Post by
Michelle Dowell, Co-Contributor
To truly be able to lead and live well, it's important to truly understand what you believe. A lot of people say that they are a Christian and assume that means they know what they believe, but may not live or think much differently than the culture around them that is not Christian these days. We live in a postmodern culture, where this is acceptable to the culture: it's viewed as good to not strongly believe anything because postmodernism is more okay and fine with everyone's beliefs.
If someone were to ask you why you're a Christian, do you know what you'd say? If they asked you what is different abut your religion compared to other religions, would you be able to answer? Does your religion cause you to live differently than people of different religions or those who don't have a religion?
A major difference in the Christian religion compared to others is that it's not our works that get us to Heaven. It's Christ's perfection and faith that does.
Some people think that feeling/emotion is most important in religion and that thinking hinders religion. For instance, feeling that God is for them in that moment, or they made God happy is what they aim for. They feel like that's all they need. But not working to truly understand their beliefs of God and what God wants--that may cause them to feel things to be true that are not true: A person may feel happy and in some sense that makes them feel like God is happy with what they're doing--but really they could be happy in that moment because the sun is shining that day or they had a great meal the day before.
The way for them to truly know that God is happy or accepting of a choice is to truly understand the Bible as much as they can. To think about it. Some people may live in the thought that they can never please God because they feel crappy and nothing seems to go as right as they envisioned it, but really understanding God's true acceptance of us would help them feel like God is still okay with them. Our feelings don't always match the reality of the situation. We are fallen and there are so many factors to what makes us feel certain ways (the weather, how much we eat or sleep, what's going on in the world and in our lives).
Showing posts with label understand. Show all posts
Showing posts with label understand. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
Monday, May 26, 2014
What the Bible Means
The bible says many things which are simple to understand. Often the greatest difficulty understanding the bible is that we wish to fit scripture into our theological system rather than create a theological system around scripture.
The issue which makes theology difficult is that scripture is highly rational and also highly paradoxical. Throughout the bible there is a large amount of rational argumentation appealing to reason. There are also many paradoxes and tensions in scripture.
You see at many times especially in the teaching of Jesus ideas held in tension. There is no contradiction in scripture, but the nature of reality is that many truths are a balance between two extremes which are errors.
We often get scripture wrong because we expend massive effort to simplify it's teaching into a rational system with no tension or paradox. Scripture actually is far easier to understand on its own terms: a system of highly rational belief which also has many tensions and paradoxes within.
It is always the call to wisdom which appears in scripture. You see there is a great nuance to life. You cannot go out and live ethically based on a set of rules without thought and prayer and discernment.
We are often such poor readers of scripture because we come to scripture to learn. We have a certain way we learn. And we fit scripture into our patterns of learning.
Rather we need to first come to scripture to learn how to learn. We must base our efforts to learn around the way in which the bible wishes to instruct us. The bible often does not like easy answers to certain questions, so we must too not like easy answers to questions.
What the bible finds important we must find important. Where the bible offers liberty we must offer liberty. You see the bible is right even when we think it is wrong. We must seek understanding by faith.
The issue which makes theology difficult is that scripture is highly rational and also highly paradoxical. Throughout the bible there is a large amount of rational argumentation appealing to reason. There are also many paradoxes and tensions in scripture.
You see at many times especially in the teaching of Jesus ideas held in tension. There is no contradiction in scripture, but the nature of reality is that many truths are a balance between two extremes which are errors.
We often get scripture wrong because we expend massive effort to simplify it's teaching into a rational system with no tension or paradox. Scripture actually is far easier to understand on its own terms: a system of highly rational belief which also has many tensions and paradoxes within.
It is always the call to wisdom which appears in scripture. You see there is a great nuance to life. You cannot go out and live ethically based on a set of rules without thought and prayer and discernment.
We are often such poor readers of scripture because we come to scripture to learn. We have a certain way we learn. And we fit scripture into our patterns of learning.
Rather we need to first come to scripture to learn how to learn. We must base our efforts to learn around the way in which the bible wishes to instruct us. The bible often does not like easy answers to certain questions, so we must too not like easy answers to questions.
What the bible finds important we must find important. Where the bible offers liberty we must offer liberty. You see the bible is right even when we think it is wrong. We must seek understanding by faith.
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