Thursday, January 29, 2015

Belief in Jesus and the Bible

It is possible to accept Jesus as your spiritual Lord without accepting that every word written in the Bible is spiritually inspired truth.  The books that make up the Bible were written by many different men, the identity of which is often unclear, and the choice of what to include and exclude in the anthology we call "the Bible" has been made by church elders in the centuries since the life of Christ.

Many people believe (or would like to believe) that every book, every word and every editing choice made by the Bible's overseers was made with divine guidance.  But it must be remembered that even if this isn't true and that not all choices were made in alignment with divine wisdom this says nothing about the worth of the ministry and teachings of Jesus.  That is, you can believe that Jesus was in touch with divine truth without accepting that everything in the Bible, or even everything attributed to Jesus in the gospels, is divine truth.  This is an unpopular position in some quarters because many people have an need to view everything in black and white terms and see things are either all true or all false.

I believe we need to look deeper than this and be willing to admit that what others see as infallible may instead be a mixture of divine wisdom and the worldly beliefs of its authors.  This is my position on the Bible and it is the only one that makes sense to me, given what I know about life and the topics the Bible discusses.  Others are free to believe the whole book is divinely inspired truth if that is what gives them peace for that is their right as a free will extension of God.

Sharka Todd

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