Fall where they may

Last entry,  I was struggling with the idea of evangelism.  I figured I needed study to settle my head.  So I took action.  I talked to a trusted friend who counsels me on lots of things.  He told me that he agrees with my approach, but he's also taken flac for it.  But he also told me he's seen others who took the more direct approach.  The proof is in the results...or the fruit, to use the Biblical analogy.

He also reminded me that there are different gifts, and though some groups try to cite the Great Commission as the bottom line of Christianity, it isn't necessarily that way.  Certainly we all have some level of responsibility to share our faith, but that there is a specific gift mentioned for Evangelism.  This reminded me of the discussion about various parts of one body.  How we are built to function as complementary parts, not all the same parts.  So in my mind, this necessarily disproves the interpretation that the Great Commission is the prime directive for every Christian.

Then I also talked to a friend who shares my faith but from a different part of the house.  He came at it from a different denomination, and then switched to one yet further down the hall from the one I came from.  So he helped me understand how those groups interpret the parts of the Bible that I was struggling with.

Then I reread a book (So you Don't Want to Go to Church Anymore) that had first gave me confidence to fully step out of the room I had been raised in.  I had poked my head out and looked up and down the hall of the wide house of Christian views, even looked int the windows of some other rooms.  But this book convinced me I needed to walk out of the one I was in.  I picked up several things I hadn't noticed before and reaffirmed the decision.  This served to help cut a few of the subtler cords that I hadn't fully broken yet.

And from there, I looked up one of the authors and found a podcast (The Jesus Lens) on interpreting the Bible as a chronicle of redemptive flow through time. The story of God's pursuit and salvation of humanity that culminated in Jesus, but continues through to this day and will progressively flow on to the end of time.  It was extremely enlightening to walk through every book this way.  I don't want to provide a cursory summary that will let a reader feel they got the idea and don't need to do the study themselves, so suffice to say this approach resolves many of the contradictory elements such as the nature of God in the Old Testament vs the New and the discrepancies in tone and approach of the New Testament writers themselves, which I mentioned as an issue last time.  I've heard many explanations for these problems, but this one is the best and most unified, to me.  So check it out if you're interested.

By this point, I was feeling more confident, so I even went through and looked up every verse that talks about the Word of God or Word of the Lord.  Actually, I looked up every instance of the word 'word'.  It's over 400 verses.  But I noticed two things:  they never refer to the written word, the scriptures, or the Bible itself.  Honestly, they couldn't refer to the Bible because it wasn't compiled until like 300 years after the last books were written.  But it never even refers to the Hebrew Law or Prophets.  These are always called out as writings.  The Word of God always refers to a live message or a person...seriously a person.  In some cases it says the Word of the Lord came to someone and said... and then the person replies.  So there's a conversation between entities here.  This is consistent with what John writes about the Word becoming flesh.

So I looked up the Hebrew and Greek words used.  'Dabar' in Hebrew and 'logos' is Greek.  They both refer to the written word only by extension.  The real meaning is the content.  They mean an issuance of information, a revelation in the strict sense.  So this just blew my head apart!  My whole life I'd been taught that the Bible was the Word of God.  Even as a toddler we'd sung songs about it.  But it's totally untrue!

In my excitement, I posted this on Facebook, which of course brought a little controversy.  But surprisingly, many people were not shocked.  So, I felt like Shinji Ikari emerging from his Instrumentality.  When it finally clicks, he finds himself standing amongst a host of people, who have also arrived there, clapping and congratulating him.

So now, I don't claim to have a better interpretation.  I truly feel confident in saying I know to be true what I already felt to be true.  And the burden of getting the right system down has been lifted.  I'm sure I don't have it totally right, but I have taken another giant step in learning to LIVE (alive, living) relationship with God.  And I am more comfortable with how to best deal with others at various points on the same road.

Because we ARE all on the same road.  Know it or not.  Believe it or not.  And I can now show you how the Bible demonstrates this.  And if I'm wrong, that's ok.  You can't convince me until my time is ripe, and I can't convince you until yours is.  So it's best to leave that job to the one who is capable of fixing us both.  Will people abuse this freedom, misinterpret what I'm saying?  Absolutely!  They already are, and have (I'm not the first to arrive here).  But potential for abuse doesn't mean we alter, negate, or hide the truth...as if we really could anyway.