Twisted Perception of God's Word

If you have read the previous post, you will note that this is a followup to one of the thoughts I dropped there; namely, that the ultra evangelical camp has made a god out of the written scriptures and is ready to defend their god to the death. I only write this entry to give an example of this tendency through the American church.

I listen to Christian radio coming home from work. It is the one activity guaranteed to raise my blood pressure more quickly than being cut off in traffic or stuck in a construction zone. I find myself shaking my head at the message I hear, both the actual words that are spoken and the meanings implied by the voice inflections and examples used. And yesterday I heard this person describing their quiet time that they have each day, and mentioning that sometimes their reading of the scriptures is sort of dry....like when their daily reading happens to be the first six chapters of I Chronicles. But just as soon as that statement is out of their mouth, they quickly offer a disclaimer that goes something like this. "I'm not saying that these chapters of Chronicles or the list of names are not divinely inspired or that each of those chapters does not have a spiritual application for our lives, that God is speaking through them, I'm just saying they are different from the other passages of the bible"....well, you get the point. Is it really so vital to our spiritual faith that we defend this list of names and pretend that somehow we can mine great spiritual truths out of these lists? It's only important if you faith is precariously balanced on the cutting edge of the word of God and your whole practice of Christianity is dependent upon the verbal, plenary, authoritative, inerrant (and whatever adjectives you feel are important to add) inspiration of the word of God. But the scriptures themself remind us that the cornerstone of the foundation or the church and our life is Jesus Christ, and it is on this foundation that the spiritual house of God is being built up.

So here's my disclaimer....it's not that I do not believe the word of God has authority, has power, is divine revelation, or has application for my life; I am just not going to play the doctrinal definition game and build my life on dogma and apologetics rather than on a real relationship with Jesus. I don't have that much life left and I am certainly not going to waste it trying to get my doctrine laid out to the last jot and tittle. As the blind man said when questioned about the exact definition and all of the mechanisms of the miracle that had happened to him, "I don't know, but this one thing I do know, I was blind, but now I see."