We are right, right?

When we try to organize God’s story into something more than core principles and insights into his heart, we end up with something lifeless and powerless. Building human constructs around spirituality is an incredibly risky business and has much more likelihood of leading to that theological error which we were trying to avoid in the first place.

The other problem with systematic theology/doctrine/dogma is that it’s way to difficult to make it our own because we don’t get the underlying principles for it in many cases. I’ve always been very aware of many of the “sins” in my life as a result of the teaching I’d received, but it wasn’t until much of the dogma and doctrine in my life fell away that I was able to really get it. It was truly like being born again…again…for me. The measure of motivation I have now to deal with junk in my life is not even comparable to what it was like before.

Give me wisdom teachings all day long about the Bible and I’ll eat it up and it will give me life. Try and turn any of those teachings into an official church “position” and I can feel the spiritual life draining right out of everything.

BD

I agree and find that helpful. Why do we spend so much time bickering about words and interpretations when we have work to do, and its not about us. It would keep me from misprepresenting God if I just kept my trap shut more often!

Please forgive me for quoting the least of all apostles.

“…The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God… no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God…This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words…The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man’s judgment:”For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.” 1Cor 10-16.

I have always loved this flow of words from Paul. Notice he said “we have the mind of Christ,” not that he had the mind of Christ. Individuals don’t have the mind of Christ, it is his mind. But as he is working through his body the church, we get to live out his thoughts and express his love and will, as we carry around the head, Christ.

I think that theologies like Calvinism have the potential to lead to theological holocausts where people make themselves as God and decide who gets thrown into the ovens of hell.

Jesus didn’t ask us to understand him or understand the Father or understand the Councellor. He asked us to follow him, and by following him, join him in his work.

Let’s let Jesus do the talking for us. Let’s be his arms and legs and arms and hands. He is our head. Let’s let him do our thinking for us. Our talking for us.

Sometimes I think action in silence is the most faithful mode of being.

So I don’t have a perfect theology of the bible. I do have certain things that I’m pretty certain about. They are truths that I’ve read in the bible and then experienced as true in my life.

Ken, I love “Til We Have Faces” by Lewis. I read it annually. It always speaks to me of the warped and twisted ways that we view ourselves instead of the beauty that God sees in us.

Eric C. you said:

“Frankly, I don’t see much evidence that professed certainties about the Bible have produced good fruit in our own time or in the course of human history.”

I find that interesting since in nearly every post I’ve read by you, you seem VERY certain of your theology on sin.

I read the above post and part of me sees the risk of a ‘too balanced’ view of things and the value of passion.

But I think part of Jesus’s fiery rhetoric such as ‘hate your parents’, etc, was just a cultural middle eastern type of communication. Look at all the crazy things that Ahmadinejad says about Israel, and Saddam Hussein’s promised ‘mother of all battles’ when the US invaded Iraq. It’s a cultural thing.

While I accept that we can get bored with too much ‘balance’. I think that the alternative can be harmful. It’s called extremism. Notice the recent events in the Holocaust museum and that abortion doctor’s murder. I would say the perps in both events threw ‘balance’ to the winds.

So I guess my point is that I see balance as a positive thing. Maybe it’s just me.

A “chastised epistemology” is a virtue. How can we not recognize that past evangelical movements have been hateful in so many ways? E.g., Luther on the Jews; Calvin’s defense of Servetus’s execution for heresy; fundamental Protestantism’s opposition to the abolition and civil rights movements. How can we not look — self-critically — at the fruits of evangelical theology?

Evangelicals should be chastened — very chastened — by that history.

Frankly, I don’t see much evidence that professed certainties about the Bible have produced good fruit in our own time or in the course of human history.

Moreover, the insistence that people buy into a huge systematic theology, or accept all of the Bible as literally true — including, for example, viewing all of life and creation and eternity through the theme of sin; the 6000-year-old-earth Creation story; pre-millenial eschatology; and doctrines that present God as a terrible wrathful God — have so deterred unbelievers from Christianity that…

…the profound salvific ideas that God is a personal God who (1) loved man so much that He became “One of Us,” (2) identified with mankind by enduring its sufferings and shame and even death, and (3) who is a God we can not only search for, reach for, and find (without being smote to death), but also “eat” and “drink” …

… are lost. My agnostic friends haven’t even heard that message.

It’s not surprising with all the distraction caused by evangelicals’ certitudinous, arrogant denunciations of:

evolution (contradicts Scripture!),
conservationism (it exalts/idolizes nature!),
humanism (it puts man at the center!),
helping the poor (they’re replacing God with government!),
peacemaking missions (they’re plotting one world government!),
concern for immigrants (they’re breaking the law!),
respect for homosexuals (they’re committing an abomination!), etc.

Yes, all of the foregoing sprout from various evangelical certitudes about the truths of the Bible.

But does all the certitude lead anyone to Christ?

Or does it drive them away in droves?