Seedling,
I see the issue here, I think.
You seem to follow this logic:
Man is fallible, man wrote the Bible, therefore the Bible is fallible.
My contention is:
God is perfect, His revelation is perfect, the Bible is His revelation, therefore the Bible is perfect.
I agree that without our spirit experiencing God, we can never understand what God wants us to understand, as you say.
However, was it not for the Bible, you would have no idea that there was a God that sent His son to die for our sins. You would not understand the context of the crucifixion, nor the wonder of God's creation.
Before you can know God, you must know about God. God's general revelation is His creation, including you and your soul. God chose to reveal His laws, thinking, emotions and the underlying message of spirituality and spiritual growth that you stress in a verbal fashion to us, and that is contained in the Bible. One cannot test the validity of a spiritual experience without the Bible, the most spectaculer encounters are void without the verbal explanation carrying intellectual context.
Since the words of the Bible were "breathed by God" (2 Tim 3:16), it is the only objective and explicit revelation by God, and it is impossible to look to God without looking to His revelation. No other source of information about God is more precise, accurate and comprehensive.
The Bible acts as an organic whole, with the golden thread of Jesus's ancestry running right through it. The content of the Bible was so much more than what the writers' natural intelligence could conceive. The human element you seem so worried about is indeed present, but serves only to show that God exercised total control over the writers' lives. When the time came, their backgrounds and personalities were perfectly suited to what God wanted them to write.
The Bible exhibits a perfect coherence, the content displays the unity, organisation and design one would expect from a single divine mind.
I know my understanding is lacking and maybe my interpretation is lacking, but the bible is lacking, too. The people who wrote the bible back then are just like me, no different.
You keep on asserting that the Bible is lacking, but then proceed to apply biblical principles to criticize it. Our knowledge of good and evil, of right and wrong, of truth and lies are revealed to us from the Bible, and made intelligible by our God-given spirit. The one does not work without the other in the Christian faith. You would not be able to level this criticism without having the biblical framework by which to do so. If this is untrue, then please provide a description of how you came to realize the difference between truth and deceipt, without taking anything from Scripture. The question then remains as to which part of the Bible is lacking, as every part of the divine revelation has value to someone, somewhere. Furthermore, my contention is that the Bible is absolute truth, for to deny that is to deny that we can know about God, and know God.
And we can still be very superstitious, and worship God superstitiously, even though we are Christians.
No argument here, we need to continue to search and grow in wisdom.
But not in the way you think. His thoughts are not our thoughts and his ways are not our ways. Who can comprehend the Creator? I don't dare anymore.
The Bible is our only source of specific revelation that can help us comprehend Gods will. I agree that we as mere humans can never fully comprehend the omniscience that is God, but we have insight into Gods mind through His revelation. This is not merely another book, there is plenty of empirical evidence that it is extremely unique, and has many characteristics not found in any other religions writings. I don't intend to quote empirical evidence though, since my belief is noted above.
You know I never could quite totally belief that the bible was the complete and literal word of God. I always had a hard time with this concept but tried to push my doubts down deep. It's not something I ever dared voice, though. Because the people at church and their experts were more knowledgeable and spiritual than me. So I had to be wrong
Firstly, I think we have had enough discourse about your first statement, though it seems slightly contradictory with your earlier statement that you cannot point out where you think the problems are. If you cannot be specific, then your assertion is hard to substantiate.
As for the rest of this paragraph, I already stated in my previous message that no two people can ever believe in exactly the same way, since we are all created unique. Just because people seem more spiritual to you does not mean that God intend for you to believe in the same way that they do. What is more important is how you translate your uniqueness into His service. I do however have to stick with my contention that you cannot fully know God and His purpose for you unless you study scripture, and believe what you read.
Then Jesus comes along and turns everything upside down! I kinda felt sorry for the Jews because they sincerely believed that their religion beliefs and rituals were from "God" …and in a limited sense, I think they were ... But then Jesus abolishes all this ... he finds a lost sheep on the sabbath and cures a withered hand, raises people from the dead ...in demonstration that hanging onto these rituals can fly right in the face of love ... He said he came not to abolish the ten commandements, but to fulfil them and that we must worship the Creator in spirit and reality.
All of this history was what was needed for Isreal to bring forth Jesus, and His coming to do what he did was predicited in great detail throughout the Old Testament. There was no ambiguity, Jesus would come to establish a new covenant, and He did. There were those Isrealites that believed it, that is how Christianity started. That some were blind to it was also foretold. How can we worship the Creator in spirit and reality without knowing Him? How do you know what He wants? How do you know that you must worship Him? How do you know what worship means? All the answers are contained in His revelation, and without it, you would not be able to assert this.
August, I can't tell you specifically what parts I think are true and what parts aren't … it's just when I read them, I am starting to read between the lines. It's not like I'm doubting … but I'm beginning to see the bible in a new way.
If I understand correctly, then you are saying in this paragraph, and the rest which I did not quote, that you are experiencing wisdom that goes beyond the physical meaning of the words. This is what I meant earlier, the combination of scripture and spirit brings wisdom, and if we agree on that, I have no further quarrel with your statement here. I would still emphasize though that without the starting point of the Bible, one would not know to look for the deeper meaning, one would be totally ignorant.
It's like … either take what people wrote thousands of years ago and conform my experience to IT and make all my spiritual experiences work within it's parameters, or trust the spirit that the Creator put inside of me (and inside of every human) and let it discern the spirits and the words, and be free to question and explore.
Maybe it's just me, but again I see a contradiction here. I agree fully with you that God gave all of us a free spirit to question and explore, and he encourages us to do so. However, without the writing of thousands of years ago working to an intelligible conclusion with your spirit, you cannot know this. You would not even be able to compare your experiences to theirs and make a judgement. Of course your unique belief is as valid as theirs, but remember that they were the ones who made it possible for you to believe.
So believing in miracles and fire from heaven, and Jonah in the belly of the whale etc. does nothing for me. But when Jesus says something like "love your neighbor" or "take care of the log in your own eye and then you can remove the splinter in your brother's eye" and my heart is open to this and I truly see it, I believe that is the miracle that will change people. And I have faith in that.
Miracles were done to show unbelievers that God existed. If you already know this, then you are right, you are not the intended audience. However, it may be the very thing that leads an unbeliever to think and come to believe, and as such, should not be dismissed by you as being invalid or untrue. The Bible is Gods revelation to all people, not just to me or you. And we while we don't have the luxury of picking and choosing which parts of scripture are true or valid, we do have the luxury of praying for wisdom as to what it means in our context, our uniqueness and within the service that God has called us to. Without the inspired writings of the NT writers, you would not have the priviledge of knowing that Jesus said these things. of course God is the only one that can work miracles and get people to turn to Him through the working of the Holy Spirit.
Just like it says in the Bible....
