Showing posts with label Bible. Show all posts

Pastor and professor David Fitch offers the following critiques of evangelicalism, as based in his book The End of Evangelicalism. This is found over at "The Other Journal."

TOJ: You claim that the evangelical belief in the “inerrant” Bible has not really been about the truth but about “being in control of the truth.” It appears that just as evangelicalism continues to fracture into different hermeneutical camps, large church personalities have effectively replaced denominations in defending doctrine. Over this next decade, how do you see the fight of inerrancy shaping up?

DF: There’s a splintering of evangelicalism, and strangely, I would say that the majority of evangelicalism realizes that “inerrancy” is an apologetic strategy whose time is over. It is a strategy that in fact undermines Scripture by defining its authority via a reference point outside itself, by what is an “error” and who gets to define “error,” as opposed to what Scripture is in its relationship to the Incarnate Christ. Nonetheless, it wouldn’t surprise me if the New-Reformed movement among evangelicals makes inerrancy once again a shibboleth to determine who is a true evangelical. Once this happens, I think we’ll all be energized to expose the defensiveness in this move and move on to a true faithfulness.

TOJ: Another hallmark of the evangelical is the “decision for Christ,” but you write that this decision has effectively been “separated from one’s embodied life.” Could you explain that further, particularly how such a deep and personal decision has found such tragic separation?

DF: I refer to it as a separation because speaking of a decision for Christ doesn’t mean anything anymore. I am sure that is an overstatement. But what I try to show in the book is that the decision for Christ has become a master signifier that creates a fantasy, as if to make a person feel good for what he or she has done. Yet it demands nothing of this person. In essence it does what any good master signifier must do—it enables us to “believe without believing,” in Žižek’s famous words. It allows us to be Christians without it meaning anything material to our embodied existence. Nonetheless, conversion is at the heart of Jesus’s call to follow him. We need to recover conversion. I go much deeper into this whole phenomenon in the book. 

You can read more of the interview following the link above.

The Bible is a letter God has sent to us; prayer is a letter we send to him. 

—Matthew Henry

Image by humancarbine via Flickr

“Spiritual theology, using Scripture as a text, does not present us with a moral code and tell us, ‘live up to this’; nor does it set out a system of doctrine and say, ‘Think like this and you will live well.’ The biblical way is to tell a story and in the telling invite: 'Live INTO this — this is what it looks like to be human in this God-made and God-ruled world; this is what is involved in becoming and maturing as a human being.'

“When we submit ourselves to what we read in Scripture, we find that we are not being led to see God in our stories, but our stories in God’s. God is the larger context and plot in which our stories find themselves.” (43-44)

via

I think I'll let this speak for itself...

Couldn't resist this.

Found this over at Ragamuffin Soul.

Image via Wikipedia"The Bible presents a conversation that continues until God himself speaks a final Word."

From Michael Spencer

Good stuff from Chaplain Mike over at Internet Monk:

The Bible is not an “owners manual for life,” a handbook that instructs us how to be healthy, wealthy, and wise, with well-behaved children and without financial debt. It does not give therapeutic counseling for emotional problems nor does it hold the key to being healthy and fit. You won’t find “15 Steps for Overcoming Discouragement” or how to build a “successful” church or ministry.

In fact, the longer we meditate on Scripture, the more we see it is not really about us at all; that is, it was not given to meet our “felt needs.” Rather it was given to tell the story of what God did to restore his blessing to creation through his Son, Jesus Christ. And it calls us to let him integrate the stories of our lives into that bigger story by his saving grace and mercy.

He's very harsh here...but I think right on the money.  Bill Maher has this monologue -- a mini-homily, really -- in response to the celebration of Christians to the death of Osama bin Laden a month or so ago.  He says that, that whole "loving enemies" thing that Jesus talks about is a pretty major part of the teachings of Jesus and that one really can't call themselves Christians if they deny this by hating enemies and hunting them down to kill them.  He claims that, if Christians ignore "turning the other cheek" and the call to love those who do them wrong, they are merely FANS of Jesus and NOT FOLLOWERS.  He says that this is "like joining Greenpeace and hating whales."

This video is NOT SAFE FOR WORK.  There is swearing in it.

But, after spending so much time reflecting on Davin Kinnaman's book UNCHRISTIAN, it's interesting hearing a self-proclaimed non-Christian tell Christians that they aren't being Christian enough...all the while using our own Bible as evidence against us.

Rob Bell.  Universalism.  Hell.  Gospel Coalition.  Evangelicalism.  Etc.

Francis Chan enters the discussion.  Here's a video intro to how he's looking at the topic...with a lot of humility.

This gets at a lot of my personal feelings about it.



And, just because it's the coolest introduction ever, this is how Chan was introduced at the EXPONENTIAL event in 2009.  I think you can only watch this after you've seen how humble he appears in the first video.

So, how many common phrases do you know that came from the King James Version of the Bible?  My hunch is that you'll be surprised by this video and impressed with the effort of the person using these phrases in a performance of sorts.

Health issues.

That's all I'll say here.

(HT/nonelikejesus)

Image via WikipediaWhat you will read below here is not my own.  This is from Rachel Held Evan's blog.  But I'm going to borrow some of this and try to pass it off as my own as I enter discussions with persons about the Bible and about following it.

See, I not only read the Bible (it's a "Good Book" :) ), but I'm interested in how we use the Bible, are shaped by it, and, oftentimes, shape it.  I'm interested in the presuppositions we bring to it and the how our view of others is shaped by our interpretation of it.  I'm interested in the notion of inerrancy as it seems that no one views the whole thing as "inerrant" and we all seem to pick and choose.

I want to take the Bible seriously.  I believe it has words of life as it relates to us the Word (Jesus Christ) of God, who is the Way and the Truth and the Life.  Can we take it seriously without using it to beat up our theological opponents?  Can we be honest about its breadth and depth and confess how we prooftext to fit our social or religious perspectives?  Can we approach the Bible with humility and see how complex the act of believing and interpreting really is?

So, Rachel has her "Seven Rules of Engagement" for discussing the Bible.  These are the ground rules that she (and I) think are needed to make sure we're honest about our limitations and perspectives.
It blew my mind today...particularly #6.

Here they are...

Are you ready...

So, what do you think?

A lot of this comes through in the discussions I've had with folks about David Kinnaman's book, UnChristian.  For instance, (to use the "poster child" of Biblical hot topics) if we're going to say, based on Leviticus (20:13), that homosexuals should be killed, we need to admit that, a couple verses prior, (20:9) the Bible says that children who "curse" their mother or father should be killed too.  If we're going to be "literal" with one...we need to be aware that we're not being "literal" with the other...or at least be honest in how we're doing our interpretation.  (Let me be clear here, this does not mean that we can pretend that homosexual practice is not mentioned in the Bible.  It's there.  But we need to have the proper perspective of our interpretation.

Moreover, we need to be clear that non-Christian people in the world can see that we prooftext and they can see that we beat each other up with our respective Bibles and interpretations.  The recent Rob Bell debates is a case in point and this is an argument that has gone mainstream, even being picked up by Time Magazine.

I want to take the Bible seriously. 

Sometimes...maybe a lot of the time...Christians use the Bible for their own purposes, perhaps taking themselves more seriously than the Word of God.

And, in all honesty, I do this too.

Oh, click here to see the great cartoon that Rachel Held Evans mentions.

Cool video.

Image by loswl via Flickr

The following is from a project called "66 Clouds." It puts all of the 66 books of the Bible into word clouds (from worldle.net) , which is a rather stunning visual representation of the text. Take a look.

photo © 2009 kevin | more info (via: Wylio)

This will preach!

I also read the Bible for the first time. It was deep! I liked the parts where some character was once this, but he ended up being that. Like he’d be dissing Jesus, and then he ends up being a saint. That was cool.

-Quoted in Rolling Stone (via twentytwowords)

I am one of those persons who can't help thinking "That would make a great band name" when engaged in casual conversation.  It's usually something very stupid.... "Broiled Fish"... "Furry Dead Plant"... or "Found in the Fridge."   I don't claim that this is intelligent humor.  But it brings me a small amount of joy.

So, knowing this about myself, I enjoyed reading Rachel Held Evans' blog this morning.  While working his way through the Bible, her husband, Dan, was struck by how many cool Thrash Metal Band Names he could make from the text of Leviticus 17.

I'm particularly fond of "Goat Demons" and "Blood Guilt."

Any favorites of yours from the list?