truth, faith can co-exist in getting of wisdom
I don’t know how I missed this powerful and challenging article in my daily newspaper. But, reading the blogs has Digger point it out for me - thanks!
Here are some powerful paragraphs:
“The church as I know it is a living, flawed entity full of varied, ordinary people who want nothing but good for others as well as themselves and who try to help refugees, the marginalised and those just having a hard time. And who not only haven’t stopped searching for answers, but also want to ask the right questions. For instance, asking whether a story from the Bible is historically true isn’t a question that is useful to me. I want to know in what context the story was conceived, and what it tells me about the struggle of human beings to understand why we’re here and live good lives….”
“The Bible is a profound record of a search for wisdom and of a long struggle over many centuries to reconcile humanity with goodness. And the search didn’t end when the Bible’s last section was written. So I can’t really take seriously someone who believes that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. That argument has been refuted by rigorous scholarship. But that doesn’t mean I think scripture has nothing to tell me….”
“In the end, if all progressive believers quit their religious traditions, it would mean that all religions would be left to the fundamentalists, and there’s already too much of that in the world. So though I deplore my church’s official positions on women’s rights and its hierarchy’s frequent flirtations with right-wing politics, it doesn’t mean I have become something else. What I have needed to do for myself is to work out what I didn’t believe and what I did believe. The former was relatively easy; the latter is taking a lifetime…”
Read the whole article here
March 7th, 2007 at 7:12 am
do you guys believe in the concept of the bible being a supernatural book, ie. a book that can be ‘alive’ as it were?
March 7th, 2007 at 7:39 am
No
March 7th, 2007 at 4:01 pm
I still have a problem with the word “inerrant” abtruth, partly because it’s been hijacked by the fundamentalists. I don’t see you as a silly fundamentalist, but it has tended to become a fundamentalist word.
It’s not only in terms of creation science… Matthew, Mark and Luke sometimes write sayings of Jesus or events about Jesus’ life with differing details… if we get fixated on the bible being “absolutely inerrant” we really start to come unstuck trying to reconcile how the three accounts can all be “absolutely true” in every detail.
They have different emphases I feel because they are different human writers trying to make different points… it’s not some kind of documentary on the life of Jesus… If we understand the gospels more as records of “this is how I see it”… human perspectives, yet inspired by God’s Spirit… we don’t tie ourselves in knots… house of cards syndrome… my faith will collapse unless I can prove every detail is true. I don’t think that’s the intent of the scriptures… which is why they never claim to be “inerrant”. They do the job of revealing Christ to us, they’re not there as a textbook on all truth.
March 7th, 2007 at 5:10 pm
Mungo… no. I believe God’s Spirit is able to work supernaturally through the bible (and does so to reveal Christ)… not that the book is in itself magic.
March 7th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
Janet, you are belittling my question using the word magic, I didn’t ask if you thought it was magic, but if you thought it was supernatural in the sense that the book can be used by God , through hearing the Holy Spirit’s direction, to direct you to answers to questions or needs you have. Or just to marvel at God himself or worship him in letting the Holy spirit reveal truths throughout the bible as you spend time with him. Surely this working in tandem makes the bible a tool in God’s hands to bless us and makes it a more than natural book. Have you ever had that experience of the words jumping off the page, or the experience of a well known and loved verse suddenly being used by the Holy Spirit in a different light to get his point across to you? I only ask this question because a lot of people spend a long time on signposts debating the inerrancy or not of the bible and intelectualising it all. I think that is great and I’ve learnt a lot by reading the various posts and enjoying real ‘church’, my question is just to understand more about the poster’s beliefs.
March 7th, 2007 at 7:05 pm
I do apologise Mungo… and if that’s what you mean, then my answer is yes!
March 9th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
OK mungo
yes
bad wording of a good question
Janet.. i think your right and my position is harder to explain because of the hijacking of the word
rather like the ID movement being hijacked by YEC’s
March 9th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
It’s a tricky business… I’ve long called myself an evangelical because I accept the idea of inspiration of the scriptures, but then the word gets hijacked by the political right wing and those obsessed with personal and sexual morality as the only issues worthy of consideration… sometimes you feel like you just need to find another word because it acquires a whole lot of connotations that don’t fit.
The evangelical alliance in the States is wanting to kick out a member because of a concern for the environment… in the view of some, a distraction from the campaign against abortion etc.
Sigh.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/marchweb-only/109-53.0.html