Yes, sometimes I hate the Bible. I hate it because it is difficult to accept, yet it is completely impossible to reject. The Bible is always right & the Bible speaks truth, however hard it may be to swallow. How do I know that it is true? Well, I extend. I extend its authority from those areas which I have tested and experienced as being true to encompass the whole thing. Is this a foolish thing to do? No, that I doubt. How can I do such things & still keep my rational, logical mind from rebelling? I guess, it falls down to a logical argument, which deductively is flawed, but which inductively could work.
So, the Bible says that if you do certain things, like believe in Jesus Christ's death on the cross as a substitutionary sacrifice for our own sins, and choose to make Jesus the ultimate authority in your life, then you will be saved from the "second death" and be given eternal life, spent with Him. It also says that if you spend a lot of time getting to know Jesus & trying to follow the things He taught us, that you will experience abundant, fulfilling life & "bear much fruit." The Bible also says that the name & sacrificial blood of Christ both have ultimate power, that those who claim purification through His sacrifice are given the same authority as He had over all things: those who love Him and want to see His Father glorified may ask anything on Him in His name, and it will be given. The Bible also says that if we test the Spirits, no anti-Christ spirit will be able to confess that Jesus came in the flesh and was the Messiah (or Christ / saviour of the world). Then, the Bible claims that every part of it is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting & training in righteousness.
The Bible makes explicit claims about followers (and hard-core lovers) of Christ being able to perform super-natural feats, including: prophecy, wisdom, discerning the nature of supernatural activity, knowledge, healing, working miracles, faith, speaking in foreign languages and interpreting foreign languages (among others). The Bible itself reports such events happening in the early church, and I am certain that there are informal records (maybe even formal? If you know of any, please comment or e-mail me) of such activities after the records of the New Testament. Why am I so certain? Well, because I myself have witnessed many of these things in my own adventures in life, as well as having talked with others who have witnessed and experienced several wondrous things as well.
My Life's Support
I myself have personally dealt with demon-possessed individuals, having cast out demons & having been able to distinguish the real thing from fakers. I have personally seen metaphorical visions of situations which end up being just as the visions imply. I have dreamt dreams where I am shown events (both important as well as sometimes trivial) years in advance of their occurrence. I have been spiritually attacked by demons (not a fun experience, just to let you know). I have come to know things that I should have by no normal means known. I may have been used by God to heal somebody of a chronic illness (I have bad follow-up. The last I knew, though, the individual was illness-free). I myself have been healed from chronic illness. And that's just me.
I know people who have had enormous trauma inflicted on their bodies & who have been miraculously healed. A guy I knew was a window installer & as he was moving a pane of glass from his truck, the whole stack of glass panes fell on top of him, pulverising his ribs & pelvis. His co-worker called 911 and help came quickly to do what they could. The paramedics didn't think that he would live, as they put his stretcher into the helicopter that was rushing him to the hospital, but his family & friends had been informed of the accident & were praying for his healing. While in flight, the guy actually felt his bones move around inside his torso, going back to their proper locations, and when the chopper landed at the hospital, the medical staff--who thought that the guy would need an extensive stay in ICU--checked him over & were astonished that all of the recorded internal injuries no longer existed. They kept him for observation for a bit & then discharged the guy from the hospital (I think) a couple of days later. This guy was my counsellor at one of the many summer camps I had attended while growing up.
A decade ago, there was a lady in my family's church who had been diagnosed with lymphoma. As soon as the church found out, we prayed for her healing. She had been scheduled to begin a full regimen of chemo therapy & radiation, but when the doctors checked her again to see how much the cancer had advanced since the initial diagnosis, they discovered that there were no traces of any cancerous activity in her body left at all.
A man at one of my other churches has a festering sore on one of his eyes. At the time, he didn't believe in God or any of the whole Christianity stuff at all. One day, he was told about this preacher who had come to town, so he went to see what all the fuss was about. There, he was told about Jesus Christ & the love, grace, forgiveness and power over death that Christ offers. This guy didn't think much of it, and pretty much wrote the whole idea of God off. The sore on his eye was getting worse, as time progressed, and there was a possibility that he would end up blinded by this. So, one evening, as he was looking into the bathroom mirror, he made God a deal. He said, "Alright, God, if you really are real, then heal my eye." He went to bed, and waking up the next day, he could see out of both eyes. After heading to the mirror to check things out, he saw that the infection had completely disappeared. I still know this man: he's the boss of one of my high school friends.
If... Then
I have seen God work and move. I have heard stories first-hand of how God has miraculously interacted in people's lives. I have even myself had interactive, two-way conversations with the Lord of Lords (no, I am not schizophrenic). There is no shadow of a doubt in my mind that God exists, that Jesus' claims about Himself are real and true. By extension, then, since Jesus' claims about Himself ring true & other supporting claims that the Bible makes ring true again and again, I extend this verification of accurate claims on to those internal proclamations the Bible makes about itself as being inspired by God and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting & training in righteousness. Do I do this with trepidation or hesitation? No. Why? Because of the massive wealth of external support for many aspects of Biblical claims. Would I hesitate to extend veracity to another text that claimed to be true, and which also had portions of itself that were verifiable? Yes, probably. Unless I had as much exposure to that text & as much experience with what it has said & how it interacts with the world as I have had with the Bible (going on over 22 years now), I would most likely be hesitant to assume that just because some parts of it are true, the rest can also be safely considered true by extension.
Even though the Bible doesn't seem fair at times, I must hold unswervingly to its correctness. God says that He's the same now as He was 3500 years ago, then I must hold that as truth. Why does He seem more silent & less active? Who knows... Perhaps it is due to a shift in perspective: The Bible records God's action in the Old Testament, for the most part, and not His inaction. Remember that the first 1656 years of recorded history in the book of Genesis are contained within chapters 2-6. Five chapters of the Bible span sixteen hundred years, and through that whole span, not much is said about what God did. The next three chapters cover 150 days--the same amount of textual space as the 800 years that preceded it! Why? Because God was doing something spectacular: He was purging the earth with water. As soon as the flood subsided, though, 500 years of history pass briskly in less than two chapters. Other fast-forwards in history occur rampantly throughout the Bible. Its recorded history highlights when God was active and skips over the times when He wasn't. And--as a general rule--people like Adam, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, Gideon & the likes were the exceptions to the rule. Billions of people have traipsed the earth, and we have only a handful of examples where God worked amazingly in a few people's lives.
Does this mean that God is inactive in everyone else’s lives, though? By no means. Take, for example, Enoch. This guy knew God so well that he was one of two recorded individuals in the entire Biblical record who went to be with God without having first died. How much do we know about him and his 365 years of life, spent "walking with God"? Four verses. Four verses! A guy who was so in tune with God that the Lord took him away from earth before he died is given four verses. That guy must've been pretty special for us not to have been able to learn anything from his life. David, the man after God's own heart, is given almost a full textual book in the Old Testament, and his screw-ups are famous: killing one of his trusting friends in order to sleep with that man's wife. Yes, we can learn from David's life.
Therefore
So, what am I getting at? What is the moral of this story? I guess it's that the Bible becomes frustrating when it gets taken out of its historical & temporal context. I cannot verify one way or another that God is any less active now than He was 3,000 years ago. I do know, however, that He still does crazy shit, and that He does it a lot. Perhaps one of the reasons why we do not hear about as amazing things happening to people as what happened to the Patriarchs may be because it isn't communicated to us. Perhaps, it also has to do with a perceived decrease in the amount of faith/reliance on God today--even in those who believe--than those of millennia past. I'm not entirely sure. What I do know, however, is that it is impossible for God to lie, that He is faithful, and that He is just. Jesus says that He will be with us, even to the end of the age. However, He also asks, “When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?” "And He [Jesus] did not do many miracles there because of their unbelief."
Something to chew on, I guess.
13 comments:
Interesting stories, but what exactly do they prove about the Bible? Supposing that God really does answer the prayers of Christians, and even converse with some of us, does this mean that our beliefs about the theological or historical accuracy of the Bible are true? Even to argue that these experiences point to the truth of Christianity we'd have to canvas people of other religions, as well as atheists, to determine whether any such people have similar experiences. (And what would we conclude if we founds that, say, Hindus had such experiences?) To make even a tentative statement about the truth of the Bible, we'd have to go further and compare the miraculous experiences of Christians who hold a variety of beliefs about the Bible.
Of course we'd have to take a pretty large sample to have credible results. And we'd have to get into the nasty business of verifying all these claims.
I would be interested to see the results of such a study, but I don't know if they would convince me of anything. The idea that God's action in someone's life symbolizes his approval of their theology doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
I would like to hear about the claims of Jesus and the Bible which "ring true again and again". My own recent study has turns up few of the other sort.
I was going to add something about all scripture being God-breathed, but I think I may write it up for my blog instead.
Jake;
It is precisely the point that Biblical claims cannot be deductively & conclusively verified that I was intending to make. The important mention is that of faith. God does act & He does move. Does He do so in ways that we could expect, imagine, predict or even comprehend? Well, yes--sometimes. Sometimes, no. These mentions of God working & moving in my life & in the lives of those with whom I have had contact be no means "prove" that God moves or works or even exists. They do, however, provide correlationary support. Does God interact & does Jesus intercede exclusively for Christians? Who knows? The uncontemplative response is "of course He's Christian-exclusive". But is that a correct line of reasoning? Now--I am by no means displaying pluralistic advocacy for salvation. I am just postulating that perhaps God comes & interacts with more people than just Christians.
Does the possibility exist for God to bless & manifest Himself to non-Christians, non-Jews & non-believers? Most definitely. Were this not the case, then the Bible would necessarily be errant, and we would never have received any word of instruction (nor would it ever have been written). Abraham began as a pagan. Adam, Eve and Noah never once proclaimed to be a part of an organised religion. Enoch walked with God, yet couldn't possibly have been Christian or even Jewish--since he lived centuries (I think maybe even ore than a millennium) before Abraham was even born.
Yes, there is Biblical support for God interacting with the lives of those who do not expressly follow Him. Jacob/Israel is an excellent example. God has every right & intention to bless those He wants to bless & curse those He wants to curse. This, however, does by no means imply that those God blesses necessarily are followers of the truth (nor does it necessarily imply that they have access or comprehension of said truth). What it does imply is that God interacts with humanity.
Now, because the Bible makes claims about itself & because it makes further claims about those who follow its guidelines, and because these claims about those who follow Biblically-oriented (ergo, Christ-filled and crazy, selfless loving) lives prove to exhibit the results that the Bible predicts--not to mention the extensive sample size of said study, however informal it may be--I feel safe in extending its authority towards its internal claims. I recognise that this is a logical flaw, yet it is also a flaw that cannot be overcome empirically. Furthermore, to evaluate the truth of the statement, "all things that the Bible claims to be true are true," we would have to have started this study at the genesis of mankind. Since, then, we cannot accomplish this, and since our resources for evaluation are limited, we can only induce that, "all things that the Bible claims to be true seem to be true." As a result of my inductive study (aka, the past quarter century of my existence), I can safely state that since the Bible statements seem to be true--in all of my experiences--then, its statement about self-truth also seems to be true.
To make a long-winded re-comment short, it is not the fact that God interacts in people's lives that provides support for their theology, it is our ability to interact with God that does.
"I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me." --Jesus, John 14:6
I see. So what exactly are the results of living a Biblically-orientated life that the Bible predicts?
If we want to evaluate the statement "all things that the Bible claims to be true are true," I think claims about those who live according to the Bible are not the only sort that we can examine. Are you also interested in historical claims, the prophetic record, internal consistency and so forth?
Thanks, Daniel.. Most glad that you agree...
Happy Valentines to you as well.
Hey Jake;
Some claims that the Bible makes about those who follow its teachings largely are contained in the New Testament (for current outcomes and also those affirmed from the previous God/Man contract, which was tied more exclusively to the Israeli nation) and the Law of the OT. Jesus' claims about coming to give us peace, support, overflowing life, love, authority and wholeness come to mind. Also, another partial list of outcomes is cited by Paul to the church in Galatia: the production/posession of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control in one's life.
And as for evaluating the verity of Biblical truth, I'm pretty sure that it would be impossible to come to an authoritative conclusion based upon empirical data. As I mentioned previously, in order to properly examine its claims of truth/rightness/accuracy, one would need to have access to information which only could have existed during both the times that the content in the Bible occurred and the times when the content in the Bible was recorded (orally or textually). What it boils down to is an inductive examination of an incomplete data-set. Each and every person is forced to make a judgement of the information with which they are faced. It is unfortunate that such a judgement cannot be made with exclusive certainty, and therefore, it is fundamentally essential (forgive the redundancy--it's used for effect)that a choice to believe whether the Bible's claims are valid or not be made in the absence of certainty. Such a choice, we English speakers define as "faith."
As a result, whether we believe or not, we must all ultimately choose a side to this binary quandary. 1 or 0. Yes or no. True or false. And... the difficult thing to this all is that the Biblical claims cannot be validated exclusive of engaging in a Biblically-oriented lifestyle. One cannot evaluate whether the Bible's self statememts are true without first believing that they are. And that belief isn't a mere acquiescence--it's necessarily a life-founding, action-motivating belief that says "I'm 125% in!" ...I guess that's why God says that those who want to find Him can only really do so if they search for Him with the completeness of their entire being (with a whole, intense, unabashed longing-type search).
Faith. Yay. Objections? Take a peek at a post-script from one of my blog entries dated a couple of years ago:
"A question to ponder" This after-thought discusses the inherent subjectivity of perspective, reason and Self. It's a fun--yet involved--look into "reality."
LE.
Logically, isnt' it possible that the Bible is partially true or inspiried?
For example, the gospels could be accurate records of the real Son of God, but without the interpetation of the writers being God-breathed.
Filth-man;
The only way that you can have your cake & eat it too in this fashion were to say that the Biblical self-statement in II Tim 3:16 applies only to the Old Testament, therefore placng uncertainty (and ultimately, the revocaktion of authority) in the New Testament. As soon as one says, "Parts of the NT may be inspired," we are left with a choose-your-own-adventure style of Christian truth, effectively creating a religious moral-relativsm. Saying that the underlying content may be true, but qualifying it with a statement about the possible erroneous understanding/interpretation of such content by its writers is something that I just cannot accept. As soon as you go there, you might as well say, "Well, since Jesus passed out on the cross, everyone there probably thought that He was dead, and then when they state that he rose from the dead three days later, he probably just recovered from the trauma (for the most part)." Or even better: "Gospel writers state that Jesus said that He was the son of God. Since Adam was also called the son of God, it's perfectly justifiable to state that Jesus was claiming that he was nothing more than a human like us & that we are all sons of God, perfect and complete in our own ways."
Doing that is scary. It lets loose the torrent potential heresies, based upon what we think the Bible should be saying, instead of actually letting it say what it really says.
LE.
I would agree with Filth-Man that this quandary is not binary. There is a wide range of possible hermeneutical positions, and many factors must influence our decision. Empirical data, textual criticism, etc., are unlikely to ever give us rock-solid proof for any given position, but they can and should have some influence. For example, the fact that (as far as I can tell) there seem to be factual contradictions in both the OT and the NT is a strong argument against hardcore historical concordism.
Nevertheless, some hold that to deny the perfect historical accuracy of any portion of the Bible is to deny its inspiration. Others, influenced by the findings of science, believe that historical infallibility applies only after Gen 11, or only to the NT, or not at all, but that all scripture is theologically and morally perfect. Still others have difficulty accepting that any portion of scripture is necessarily theologically/morally inerrant, but that it is nonetheless useful and inspired in a similar way as the work of Mozart, van Gogh, CS Lewis or Annie Dillard. Of course there are other positions between and beyond those I've mentioned.
From my perspective, to say that everything in the Bible must be true is like saying that anything in a history or physics text must be true. We recognize the usefulness, authority, and (to a lesser extent) inspiration of a wide variety of books which we recognize to be less than inerrant. Of course some people deny Biblical infallibility out of a desire to pick and choose, but not everyone does this, and "religious moral-relativism" is no more a necessary result of this position than anti-realism is a necessary result of admitting the fallibility of science.
LE, I agree with your critique of a "partially inspired" Bible. This is not my own belief. I was just pointing out that it's logically possible (though theologically problematic.)
I would add that there are crap loads of "potential heresies" even among people who believe in total inerrancy. Lots of Biblical literalists differ about what the scripture says about different stuff, and they can't all be correct.
woah woah woah, jake;
If I ever once implied that the Bible is 100% literally true, then you seem to have gotten the wrong idea of what I've been trying to say. Instead of advocating uneducated, uncritical swallowing of every pen stroke in the text (which I whole-geartedly do not. Such an understanding of the Bible is disrespectful, foolish and pretty much a bane to God, Christ & Christianity), my intent was to recognise the Bible's content as right, correct, perfect, etc.
I will not deny that the Bible contains outright lies. I will not deny that there are passages in the Bible which, if taken literally, could potentially cause all sorts of problems for Christianity, society and all of creation. In stead, what I have been tying to say is that the Bible claimes to be right in what it says, and it is supported by the outcome of executing its commands.
No one in their right mind would ever give 100%, outright credence to Solomon's claim: "I found one upright man among a thousand,but not one upright woman among them all," in Ecc 7:28. Such a "literal" reading would(could) state that the Bible claims total and utter depravity to all women everywhere. As inspired scripture (and as a person not undersitanding literary convention...), this passage would have to be held as rock-solid truth. Unfortunately, the word "hyperbole" comes to mind...
Furthermore, the objections you raise about Biblical history/errancy are largely addressed by what your commenter BruceA wrote about these supposed historical errors--that they indeed are not errors so much as they are literary choices used to drive home a prominent theme. Remember (you implied thus yourself, and I addressed this in a comment above), history is never objective & it is impossible for it to be so. History is a story based on facts (and, if you're interested in current psychological studies on memory formation, so is what you think happened to you yesterday) coloured by the person telling it.
Yes, there will be discrepancies between accounts, and yes, there will be ommissions, but that does not automatically imply that inconcsistency equals error.
This statement holds eversomuch more true when we talk about English translation. Not only does one now have to contend with the original author's understanding of what was going on (or what they were trying to say), but we now also have to sift through what the translating editor (or committee of editors) thinks the original texts are actually saying so that you & I can get a grasp of what's actually going on in the underlying foreign tongue. Of course... this gets further befuddled when an individual comments upon Biblical inconsistencies & errors when only looking at one English translation (instead of comparing across translations, or better yet--going to the original source). As in all history, and all translation (and, of course, all communication forwarding...purple monkey dishwasher [yay telephone game!]), the more iterations that pass between the receiver and the original source, the greater the difficulty of deciphering the original message & the more sifting out of imposed perspective needs to be done.
If Krista heard from Ruth who heard from Jill who heard from Nate who heard from Lisa who heard from Jeff who heard from Molly who heard from Stan who heard from Gary that Jacob's brother overheard Jake saying that he wasn't a Christian, the original message very well could have been, "I don't feel like going to church today." Instead of asking Ruth or Molly or even Gary, don't you think you would get a better appreciation of what really's going through Jake's head if you went and asked him--the primary source--to begin with?
Just a thought...
LE
I didn't say that you said the Bible is 100% literally true, only that some people believe this (or something close to it). My point is that there are a wide variety of positions on this issue, ranging from "every statement in the Bible - theological, moral, geographical or historical - should be taken as literally true, excluding obviously figurative language" to "the Bible is a useful but flawed guide to spirituality" and beyond. Those who hold a more strictly literal view than you may well accuse you of denying the infallibility of scripture and opening the door to "choose-your-own-adventure" Christianity. (I'm not saying that you're position does create "religious moral relativism", I'm just saying other, still less literal positions may not either.)
If we're talking about my own view, I do not forget that history is necessarily subjective, but I ask that we remember that theology is at least as subjective. If we grant that there are historical discrepancies and omissions within the Bible, why can we not be open to the possibility of theological discrepancies and omissions?
Valid point, Jake; and it is also one of the most difficult things about the Bible. As far as packages go, the Word of God isn't a very neatly-wrapped one, I must say. Loose, unfinished ends abound, often leading us into regions of discussion with no other choice left for us but to speculate. Good examples are the concepts of what hell is, how salvation is dispensed (and to whom, and when, and what exactly are the qualifiers... since Hebrews states that Christ died one time for all mankind, does this imply that all are saved, or does it imply that all have access to accepting salvation? Or some other understanding), what the position (and primary role) of Satan is, when angels & spirits were created (and for what purpose, and how they interact with humanity) and, in fact, when all those things not listed in the creation account actually were actually created (In Proverbs, Wisdom claims to have been with God when the the Trinity laid teh foundations of the earth)... ... ... ...
Yes, the list goes on seemingly forever, and unfortunately, there is no way (at least, that I can fathom) for us to come to a conclusive end for everything discussed in The Book. In fact, I am only now just slowly coming around to beliving that a Trinity is indeed a Biblically supported theology (it actually takes some looking to support a trinity, athough evidence of a "plural," yet single, God abounds). There are lots of questions, and lots of speculations.
Perhaps, the Bible's given us the information necessary for us to follow God, and purposefully leaves the other details vague so that we focus on the important parts instead of being bogged down by trivia? Again, another thought... for now ;)
LE.
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