I have some more substantial posts in the works, but a couple quick things:
First, I know our banner has mysteriously disappeared. Our web guru has switched our provider, not given me access to the new ftp server, and is incommunicado. (Tyler, if you get this, call me!). I’ll be remedying it ASAP.
And secondly, just a minor pet peeve: God gave us the bible. In this bible, he gave us four gospels. In these four gospels, he gave us four different accounts of the life of Christ. That’s fine. He did it that way, and He knows what He’s doing. So please please please don’t complain about it or try to spend your time boiling these accounts down to a single story about Jesus. Evidently God knew we could best understand Christ through the eyes of four different inspired writers. Can’t we leave it that way?
Comments
This entry was posted 2 years, 6 months ago on Monday, September 3rd, 2007 at 6:27 pm and is filed under fides quarens intellectum, the real world intrudes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Of course we can’t just leave it that way! Are you crazy? If we didn’t have a completely linear view of Jesus’s life, we wouldn’t be able to make sense of anything. For instance, what would we do if we only looked at the Gospel of Luke from its own perspective? Its the only gospel that records the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan. We need the other gospels in tact so that we don’t rely too heavily on this “touchy-feely” Jesus. We all know that Jesus’ real purpose on earth, indeed the purpose of God from all time, was to get people into the right place and time so that they would accept Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior. We need all of the gospels to support this!
More than just the gospels, this way of viewing the scriptures can get us into trouble all over the Bible. Take the prophets for example. If we don’t take a completely linear view of apocalyptic literature, then how are we supposed to instruct the people on EXACTLY what will happen at the end times. People need to know all the misery that will occur in those bloody 3 1/2 years so that they can get saved and get a rapture ticket out of there! If I still haven’t convinced you, let me quote a scripture. We must remember to “rightly divide the word of God.” The only possible meaning for this is that God has set up certain time periods (oh, heck, lets call them dispensations). If he has done this, it makes sense that we need to figure out exactly what is going to happen every step of the way. Lets stop all this nonsense about the “mystery” of the Scripture. Theres no mystery. We just need to work a little harder at trying to understand it.
Eric, I fear for you. This kind of thinking is exactly what led to the end of revivalism. Shame.
Sincerely,
—— ——
President of the Society for the Preservation of American Fundamentalism
This will be the only time that I ever use the word “giggle,” on this blog, but Gray… that comment made me giggle.
Thanks, Jake. Its a completely straw man argument and doesn’t really have to do w/ Eric’s post. Sometimes its fun to associate all of the things that you dislike in the world and collectively and shamelessly spit upon them.