On a general perspective Christians do not see the need to know the Bible, or even God. That is what they have a pastor for. This is why people get so quickly lost with pastors that have messages that are not biblical. It has become a trend to teach that the Bible is not as relevant today as it was to the people that were writing it, this is wrong. Check 2 Timothy 3:16-17. This is commonly taught by Emergent Church leaders, thus they allow people who are openly living in sin to be leaders in their church, 1 Timothy 3. Since Christians do not know the Bible we can't stand forward as a group and say no.
In a more worldly view, Muslim's do not know the Koran. They cannot read it unless it's in Arabic, and how many Americans know Arabic. They also have parts of the Bible that they consider their holy texts, (these parts being the Gospels, Psalms, The Pentateuch/Torah, among others.) but they do not read them, and thus do not notice the blatant contradictions between the Koran and the parts of the Bible.
I would think that if you were going to believe something, or claim that you would believe something then you would want to know what you were saying you believe. I am not claiming to know the Bible extensively, I know very little about what is said in the Apocalyptic writings, I know where to find the passages on it but I couldn't tell you much about it.
This is a problem.
Christ commanded us to know God. In Deuteronomy 6:5, the Jews view this as being the greatest commandment. In the New Testament, Jesus adds on to this passage with stating that we need to love God with our mind as well. Meaning we need to KNOW him and to KNOW what he says.
However, we cannot do this on our own. Just reading the Bible is not enough. We can take a lot from it, but we cannot always rely on our own interpretation. We occasionally read what we want to into the text. This then results in making God into who we want him to be, and this is not YHWH. We cannot make our God into who ever we want him to be. All throughout the book of Isaiah, we see God being referred to as the potter and we are the clay. Not vice versa. Specifically in Chapter 64 verse 8. We see this point taken further earlier in Isaiah 29:16, where it shows how ridiculous it is that we would question God.
I've used these two quotes before but I wanted to use them again.
Brennan Manning in the Ragamuffin Gospel
"When I look at that God, the God of Abraham, I feel I'm near a real God, not the sort of dignified, businesslike Rotary Club God we chatter about here on Sunday mornings. Abraham's God could blow a man to bits give and then take a child, ask for everything from a person, and then want more. I want to know that God."
"You know a man is looking for truth when they are willing to believe something about God that they do not want to believe."
-Francis Chan
These quotes combat the whole "well God wouldn't do that" argument. 99% of the time that's opinion with no Biblical basis at all. Unless you are 110% sure that you are correct, or if you're God, which you're not, don't even say that.
In essence this blog is about knowing and holding to theology. There are certain steps for properly going about studying this. I'm not going to introduce those but I do want to say this much: in the steps that I have seen for building theology it is done with looking at the Biblical passage first, and then looking for extrabiblical sources almost last. Don't base your theology on what someone else believes. Most of the time your interpretation of a passage doesn't matter. I want to challenge you to do 2 things. Know the Bible, Know God when someone comes along with a message that doesn't have good basis, know what's wrong with it. Dig into what you believe, and discover what it is that you really believe.
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1 comment:
"In a more worldly view, Muslim's do not know the Koran. They cannot read it unless it's in Arabic, and how many Americans know Arabic. They also have parts of the Bible that they consider their holy texts, (these parts being the Gospels, Psalms, The Pentateuch/Torah, among others.) but they do not read them, and thus do not notice the blatant contradictions between the Koran and the parts of the Bible."
That is why there are translations of the Qur'an to English (another other languages), and why Muslims try to learn Classical Arabic during their lifetimes or read tafsirs or commentary on how the Arabic is used. Yes, reading the Qur'an in a translation is not reading it in its pure form, but in addition to our reading in the language we understand, we are encouraged to listen to the recitation of it in Arabic for spiritual purposes and to gain rewards from God. Recitations of the Qur'an are beautiful, in fact the first time I heard it, I thought it was music.
Memorizing the Qur'an is an honored tradition in the Islamic faith, and during the 5 prayers Muslims are required to recite passages from the Qur'an. The first word ever revealed to Prophet Muhammad was Iqra, which means Read! Yes, there are plenty of Muslims who do not read the whole Qur'an, but there are a lot more that do than you may think ;-).
Yes you are correct that we take some of the other holy books to be ours, but we also believed they were corrupted from their original form. So the passages from those other texts fall into 3 categories: 1. Passages that do not conflict with the Qur'an we accept, 2. Passages that conflict with the Qur'an we consider to be corrupted, and 3. Passages that neither agree or conflict with the Qur'an we can neither fully reject or fully accept, so we remain neutral.
I hope that clears some things up. Your post makes an important point...we must always have the courage to think!
~Kay
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