RHU East coast Style - Part 2
Posted by Chris on Friday, March 7th, 2008
This past Tuesday Danny, Cassie, Matt, Jenn and I meet again to continue our discussion and review what we listened to in the theology track “Words of God or Words of Men: A theology of the Bible track“. Last week we listened to the first hour of a two hour part session. The second hour wrapped up with some mistaken views of the Bible. While there are probably many you could list out. Steve Porter, the speaker spoke of primarily 4 that resonated most with him. Honestly…they resonate with me quite a bit as well. I just want to share a few thoughts…what are some mistaken views of the bible that you have or think there are? I also shared one a few weeks ago and will add a few other thoughts to it here, which was also talked about. This is going to be a long post. I took 4 pages of notes. Yes Danny…I am a nerd.
Mistaken Views of the Bible:
1) The Bible as God.
a. Scripture can take the place of our relationship with god. The scripture becomes what we worship rather than God. We think how we are doing spiritually relates to how well my relationship with the Bible is.
b. How my relationship with the amount I read of the Bible determines how my relationship with God is. How little I read, makes God angry and I have to read more earn favor and appease Him.
c. We often emphasize the bible and bible knowledge, and forget God.
d. We end up making the Bible an idol. We cut God off and tend to make the Bible say what we want it to say.
It is..
a. God’s word written. We should not disconnect it from God from His Word. It’s His meaning, self expression, Its His way of conveying to us who He is. The word of God carries forth God Himself.
b. It is a means of relating with God in our relationship with Him.
c. It is a relational thing to meditate/read God’s word. It’s to put our trust in the God of who’s scriptures it is.
Other places of finding God’s truth..
a. Creation is a manifestation of God’s word, the heavens declare of God’s glory, they pour forth speech. Creation is inspired by God’s nature.
b. God speaks audibly - and through the spirit. The spirit of God speaks truth to us. We often get caught up making sure something is in scripture that we miss other ways God speaks to us.
c. Jesus - God’s word in bodied.
Once something is written down it has the power of being studied, memorized, reflected on and it can be passed on.
2) The Bible is Magic. (When I spend time in God’s word my day goes better - why to some extent this is true, it doesn’t make the bible magical. Sometimes more often than not we just have bad days.)
a. We don’t interact with the word properly. We don’t know how to approach it and just do so passively, we just read it to read it.
b. The Bible is nourishment. We are nourishing ourselves off of God’s word. Our days just don’t go magically OK. When Jesus was tempted He said “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from thy mouth” - its not just physical substance.
c. Scripture is a source of Life. Its a primary one, just not the only one.
d. When the word of God abides in us. God abides in us. Whatever we ask will be given to us, b/c we will only ask for things that God desires.
e. The Bible is not magic, but spiritual nourishment.
3) The Bible is a guilt offering. - We read scripture to merit God’s favor, His love, His acceptance.
a. We think if we sin we can approach Scripture and reed enough we think God finds favor in us, thus we “feel better” so we think God feels better. Or if we don’t sin, we try to read a lot and think God owes us, we use it as a way to absolve our guilt. This is works righteousness - when we approach scripture as a way to merit favor in God.
b. Whether we read the bible or not…God still loves us.
c. We often have a view of being saved by Grace and our sanctification is by works. Works should be the result of our Sanctification process which happens because of God’s grace.
4) The bible is our sole source of truth.
a. Sola Scriptura - The scripture alone is our highest authority, but often take it to being the only authority and have ignored culture, science, history and philosophy.
b. We tend to believe that if its not in the Bible then its not work knowing.
c. If we don’t pay attention to other sources of knowledge our theology becomes irrelevant to the culture around us. We can not connect and critique it.
d. We need to study scripture with our eyes open to what people are saying about life, creation, etc.
e. If we say scripture is the only source we cut ourselves off from reason, experience, and tradition. They are legitimate lesser authorities. What others have learned is important.
Test everything. Hold onto the good. Being legalistic about scripture pushes us to heresy and even the occult. But the opposite end of the spectrum is equally true (complete liberalism).
Filed in makes ya think, random thoughts, spiritual application |
I’m so excited to hear you’re doing this! Please keep this going!! How else can we support you?