This is rambling, sorry.
To the fundamentalist who hates me (there are plenty who relate to me as a brother, and this is not directed at you.). I am not an inerrantist. I do not believe the Bible is the Word of God. This no more means that the Bible cannot be a reliable guide to understanding God than the errors in Newton's writings means his writings are not a reliable guide to much of physics. I do not hate, devalue, or fail to love the Bible. I love the Bible, flaws and all, for what it is. I believe the Bible is a record of God's self-revelation. And I believe that many if not all of the writers were inspired by the Holy Spirit. I also believe that I am inspired by the Holy Spirit. But that never implies that I am infallible as the Holy Spirit is. To believe that the Holy Spirit's inspiration implies inerrancy or infallibility is to imply that the Temple is the same as God, and clearly it is not. What contains the Spirit is not the Spirit, in fact it is not the Spirit necessarily. To believe one to be infallible because one has received the Spirit is nothing more than self-deification.
I do not love Jesus Christ less because I have a different view of what the Bible is. I love Jesus and have a continuing relationship with Him. Understand: I think your views on the Bible are as sinful as you probably think mine are. I think you worship a book, rather than God-Made-Man. I think you attribute lies to God by acting like the creation points us in a direction that actually conflicts with the Bible. I think you lie to yourself and to others about how God actually works. However, I do not think that you do this consciously, and I do not think you go to hell for it, as you believe my beliefs condemn me. This puts me in a naturally difficult position: you think I am going to hell despite my love for Jesus, I think your love for Jesus ensures that you cannot possibly be going to hell. I am a universalist, but I have more confidence in Heaven for those who have faith in Christ. I think it is a bigger sin to harp on your doctrinal errors and put a wedge between believers than to correct your sinful mistakes.
You have no idea how hard you make it for intellectually hungry people to enter the church. God put the need to know in my heart. Denying it has always lead to sin, in myself and in the world in general. It is evil to deny the needs of the mind, as it is to deny the needs of the heart or the soul. I love my fundamentalist brothers. I truly do. If you get down on your knees and pray to Christ, and seek to do things HIS way, you are my brother and part of the same body, EVEN if you are doing things in the wrong way. I never would sever that cord or act as if it is severed. But I believe you are hurting the faith.
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