I get being “open-minded” but unfortunately it usually seems to go too far in some respects. I have met way too many “open-minded Christians” who have completely abandoned the authority of scripture. It can be something insignificant as if the days of creation were literal or figurative to something as monumental as someone saying that the way to Heaven can be achieved through some other way than Christ.
But often I am left with one question when I approach scripture. What reading or interpretation of this gives God the greatest glory?
God will not be diminished through our interpretation, our views, our faith or our thoughts about who He is or how He works. He is bigger than that and He’s given us more important things to do than argue out details that have little bearing on the relationship He desires with us. Scripture will not bend for us.
II Timothy 3:16 says:
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
How could scripture even hope to teach, rebuke, correct or train us if it bent to our will and our desires whenever it pleased us?
Personally, I believe God is big, creative and powerful enough to have created all of earth and everything in it in one hour should he have chosen to do so. I believe the “rest” He took on the seventh day was likened to that of a musical score rather than of one being weary of the creation process. I believe He took His time because… well, He created time too didn’t He? I also believe He made the scripture quite literal but full of amazing imagery so that our imagination might glimpse the wonder of who He is through the resonance of dazzling miracles, beautiful visions and intricate manifestations of His purpose. Scripture is alive with simplicity, made whole through the person of Christ and resounding with the eternal glory of the Father at work.
So I’m reduced to a brain in a jar of blue fluid now, am I? Harrumpf! Good point, though.
BTW, what Twitter plug-in do you use to send your blog posts? I am signed up with Twitterfeed, but think I might rather use a plug-in and keep it within WordPress.
He he. I just chose random names for the brains. I forgot I had a reader with the same name…lol. Sure, blue fluid…. you like blue right?
Actually, I think I am using Twitterfeed, I can’t remember honestly. It’s not a plugin. I set it up in twitter somehow, left it and forgot about it.
My grandpa was a writer and editor for a textbook publisher years ago. He named one of the characters Kim in one of the books, a nod to his only grandchild.
I wish I knew where those workbooks were now!
Oh, wait, it was in a story in an activity book titled Holly that he used my name. He also wrote for a reading book entitled Pat the Pilot, too. See this page. My grandpa was J. Leonard Davis. How random that I could find that when I haven’t found stuff by searching just for his name. He was writing and editing for them in the mid to late 1970′s, I believe. That’s your trivia for today. LOL