themselves as atheists, Christians, or "just spiritual", they might believe in God--maybe a few even go to church--but they also know there’s something undeniable about evolution. They might think God created the universe at the point of the Big Bang, but the Big Bang doesn’t answer their questions: Where did we come from? Why? They know intuitively that no matter how deep we go with science, it will never answer these questions, yet we will still need answers. The spiritual realm has always been the place we look for those answers, and it will always be so.
As Christians, we need to recognize these half-Christians as our neighbors, love them, and stop trying to make them give up Darwin for Genesis. Get to know and love Darwin and the 14 billion year epic of Creation. Praise God! What they really need to understand is that God gave His Son so that they would not perish in an unjust universe, but that they would live, justified, in His Grace.
Who's with me?
"No one who is speaking by the spirit of God says ‘Jesus be cursed’ and no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the spirit" (1 Corinthians 12:3). That which glorifies God, bearing witness to His supremacy, is of the Spirit, and that which vilifies Him is not. Scripture can be God-glorifying or it can be used (improperly) as a condemnation of God, so it really depends on the context; neither the written word nor the findings of science are of themselves holy or unholy.
Many people, including myself before I became a Christian, see the book of Genesis and its obviously flawed cosmology as a barrier between themselves and Christianity. I found the way through, but the barrier still isolates many people from the message of Christ and the salvation found in Him. This is the greatest of tragedies and must be resolved.
We must realize that adherence to a literal interpretation of Genesis is not central to Christian theology, and isn’t the pill that must be swallowed to be saved. Rather, the divinity of Christ, His sacrifice for the sake of our salvation, His resurrection and ascension are, cumulatively, the pill, and it’s a much smaller pill when one doesn’t have to simultaneously throw up centuries worth of brilliant and honest work from the best scientific minds.
Biblical literalists may want to pick nits and posit stale arguments about some aspect of the scientific perspective on the origins of the universe, but the conflict basically boils down to one group of people that want to hold up a literal interpretation of the Bible and make science adhere to it, and another group of people who want to destroy God and start from scratch. Neither of those positions is satisfactory; we must find a middle ground that moderates on both sides can not only accept, but relish.
In fact I think plenty of people would stand in the center of those two extreme positions, thinking there is a middle ground, knowing that Genesis is not literally true, possibly even suspecting that the story of Jesus is in some ways embellished beyond His own intent. But in spite of all that, they sense a deeper truth that their spirit cannot and will not deny.
These half-Christians may identify themselves as atheists, Christians, or "just spiritual", they might believe in God--maybe a few even go to church--but they also know there’s something undeniable about evolution. They might think God created the universe at the point of the Big Bang, but the Big Bang doesn’t answer their questions: Where did we come from? Why? They know intuitively that no matter how deep we go with science, it will never answer these questions, yet we will still need answers. The spiritual realm has always been the place we look for those answers, and it will always be so.
As Christians, we need to recognize these half-Christians as our neighbors, love them, and stop trying to make them give up Darwin for Genesis. Get to know and love Darwin and the 14 billion year epic of Creation. Praise God! What they really need to understand is that God gave His Son so that they would not perish in an unjust universe, but that they would live, justified, in His Grace.
Who's with me?
Monday, December 6, 2010
Scripture, Revelation, and the Trap of Bibliolatry
For Christians, scripture is text inspired by God. But how can scripture be distinguished from other written words? God doesn’t speak Aramaic, Hebrew, or Greek; it is doubtful that even the original texts of the Bible can begin to capture the simplest idea that resides in the mind of God. The words alone are not enough; before a Christian can gain knowledge of God’s message through scripture, inspiration must be obtained from the Holy Spirit. This is referred to as being "in the Spirit". When such inspiration is found, it may reveal a different or even contrary meaning to what the scripture seems to mean on the surface, but the inspired interpretation will always fit into the context of the passage and of the Word of God as a whole. Many Christians understand this very well, but far too many tend to quote scripture out of context and outside the Spirit to justify their own ideology.
There is a word for the practice of worshipping a book, as opposed to worshipping God Himself. It is "Bibliolatry", and I think it is a growing practice among many proud, well-meaning, conservative people that think of themselves as good Christians. God is unchanging, but people aren't, and what the Holy Spirit reveals to us through scripture changes with us, even as the scripture remains constant. God doesn't contradict himself, but without divine inspiration to understand His Word from one's own perspective at the moment, it can seem that way, and this fact is a dangerous and potent tool of evil.
There is a word for the practice of worshipping a book, as opposed to worshipping God Himself. It is "Bibliolatry", and I think it is a growing practice among many proud, well-meaning, conservative people that think of themselves as good Christians. God is unchanging, but people aren't, and what the Holy Spirit reveals to us through scripture changes with us, even as the scripture remains constant. God doesn't contradict himself, but without divine inspiration to understand His Word from one's own perspective at the moment, it can seem that way, and this fact is a dangerous and potent tool of evil.
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