"Let the Bible speak" is the charge of some. "We go by the Bible" seems to imply that settles the discussion at hand. But it doesn't. Yes, the Word of God was delivered flawlessly by the Holy Spirit through plain men. Yet, plain men still study the Spirit delivered Word....and misinterpret. We are simply growing students of this fabulous heavenly treasure on earth.
I wonder how often being blamed for being liberal or conservative has little to do with disagreements. One side insists the other isn't "going by the Bible". Often that is not true. It is not only possible but probable that much dissension arises because honest people simply view the passages differently from their counterparts; both with eyes wide open.
Serious students of the Word must be careful with the labels we freely toss as if we really know what we are talking about. Not everyone who fails to think and believe like my circle of friends is a Bible-denying scoundrel. They are often found to be basing their stance upon a position they gained from understanding the Word of God.
Yes, we can know the truth and the truth will make us free. Yes, we can understand the Bible. What I am saying is we must not assume we have complete and final grasp of this ever-flowing spring of Holy Spirit drama unfolding before our very eyes. Sometimes, people, we just get it flat wrong and there's nothing to be ashamed of unless we have inbuilt such bias to defend our errors over admitting them.
From experience the stronger one gets in his plea that we must only go by the Bible the more likely this brother may possibly be really meaning we must go by his interpretation of the Bible...and his view is supposed to settle it.
The Word of God is to be revered, believed, and lived. It is far easier to defend what twenty-five verses we know by rote than it is to study those texts familiar to our denominational friends yet are foreign to us. Go by the Bible? That's good advice. Don't fall into the trap of concluding that those who see it in a different way are always false teachers. True, they might be. Too, they may have seen something God wishes we'd get.....but so far we can't see it because it doesn't conform to our well-organized rut system.
4 comments:
Terry,
Great thoughts. How often do we have our own "lectionary" just because we tend to preach the same 50 verses over and over again with little interest with anything else. What about the verses that make us uncomfortable? Shouldn't those be the ones we take most seriously...the ones that challenge us the most? Yet we condemn other groups for having a lectionary that they preach from. I am not saying lectionaries are a good idea. I just think it is funny that we often informally do the very same things we condemn others for formalizing.
This takes a lot of humility to disagree with someone about the most important areas of our lives and still be able to eat around the same table even though we disagree.
TR - you always seem to capsulize - in a few paragraphs - what so many of us are living through! Very insightful and spot on accurate... hermeneutic is a four letter word among so many in our fellowship. Yet if we allow the Spirit to guide us in our study of His Word (the same one, by the way, who breathed it through inspired writers), we will be truly free! And that type of liberty is exactly what John 8:32 is talking about... blessings!
I rarely expect anyone to say anything about what I write here or other places, but I believe I have found something worth looking at. I believe it is so good that I will send this along to one of the ministers at our church because we are currently going through a study that relates emotional health to spiritual maturity. The article you can find below is worth checking out.
http://www.biblestudy.org/basicart/how-can-we-achieve-spiritual-maturity.html
and the writer's works can be found at http://www.godward.org/
Where our heart is there will also be our treasure. We may not all have the answers but the Bible does have all of the answers!!!!!!!!! God bless, Jim C.
To think everything we believe about the Bible must be right is to be haughty; to think it doesn't matter what you believe about it is to negate its value.
Thanks for reminding us we are not God. We aren't even Moses, or Elijah, or David, or Peter, or....
Just imperfect people trying to serve the perfect Creator and Savior.
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