My Coming to Grips with the Word of God

First let me say that I hold the written word of God in pretty high regard, but lately I have been struggling with all of the evangelical baggage that is currently associated with the Bible...concepts such as inerrant, verbally inspired, or complete (no further revelation necessary and containing all we need to live now and eternally). There is a plethora (I love that word) of radio personalities that make a living bringing us a word of encouragement, or teaching us great insights, or putting our lives back together all from this amazing book. But every time I hear someone say "God has promised..." and then they read a verse from the Bible I have to wonder, especially when it is Paul or Peter saying something under very particular circumstances to a very specific individual. And suddenly what was a record of God's miraculous work on behalf of the world throughout history becomes a promise that we can stand on. But was it ever meant to be that? Did Paul know he was being used as a scribe of the Holy Spirit to comment on church behavior or organization? To see what I mean, read Paul's letter to Philemon, or John's letter to Gaius (3rd John) and try to see these books as God-breathed encyclicals given for your edification, salvation, and growth in the circumstances you face today. These are obvious examples, but you can see the dilemma I am in.

I have always felt that the current evangelical church confuses the word of God with God Himself and makes no distinction between the two (because that is one of those written or unwritten premises upon which evangelical faith rests in this century). They worship the book rather than the Author. I don't feel like a heretic to say that they are not one and the same but that is the box that I am sometimes pushed towards in what I read and what I hear. I still read and reread the word of God, but I confess that I am less prone to hear "Thus sayeth the Lord God to you Russell..." and more apt to read because some things were written that I might believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and believing find life in His name. And because some things were written for my example that I could avoid the pitfalls that others have fallen into. I don't have all the answers but do know that I have no other good place to turn in my journey towards answers. That is good enough for me today.

Directional Prayer Focus

I am at that stage in my spiritual life where I notice almost everything that fills a normal experience of Christian worship or teaching, and wonder where the practice or content first originated, and, more importantly, whether it is worthy keeping just for the sake of nostalgia. For instance, I have noticed for weeks now that when the pastor says the prayer of thanksgiving over the morning's offering, he instinctively turns towards the front of the church with the congregation to his back or mostly back. This is to indicate, in part, his solidarity with the congregation as they approach God with their offerings, but why the front of the church? And does it matter that his solidarity with us is broken by multiple steps and a rail?

The real issue for me, however, is the front of the church with its central altar (it really looks like an old Roman Catholic altar to me, it definitely is not a table), central golden cross sans Jesus, and prominent pulpit bible placed on a stand. Add some backdrop of old organ pipes from an organ no longer present, some curtains and a couple of candle and you have the closest this old Protestant Church can come to the holy of holies. Now it may be argued that God inhabits His word, or that the empty cross is the sign of our deliverance or even that 99% of the people are already facing this direction so it is a good place to turn to "face" the presence of God for this important prayer. But the reality is that God does not sit in the front of the church, sacred furnishings are no resting place for His presence, and our particular church faces to the northeast so there is not even a good historical precedent for the direction of our prayer. My thought was, how odd it is that we look to the front of the church to find the presence of God, when according to all that I read, God resides within the hearts of His congregation by the power of the Holy Spirit. It is in the pews that we need to seek the face of God for there it is most visible, no longer a lofty idea, but a gritty incarnation of divine spirit abiding in flesh. And that is a change of perspective that I welcome.

Prayer before the Sermon - Evangelical Practice

In our church we have someone pray just before the reading of the scripture and just before the pastor brings the message. And it is pretty predictable in its formula, it has a salutation to God or Jesus, some sort of please open our minds and hearts to receive the word that you are going to put into Pastor (insert name here) message, and a closing that declares that we hope it does us some good. And then the pastor usually prays again at the start that God would make him a worthy vessel and speak his words through him. But I always find myself wondering if that is what really happens each Sunday. How can we know that the sermon is God's word for us today? We've been programmed to believe that, or at least hope for it, but why do we even need to say it or pray it at all? Why must everything be God's word, God's direction for this very minute? Why can't the sermon just be some insightful comments on the scriptures, or an application of a scriptural truth, or even just some wise opinion or statements that the pastor wants to share? Why do we demand that the very words of the sermon be the very words of God spoken from heaven through the pastor to us who are gathered on a Sunday? If the pastor has our best interest at heart, if he is a man of God seeking to be faithful to his calling, if he has been accurate in his reading of the scripture and diligent in his exposition of its content, isn't that beneficial as well? What I am saying is this. If God is present in our gathering, and each of us are responsible before him in whatever position or location we occupy in the congregation, isn't this enough to validate what we do, hear, or speak on any given Sunday?

I only say that because if the typical Sunday sermon is really the very word of God being spoken then I feel very guilty because it does not seem like there is often a whole lot of substance to God's message and I have been very remiss in being cut to the heart by the message. But I do hear truth, I do seek for application, I want to receive all that is offered. I just don't want to have to struggle with another unnecessary evangelical practice and dogma that we keep foisting on ourselves each Sunday. Every sermon is not another revelation from heaven, every pastor is not an Apostle Paul debating before his audience, some Sunday's I tend to be a little hard of hearing and slow of heart...but that does not make it unprofitable. It remains what it is, I just can't play the game of trying to make it more than it is.

Error and Renewal

So I am making my way through this trilogy written by Hans Kung, and since I came across the books in different places, I have read them in the wrong order. But this final volume, actually his first volume, is on Judaism. And today I read some of his thoughts on why the church failed the Jews during the rise of National Socialism. He was talking about the concept of infallibility and how, even when there is no formal infallible statement being made, such an infallible church has the greatest of difficulties in acknowledging errors. You've all done that stupid move that begins by pulling a loose thread in a woven fabric only to suddenly see a line develop, pull away and soon a hole exists in the fabric where there wasn't any earlier. An infallible church is afraid to admit error because things start coming unwoven and soon there are holes, holes that once were all neatly woven into the fabric of official pronouncement. I came from a church that could not admit error. To say that they were wrong about this made people wonder whether they were wrong about that, and you can see where such a tendency leads.

But I thought to myself why must it lead there, why does it not rather lead to a pulling out of something that was woven in mistakenly, a flaw in the fabric, a place where it will not long retain much strength or sustain any close scrutiny. Pull out that flaw and replace it with truth. This is not like putting a new patch on an old garment, it's like creating the garment new and whole from the start. The admission of error is always the door that leads to repentance, and repentance leads to renewal, and renewal is that which always carries us into the future with no baggage or regrets brought along.

New Years Blog Resolution

So I slacked off, what else is new? It's not that I did not have anything to write, it's just that I was busy, or playing online games, or facebooking, or a dozen other excuses. So resolved, this year I am going to blog more. Why? It's not that I have anything earth shattering to share, but I do have something to say, and why not say it here? You don't even need anyone to really read it, somehow the writing, the saying of the words, makes them more real. They go from being thoughts or ideas or musing to concrete opinion. But I think that some of my opinions must be shared by hundreds of other people. Maybe they will stumble across them in a Google search gone wrong and find that they were not alone in their opinion, that there are others like them. And even if no one ever finds what I write, somehow the action of writing solidifies my own thought in my brain, and that cannot be a bad thing after all. Maybe just having to put thought into letters, letters into words, words into sentences forces me to define, refine, cut through the crap, find the essence worth repeating. So let's see what the year brings, at least its a clean slate waiting to be written upon and today I made a start.