THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST:The Word of God is NOT a book
PAGE THREE/Conclusion
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Peter, in a much calmer voice, had this admonition for his brother Paul which is of tremendous assistance in helping us reason through matters like this:
One -- the word "Epistle" simply means "letter." In fact, the King James Version uses the word "Epistle" instead of "letter" in 2 Peter 3:16.
Two -- note carefully Peter's use of the words "letters" and "Scriptures" side-by-side. He refers to Paul's Epistles as "letters," and contrasts them with "Scriptures." The Scriptures were something Paul was trying to explain with his letters. Imagine Peter had expressed it this way and the meaning becomes clear: "Paul wrote to you about the Scriptural matter of the Sabbath in one of his recent letters. But some of you misunderstood his Scriptural reference, as you have done with other passages of Scripture." My point is that Peter was not conferring "Scripturehood" on Paul's writings, as I have heard some people suggest. Today, many people use the term "Scripture" to refer to the entire Bible. But that is not correct. Technically, "Scripture" means only Old Testament. But forget, for a moment, this error in today's vernacular. Two thousand years ago, whenever Paul or Peter (or any of the Disciples) used the term "Scripture," there can be no question they were referring to the writings we call "The Old Testament." After all, their own writings were not assembed into the New Testament until many years after they were dead. Peter would never have called Paul's letter's "Scripture!"
Three -- in addition to warning fellow believers not to get too bogged down with passages of Scripture that are difficult to understand (and isn't that good advice?), it doesn't take too much reading between the lines to see that Peter was mildly chastising Paul as well. He might have been alluding to Paul doing some misinterpreting, he might not. But at the very least, he was cautioning Paul that he might cause some less experienced swimmers to drown by wading in such deep waters.
"Norm, logic dictates that if the Bible is not the Word of God, then it is only a book -- no better than any other book. So, why bother to criticize and critique it? If God left no record of His word here, or if He left a record with truth and untruth in it...then that would be confusion, and we would be justified in not having anything to do with that book."
I completely disagree. First and foremost, the Bible isn't a single book that God "left" here, as the correspondent suggests. It is a compilation of many books, written by human hands over a tremendous number of years. Some of its passages are simply no longer relevant to the way we live. We don't follow the example of the Old Testament and have hundreds of wives as King Solomon did, do we? Both Old and New Testaments give tacit approval to owning slaves -- but today, we think owning another human being as a slave is a crime, don't we? And surely no one would suggest we stone adulters and burn prostitutes? Those are Biblical passages which common sense tells us can no longer be followed. But does that mean that we must discard everything in the Bible, simply because parts of it contain inconsistencies or disagreements? In the four Gospels, we have the consistent testimony of four different authors about the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Just because certain passages have become obsolete, or just because human hands made some mistakes in other books of the Bible is no reason to discard Christ.
My disagreement with Biblical literalism is not an attempt to rip God from His throne. It is, however, meant to suggest that people should think for themselves and not buy the lie fed to them by organized religion that every word in this book is accurate, everlasting and ironclad. As I have pointed out earlier, some passages make the claim that they are the words of God (I gave Ezekiel and Isaiah as two examples), and history has borne out their accuracy. But other passages (including the Epistles of Paul, Peter, John, James and Jude) do not make such a claim. If the words themselves don't claim to be from God, then why on earth should we believe they are?
Is that "picking and choosing?" You better darn well believe it is. God gave us each a brain, and I think we should use it to reason things through. Jesus taught with many parables so that His meaning would be clear in each passing age. But more importantly, He was trying to teach us how to think. When it comes to the Bible, we need to "pick" the parts that make sense, and "choose" to discard the errors.
Paul himself taught this when he wrote:
So on the matter of circumcision, Paul seemingly has taken it upon himself to contradict what was, to him, his "Bible" (Old Testament Scriptures). Genesis certainly appears to make the case that God insisted upon this requirement for all time:
Even Jesus Himself was a "clean cut" kid, so to speak:
Personally, I think circumcision is completely irrelevant to a man's relationship with God -- but it opens the question of why do we find such conflict in the Bible over this issue? And when we do find such disagreements, how to we determine what the truth is?
Here are a few SUPREMELY important points about that passage:
To wrap this up, I would like to refer again to the email which Norm re-printed for the club. The correspondent made the classic "throw the baby out with the bath water" suggestion about the Bible when he wrote:
Think for "thyself !" To place a book -- any book -- ahead of Jesus Christ can only be called one thing -- idolatry. "The Word of God" is Jesus Christ. If you want to be truly Christian, then you must love and follow Jesus, the Son of God -- not a book.
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