Revealed Knowledge and True Believers

I am always curious why people would claim any connection to the Bible when they don’t really care for what it says. The fundamental issue to me is that it claims to be revealed knowledge. If you accept that it is revealed knowledge, truth that we could not come by another way, then shouldn’t you make every effort to let that knowledge guide you in your behavior? And if you don’t believe it is revealed…why keep it around at all, surely you can find another book or perhaps even write your own?

For those of us that do accept the Bible as knowledge revealed from God it seems to me it would serve us well to remember a few things. The Book of Genesis, the book of origins or beginnings, sets the tone in its first few pages. Whether you believe the stories to be literal or metaphorical doesn’t matter, the lessons are the same.

The first truth revealed in the scriptures is that God is our Creator. We all came from Him and that linage can be traced back through the generations. We are directly connected to God. After our creation, the first lesson He instructs us in is that we have been given freedom of choice. We can choose to obey our creator, to accept what He declares is good and evil, and we’ll live. Or we can take it upon ourselves to decide what is good and what is evil and be subject to death. Being the independently minded creatures we are, we chose the latter…and have suffered with that decision ever since. You see, only God, our Creator can determine what is good and what is evil. Who could be better than The Manufacturer to know how His creation works best?

God’s next lesson, revealed through the story of Cain and Able, is that God determines what is and what is not acceptable worship to Him. We have largely ignored that lesson through the millennia and have opted to do what feels more appropriate to us. We have wanted to feel, more religious, so we’ve created our own rituals and temples and rules among other things to satisfy us…and tell ourselves that we are satisfying God.

In a like manner, only God can determine what is and isn’t holy. Only God can lift up something from the mundane and set it apart for a special purpose…one dedicated to Him. What makes both time and space holy is the presence of God. God created holy time in His creation of the Sabbath. He set that time apart from the mundane as specially consecrated to Him. He declared a physical space in the tabernacle, and later in Solomon’s temple, to be holy space. Here again, we humans aren’t content with what God declares holy so we step in and correct His mistakes for Him. What do you suppose would have happened, when Moses approached the burning bush and God told him to remove his shoes because the ground he walked on was holy, if Moses had said: “ I’ll take my shoes off over there…that patch of ground looks more holy than this one”? (We probably wouldn’t even know the name Moses today is my guess. )

So, God reveals Himself to us in scriptures, He reveals what is good and what is evil, He reveals what forms of worship He finds acceptable and He reveals what is holy. God reveals the laws that should govern our behavior individually and socially. These are themes that run throughout the Bible in story after story. The scriptures reveal for us the Creators instruction manual for the care and maintenance of the human race. These should be the very things that guide everyone calling himself a believer. God reveals much more if you reflect on it. For the believer, history has a beginning, a purpose and a destiny. For the believer a missing dimension in human affairs is revealed, a spiritual dimension that interacts with this physical dimension in human psychology and in human affairs. That revelation alone gives us new insight into so many things.

Two questions should be on the minds of every believer. The first question is whether or not we are really making an effort to know what God reveals? The second is: are we willing to accept that revelation and make and effort to live by it? No one understands all the truth the scriptures reveal. The Bible is a book of layers, each time one reads it one can glean new levels of understanding. God reveals to us that we are responsible for what we come to understand. If we are faithful and obedient in a little…more is revealed.

Some, calling themselves believers, have attempted to distort every aspect of the revealed knowledge in scriptures. They ignore the danger in doing so at the risk of their own lives.

There are churches these days that claim to be Christian and worship ‘the goddess’. No doubt God has feminine aspects in His nature since He created men and women in His image…but He reveals Himself to us as a father throughout scripture. To ignore that is to disobey the God revealed in the scriptures. That is addressed in the very first commandment. Some attempt to remake God in an image more comfortable to themselves, one that fits, not what the scriptures reveal, but what their own hearts and minds limit Him to. That's a form of idolatry and it’s addressed in the second commandment. Many call themselves by the name of God and make little or no effort to follow His way of life. That is addressed in the third commandment. The forth commandment reveals what time God has declared holy. Most believers don’t bother with that one either. They choose instead to pick their own day and declare it holy while trampling on the one God has designated.

The last six commandments don’t so much reveal things that man can’t find out another way. In fact many human cultures and traditions have come to understand what they contain as the best way to live. Those obedient to them are rare and are among the wisest of human beings. Life itself has instructed them in the wisdom of obeying the way of life laid out in the last six commandments. To the believer, obedience to all the commandments against our own desires is an act of worship. It is an act of worship that God readily accepts. In fact He says if we love Him we will keep His commandments. To one who understands the truth of the commandments and still disobeys them their own understanding condemns them.

One of the biggest misunderstandings among believers is taking knowledge that has been revealed to them and, instead of using it to become a better person the way it was intended, they use it to hit each other over the heads with. There are many traditional churches full of people who will readily tell you who is and who isn’t saved. But God reveals to us that He is the judge…we are told not to judge. God reveals that He is a just and merciful father, but many twist some verse or two to claim that infants dieing before reaching maturity or people who have never heard the message of the Christ will be condemned to an ever-burning hell. These people miss the big picture by misconstruing the details. These are the folks that will no doubt lecture Christ that He should never have allowed the thief on the cross to enter paradise! Where would God be without our advice!?

Then there are those that go to the other extreme and distort the meaning of love to excuse whatever they want. “I only beat my wife because I love her too much!” “I slept with my best friends wife because I fell in love with her!” There are those that call Sodomy, ‘homosexual love’ and pederasts ‘lovers of children’. God calls love obedience to Him. Love reaches out to give to others…it doesn’t desire for self.

The road to being a believer is full of pitfalls and everyone of us will fall into more than one. We can always find our way out if we remember that only God determines what is good and what is evil, what is holy and how He will be worshipped. To believe Him is to trust Him. The measure of a believer is in openly and honestly seeking to understand what God reveals to them…and in making an effort to live it. The true believer repents when they fall and they get back up and continue on the path that God has revealed to them. The true believer lives justly, loves mercy and walks humbly with their God.

To Be a Christian...

There was a commercial that recently made the news because it was produced by a church and network TV refused to air it. It staged a church building to look like a night club where there was a line of people waiting to get in and there were two 'bouncer-like' figures that decided who would and wouldn’t be allowed. While it never mentioned gays, or any other group per se, the implication was clear that homosexuals were not allowed in that church. The church that produced the commercial then made the pitch that, unlike the church that wouldn’t let some people in, everyone was welcome in it.

Network TV had their reasons for not airing the commercial. I’m not concerned here with what their thinking was. It generated controversy in the religious community over the implication. Some believe that homosexuals shouldn’t be allowed in Christian churches because the Bible clearly labels that lifestyle as sinful. The other side says that everyone should be allowed in church and Christ wouldn’t turn anyone away from fellowship. Other commentators have correctly identified the heart of the issue as being the central controversy of our time in religious circles…literal interpretation of scriptures versus a metaphorical interpretation.

First I’d like to say that I think both sides that have polarized around this are wrong. Anyone should be allowed to attend a church. No one should be turned away for who they are….not homosexuals, not adulterers, not fornicators, not liars…no one.

The issue of allowing them to remain in a church is quite different. Church is supposed to exist to change people…not to be changed by them. Sinners should all be welcome…but they should be expected to put their sins out of their lives to remain. Homosexuality is no different than adultery or fornication. They are all identified in the Bible as sexual sins that must be repented of to atone with God. All sins need to be repented of to atone with God…period. To repent is to put that behavior out of your life and return to obedience to God. That is a keystone message of Christianity. God decides what is sin and what is not, no one else does, including a church. Another message of Christianity is that the scriptures identify what God reveals to us as sin…literally. In other words…the book means what it says.

There are many things in scripture open to interpretation. When such things are encountered a consistent set of rules should be applied. The first rule should be that the Bible interprets the Bible. When scriptures tell us that wise men followed a star to where the Christ-child was, it could mean a literal star, except that stars don’t move that way. A star is symbolic for an angel in other parts of scripture. The interpretation that the star was an angel can be supported by adhering to the rule that the Bible interprets the Bible…without having to suspend the laws astronomical bodies must adhere to.

The problem with metaphorical interpretation of the scriptures is whom is qualified to interpret what the metaphors mean. Some argue that the church has that authority and that each age of the church can reinterpret scriptures for the needs of their generation. This is not a new controversy…it is one that has divided Catholics and Protestants for centuries. The Protestant reformation began with the motto: “Solo Scriptura…only the scriptures”. In our time the old controversy is dividing Protestants too but, unlike the Catholic church who asserts that it is the final authority, there is no clear authority recognized by Protestants for who correctly interprets metaphorical symbolism. If such interpretation is open to change with each generation then why have scriptures at all? They would become meaningless in such a system.

The last issue around this “central controversy of our day” is whether individuals have the right to expect a church to change to accommodate them. An African American may want to join the Ku Klux Klan…but why? Why would one want to join an organization that is against who one is? Wouldn’t it be better to simply go off and start one’s own organization…one more sympathetic to one’s own cause? For Homosexuals and Adulterers (and any other sinners) to join a church and refuse to change is only to delude themselves. God demands that we change to atone with Him…He will not change to atone with us. He has given His only begotten Son as a sacrifice for our sins…if we will repent, accept that sacrifice, and continue to work to put sin out of our lives He will allow us to come to Him. A part of the message in God allowing His own son to be sacrificed to atone for our sins is just how repugnant sin is to God...it smells of death because that's where it leads. Your faith should make you better than you are. If it is doing its job, your church should make you too uncomfortable to live in sin. To come into contact with the will of God should make you change for the better.

We will never be without sin in our lives as long as we are mortal. But we will have the help of God’s Holy Spirit to aid us in fighting sin as long as we are willing. We can’t give up the struggle and expect God to change to accommodate us. The reward is in the struggle.

Human beings may be able to storm the gates of a human organization…but they will never storm the gates of the spiritual Body of Christ. The only ones welcome to stay there are repentant sinners…and that applies to all of us.

THE BOOK

I have in my possession a book. It is the product of many years of compiled wisdom. Many authors contributed to it. This book purports to be a guide for how to remain safe and get along with each other.

It gives specific laws that if everyone obeyed…would make our society much safer. Many people have read this book and figured it was only a guide to live by, it was never to be taken literally.

Most people rationalize that it need not be taken literally. We can pick and choose what we would like to obey in it. After all…we are all rational adults and can decide for ourselves what is right and what is wrong…

Most people that have read it don’t live by its’ laws on a daily basis…even though they know on some level that to disobey those laws can endanger them.

All who have read it know that it speaks of a higher authority, a higher authority that is always watching us. If we continue to break the laws of the book, it tells us that one day we will stand before that higher authority and have to answer for our actions…

That authority can and does impose penalties for breaking the laws contained in the book. But most people behave as if they aren’t being watched?

You see there are basically two kinds of people…those that take the book literally, and believe that it means what it says. These folks believe that the book is an instructional manual and should be followed as such. And then there are those that believe that it is only a guide, written metaphorically, and needn’t be followed to the letter… The problem with the latter is deciding exactly who is qualified to interpret the metaphors. If it is, in fact, only intended to be metaphorical….why have a book at all?

Each of us has to make a decision about how we feel about the writings in the book. Each of us faces the choice about whether to obey the laws in the book or to just hope that others obey the laws in the book. That is the choice after all… We ALL want everyone else to obey the laws of the book!

Everyone knows the book I’m referring to… The State Drivers Handbook of course!
What did you think I was talking about??

From these shores...

The estimated death toll of the earthquake generated tsunami in the Indian Ocean stands now at about 150,000 souls. The hearts and pocket books of the American people have opened to the less fortunate members of our human family affected by this catastrophe. Say what you will about this nation. We have our problems and our faults to be sure…but this people also has true nobility in their veins. This is a nation with a huge heart. It is in moments like this that our light truly shines on the world. It is in moments like this I have hope for humanity. I am proud to be a member of the most generous nation in the history of the world…I am proud to be an American.