God's Not Dead pt 5

If you are still with me, I want to thank you for staying with me. I know that it's not easy.  I wish also to remind you, that, I make no claim on being right all the time, but merely am presenting in what I hope is a clear, complete and logical manner, and hopefully biblical as well, perspective(s) on things, that are Spiritually important. For the clear understanding that all things in life have a Spiritual foundation, emphasis, and drive behind them is essential knowledge.

reviewing just a bit, Theology. Now, there are many who do not claim to be "theologians" but that is somewhat misleading, because everyone is a theologian whether they are aware of it or not. For theology is the foundation of whatever we believe and however we act because of that.

Now, there are a myriad of "rules" and "techniuqes" for Scripture interpretation, but not all are perfect, however, I believe that there are many which can be useful when applied correctly.

The first and most important thing to remember is  Scripture is Breathed out and inspired by God, and is accordingly the ultimate authority when it speaks in regards to all things, including interpretation. Now, with scripture there is often many layers of communication or meaning. First we must understand that scripture is not isolated from itself, nor does it contradict itself.(More on that in a moment.)

When I say it's not isolated that means that we must always look for and at the context of it and not just at isolated verse(s) or chapter or book. what might be reffered to as context. This also means we ask the who, what, when, where, why, and how. Seeking to understand the communicator, and audience, [of which because we are reading a living book we are also part of that audience.] What they are communicating and understanding, How they thought and proccesed. The scripture is also history, which means we must also look at the culture during the time at which the piece we are examining was happening. That, is context.

Another part which is important is linguistics. Many books have been translated from their original language so it is important to have a grasp and understanding of the original language, and definition of the words being used. With scripture that means Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic. Where it has a way of being confusing it that many times the same or similar word is used to communicate a slightly different concept. So what I do is look at the word and it's definitions in context of what's around it, and that will usually help to correctly determine which definition is the right one.
Granted, it's not a perfect method, but I believe it's a reliable one.

Scripture intrepretation is a skill set that takes time, and some guidance from others who are farther along than us. But, that guidance should not lead to the "guide" having all the controll or say so. It should be more like sharing study notes with people around you.
The problem is Bias-ness.

Everybody has A bias/bent a prefered way of looking at things. Even me. my job as a believer is to not get caught up in my own view, but to Study, and share and look at all the different views and come to my own conclusions based on scripture on what parts of different views I feel are worthwhile to incorporate and refine what I already have.



Stick with me, the ride's about to get even more interesting, next topic(s) coming up are specific to Scripture(s) I've read and what They say, and what that means for us. Then looking specifcally at culture and things within Christianity (parts/sects)that(I firmly believe) are counter scriptural.

God's Not Dead pt 4

Before I really get into writing here, I just want to warn you all that this is a long one.

GOSPEL:
If you've read any or all of the last several posts, then much of this may seem very familiar, but there willl also be new pieces which you have not seen yet.

What is Gospel, and more specifically THE Gospel?
 I'm going to explain it in two styles, the first is in a way that is less detailed but still accurate, or the "milk" version. Then I'm going to really dig into it which I like to call the "Meat and potatoes" version.

Gospel level 1:

God is sovereign creator and is perfect in nature. When God made us in His(God's) image He made us the same way. Perfect. Perfection is the standard for us because of Him in who's image we are made. because of sin, we are no longer able to meet God's standards on our own. But God did not leave us without a way to restore our brokenness. He sent Jesus; in/through Jesus we can be restored to God, and spend eternity with him after we die instead of eternity away from him.

 Now, there's a lot more to it than that. because our sin interfers with our ability to understand the true and full meaning/importance of being made in Gid's image, as well as other things. Being made in God's image means that we have things about us that are similar, yet different and unique. Like having a twin, or having someone say "You look so much like_____!" Looking like someone does not make you them, or them you. You are the only true you that will ever exsist.
      What happened is that we tried to make ourselves the same as God, and in doing so sinned. When we try to be "god" that is self-idolatry. Now the difference between temptation and sin is how you react to whatever the temptation is. it's the action that turns temptation into sin. Sin is anything that is opposite God, or is an attempt to replace God, in some aspect.
    James 1 makes it Clear that God is not to blame for our shortcomings, God does not lead us into sin he leads us out of it. He uses sin as a way to show us the redemptive part of his nature. That's the best part of the gospel.
 
Scripture is also clear God didn't and still doesn't need anything. He didn't need to create us or reddem us after we sinned, but he did and does because it brings him glory.

Moving right along into something else. Theology, and Doctrine. Now, they're not the same thing, although they have a lot of inter-relation to eachother. But they are not identical. Theology is the Theo- logos" or "God-logic" "study of/about God ." Doctrine is teaching that comes out of theology.

There are different oppinions and views among believers within "Christianity" in both areas, But mainly the differences are in doctrine. There are differnet types of doctrine. All doctrine should come from scripture. I'm going to address two.

Primary Doctrine: very simply put it's what's believed and taught about God, man, sin, Salvation, and Scripture.

Secondary doctrine: This is where a lot of the difference is, because this type of doctrine is more contextual in nature. which simply means it may have more than one possible correct interpretation. I.E. the 4 horses in Revelation real(physical) or Metaphorical (Spiritual representation of something.)

Again, ther'es a lot of inter-relation between doctrine types, so how to correctly interpret and communicate  Scripture becomes crucial.  More on that next time....

God's Not Dead pt 3

One of the things we as believers run into is how to present a defense of our Faith from mainly a cultural/morality basis, rather than scripture. Part of the reason again is a trust issue, How sure are we that scripture is true and can speak to any and all aspects of life? But, the other part is we have a tendency of trying to make the truth of scripture more palatable for others. Why, I'm not entirely sure, But one thing I do know Is What God says about ad-libbing scripture: don''t do it.

What we as believers need is a fundamental change in perspective about scripture, It's an all or nothing approach. 

We must believe that ALL scripture is God breathed, and Usefull for teaching, training, rebuking, and correcting in righteousness.

We must believe Scripture is living, and Breathing, and sharper than any two edged sword, and able to seperate bone and muscle.

In other-words we must believe in it's inspiration, it's  Accuracy, and it's application to any topic which is written of within it.

And we must communicate those things clearly, fully, unapologetically, and un-ashamedly. yes, that will create a lot of conflict and controversy, But that's what Christ did, and If we truly desire to be like him we must do the same. Yes, we won't do it perfectly, that's a given,  But we must take advantage of every opportunity presented to us because our first chance may be someone elses first and last chance.

Think about it this way: If you have a spiritual conversation with someone you've never talked to or even seen or met before, if you never see or talk to them again, what the most loving, Christ-like thing you can do If you don't know for sure that they have a personal relationship with Christ? We don't know how much time anyone has before they're face to face with God. We must be radically forward in presenting the Gospel clearly and fully.

All we can do is present a full gospel, we have no controll over whether that person becomes a believer, That's God's department.

In the next post I'll address problems having to do with Gospel, I'm warning you all ahead of time there will be a lot about the church AS A WHOLE  which I fully expect to create conflict, but I aslo believe stringly are things which must be addressed and brought to light. So Again, to be clear what I'm going to say about the church is meant  Generally and should be treated more as observation NOT finger pointing.

 Please also feel free to leave comments or questions on posts. and If I feel it is appropriate I may reply or specifically address it in a post.

God's Not Dead part 2

In the last post I wrote about God, and how our perspective[s] and limited ability to fully understand Him often cause us major headaches. With understanding and communicating God sized concepts the best we can do is the best we can do. being clear about our limitations, and being clear about what is fact [as best we know them] and our opinion[s].

One of the fundamental hinges of the argument/debate of God's Exsistence is that: "it's all about perspective."

Who is ultimately (completely) Sovereign?
That is the underlying question all who'll ever exsist must answer for themselves.

The Answer seems obvious, from a certain perspective. That word's going to pop up a lot so get used to seeing it.  Heres the problem: humanity does not want to acknowledge it's fallen state.
There is Mis-understanding and mis-communictation of God's character, and a mis-respresentation of humanity in light of the truth of the relationship between God and man. You can thank our inherent sin nature for that.

That brings us right back around to our statement of what the problem is.
Because Addmission of our fallen state makes us morally accountable to God's standards. Which we cannot meet on our own. We don't like the taste of that pill, So we try to find a way around it.  It's not that we don't want God, We just want the "Nice, loving" part. we want all the blessings without the responsibility of ant difficult follow through, and without having to pay the price for failure.

It doesn't work that way. There is no grey with God, if you want to partake in the blessings, you must also be willing to partake of  the curses of failure to follow through.

The important thing to Understand is God is "both." He's loving AND Just. Grace AND Wrath.
And he's both perfectly, unlike us. Anything less than both in perfection would be a denial of his nature. If God Cannot be both, then He's not God.

Our tendency is to want a "god" we feel we can "controll/manipulate." This is the Heart of Idolatry. A god we can "control" is not a big G God, it's a little g god, and not really a god at all.

A synonym for Sovereign is  in control.  Do we really want to give God ALL the controll? Sadly for many the answer is no. We want to retain some controll,  If our relationship with God were to be equated with a car, it'd be like using the "manual over-ride." when we don't like the way something's going or turning out we just turn on the manual over-ride. If we want a true and growing relationship with God we must resist the urge to Manually over-ride and take over. It's fundamentally a trust issue, when life is chaos do we say "Jesus take the wheel" or do we grab the wheel?.