Christianity Growing Up

I just read an provocative article on Atoday.com. Since it is short here it is:

I tried to heal someone this week.

I have a friend who is extremely sick, as in die-any-day type of sick.  Furthermore, he doesn’t believe salvation is for him and rejects Jesus as his Savior and Friend.  Lately it has become nearly impossible for him to feel any type of love from God, his family, or his friends because his sickness is clouding his thoughts.

I have done, quite literally, everything I can think of in order to show him the love of God.  I have prayed the tears out of my eyes.  I’ve tried Bible studies.  Prayer circles.  Different doctors.  Just being a listener.  Pastoral counseling.  I can’t list all the things I’ve tried.  But he got worse, not better.  With every change in tactic I expected some type of improvement, yet there has been no change in his sickness or in his soul.

There is no prayer like a desperate prayer.  At one point I got so downcast that I asked God to violate his free will and save him no matter what he wants.   I was, and kinda-sorta-but-not-really still am dead serious about that despite how I know that the destruction of free will precedes the destruction of true love.

Lately, my best friend and I have been talking about miracles.  About how Jesus essentially said that even a little faith could move a mountain if it was hindering the work of God.  About how Jesus said His disciples would do greater and more things than He ever did.  About whether these and other statements were meant specifically for His 12 disciples in that cultural context or if they are timeless principles.

I thought to myself:  If only my friend wasn’t sick, he still might not choose God, but at least the choice would be clearer.  If only my friend wasn’t sick, maybe he could feel love again.  If only my friend wasn’t sick, his judgment would be normal…

I asked God to give me the authority over this type of disease.  I told God He could take the authority away from me after the disease was gone.  I had almost asked God that question earlier this month, but I didn’t yet trust myself to ask not out of caring for my friend, but out of doubt that God would do it on His own.  I just wanted to give him a clear mind, so that maybe, possibly, prayerfully, he will choose to follow Christ.

So I tried to heal someone this week.

Didn’t work.  And I feel dumb.

Thy will be done……so easy to say.  So difficult to mean.

Go ahead and read through the comments as they are about as provocative in what they say and don't say. The author in the comments states that his main concern is the salvation of his friend.

What I have come to think is that we have as Christians taken a view that it is all about coming to believe in God as we ourselves believe. The author of the article wants his friend to view God the same way he does. But his friends mind is cloudy or sick or whatever he does not see God the same way. In fact this is the problem we all face. We want people to think just as we do. If they think like us then they will see the truth. But many Christians have created a religion where that truth...that specific knowledge is what everyone must have to be saved. Salvation then becomes the product of correct knowledge.

Yet none of us actually have correct knowledge or really any method of determining correct knowledge. We like others have a set of beliefs some of which are based upon reason and suppositions and some of which are based upon tradition and upbringing. But we do not “know”.

In many Christian churches they are dealing with how they can deal with science which presents a view of an ancient earth and constant change. Evolution may not tell us where we came from but it presence is pretty well established and it is at odds with a young earth creation as interpreted by many in the book of Genesis. If the story of Genesis is alluded to by Jesus then many Christians will interpret that to mean that it is a divine expression that the Genesis stories are literal truth. Much the same as many look at New Testament verses about woman and authority in the church. How does the church deal with such things when the culture is more equitable and more knowledgeable.

Churches develop their structure and form by their claims to knowledge of revealed truth. When one church finds different truth in their Bibles then they form a new church based upon their new revealed truth. Thousands and thousands of differing versions of truth. Yet often to be saved you have to acquire the correct view of truth. Which often finds itself revealed in my version of truth. Insert your own views as the “my” in that sentence.

I think there is a growing movement of people who find this troubling and who can't grant themselves the privilege of the belief that their version of beliefs represents the truth. If only others could be freed from their delusions and upbringing or traditions they could realize the truth and be saved by God. But this view seems to not work with that of a God of love. Salvation based upon what you know or what you live up to because you believe it seems different from a salvation based upon a love of God that seeks to save the lost.

We often suspect that if there were miracles all the time that might make us believe in the presence of God. Just look at the miracles the legs amputated regrown etc. Yet all it would suggest is that there is supernatural forces in the world. It would not be evidence of a God of love unless all legs were regrown or no one died. Even supernatural experiences would not give us knowledge of truth. We are in a very weak and limited state when it comes to truth. Science has to slowly build it's knowledge and it is forced to regularly redefine its propositions. Religion is far slower to redefine its propositions. But it seems we are way past time to begin redefining what our knowledge of truth is. A little more humility and a lot less surety are in order.

God could very well save every living creature for a new life, would that be out of the character of love to be accepted. What may be the future of Christianity is not the traditions of the past but a new view of what religion can do for us in the now. How can it be used to encourage better and fuller lives for people. Whether they believe in Christ or God or the supernatural. Leaving salvation entirely up to God the Christian would then focus on helping others here and now. No longer soul winning as we have no ability to win a soul anyway even if we knew what it was. Perhaps Christianity is really as easy as the story of caring for people that Jesus taught*. Perhaps the idea of damnation was just sticks to prod people into doing something that they were reluctant to do. Rather like the promises or threats a parent gives to a child for doing what the child should do. But at some point the promises and the threats don't become the impetus to action. Can Christianity actually grow up?

*Matthew 25:34  NIV“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

No need for ordination traditions

Perhaps Unwittingly John McVay of Walla Walla University has presented us a way out of the women's ordination mess that has caught up with the Adventist church once again. In McVay's article he quotes 8 points from William Tyndale. They are in general the points of the Reformation against the abuse of the Roman Catholic Church in it rulership of the people through Priestly abuse. He points summarized simply are these:

1. Ordination is not a sacrament
2. The various orders and titles are simply names of offices and services.
3. Faithfulness matters
4. Christ is a Priest forever none other is needed.
5. A new testament Elder is the counterpart of a old testament priest and is nothing but an officer to teach.
6.Taking advantage of people is condemned by the Bible
7. No Office or "ordination" bestows any special status before God.
8.There is no special ceremony at all required in making of our spiritual officers than to choose able people.

For years I have said that there is no Biblical instruction for our practice of one person in charge of a church. That we are simply taking the Old Roman Catholic tradition of one Bishop per city which then became one Bishop per church and instead of calling them a Bishop which simply means Elder we called that Elder in the SDA church a Pastor. We then followed those practices and developed our whole ordination system. 

Perhaps it is time for the ordination system to stop and fall by the side of the road and begin a new tradition more in line with the Bible whereby a pastor is someone that looks after other people. As in its word predecessor the shepherd. Of course people are not sheep and just because a small flock may have only one shepherd to push the animals around in a certain direction we should take the concept into the meaning of someone one guiding and directing, teaching and caring and comforting people. Just as we don't have one teacher in a church there is no need to be limited to one pastor. This allows people who have the ability in the church to exercise their particular gifts to their follow believers in the church. 

So does the Adventist church need to allow women to be ordained and become pastors and divide the church between the contemporary Western world and the rest of the world. ( I am refusing to use the terms first (aligned with the United States), second (aligned with the Soviet Union) and third world (unaligned) as they are obsolete terms when the Soviet Union collapsed, the unaligned 3rd world is no longer a valid concept). Would there be any question in the cultures of the non westernized world that a woman can guide and direct or teach and care for other members of their church. Of course not that is perfectly acceptable. What was not acceptable was to go against the Westernized traditions accepted in those cultures of a male dominated clergy. Sadly taught to them by a poorly thought out tradition produced by a less then credible Roman Catholic church tradition. 

The Reformation gave us so many great ideas and most of them were lost as the people simply formed sides for or against the church organizations at the time. Reformation ended when they accepted that they could start new churches who would then create concrete traditions as unmovable as their fore fathers they rejected.

The Adventist church stands at a point where it can break with it's own mistakes and traditions and create a contemporary and more relevant and thinking religion. Or it can attempt to continue with the mistakes of yesteryear. When it speaks of God made sacraments that are simply man made traditions.

Religion as social club

I am wondering if there really is a difference between a religious church group and a social non-religious group. Is a religion just another form of social organization where people follow a generally prescribed set of opinions. The boundaries of opinions being set by the overall denomination out of the scores of different denominations. The social groups then holding together the wider dispersed denomination. The denomination leadership working to keep their overall group distinct from the other social organizations, the other denominations.

Now this would not seem to be a bad thing, as there are all kinds of social groups in existence but the religion claims a higher goal. That goal being to search and hold to truth. They do well on the holding onto what they think is truth part, but how well to they search for truth? Or could I be wrong and they are not searching for truth at all, rather, thinking they already have the truth.

Searching for truth involves testing and experimentation with different ideas and practices, that is not something that many church organizations seem to do much of it seems to me. For example when I used to go listen to sermons at my local church I would practically never hear anything new that stood up to the test of being true. Sure our Washington Conference brought a woman in to help teach people how to evangelize and she told us that the ancients tied lamps to their sandals hence the Psalmist famous quote, “thy word is a lamp unto my feet”. That indeed sounds like something new, it was news to me, but there was no truth behind it. No archaeological evidence no written descriptions, no half burned up sandals from the spilled oil. I would love to have seen her try to tie some lamps to her shoes and test out the theory however. But it does not stop these people who seem to be church organization leaders from telling these ridiculous things.

Just this last month I noticed John McLarty had to write the following to the North Pacific Union Gleaner:

“In his May editorial, Max Torkelson spoke of the good news that Jesus is coming again. In support of this good news, Torkelson quoted an "End Times Predictions" website that claims major earthquakes are increasing in frequency. However, according to the United States Geological Survey (which has credibility in the field of earth science comparable to that of the GAO in the realm of government or the CDC in the field of public health), the frequency of earthquakes has not increased over the last hundred years or so that systematic records have been kept.”

I know over the years on the Internet I have pointed out this same mis-information and pointed people to the scientific information from the USGS. But it seems in the church organization truth is ignored in favor of some pet belief. So maybe truth is really a casualty of religion just as in the societal groups that hold to astrology where the truth of planet alignment really has nothing at all to do with human behavior and that the planet positions or names but is assumed to have deep meaning. As the About.com article states:

These ideas were not, however, isolated - they were instead part and parcel of omens derived from entrails, oil dropped on the floor, birds flying in the sky, and more. As Will Durant observed of the Babylonians:

Never was a civilization richer in superstitions. Every turn of chance from the anomalies of birth to the varieties of death received a popular, sometimes an official and sacerdotal, interpretation in magical or supernatural terms ...The superstitions of Babylonia seem ridiculous to us, because they differ superficially from our own. There is hardly an absurdity of the past that cannot be found flourishing somewhere in the present.

Yet how often does the dating crowd ask someone what sign are you? It becomes a commonality a way of communicating, to get the conversation going. That is what is happening with the religion as well. Traditions and untruth are used to bring the conversation around to something that they believe even more deeply. But in religion many of those beliefs cannot be documented as true or false because we lack the ability to ascertain the future or all the aspects of the past so they must remain as beliefs. But if truth is important in a religion why is it so often ignored?

It seems that the search for truth may be one of those statements which is used as a tradition rather then as a meaningful statement. Because a religion should really want to be about truth just as much as tradition if not leaning more toward truth. But because truth interferes with tradition and presuppositions it seems to often be a fictitious piece of propaganda, we have the truth, we search for the truth, but don't ask us to really pay attention to the truth.

The Adventist church is on the cusp of dealing with the issue of science and truth with the controversy at La Sierra University and subsequently all other Adventist educational institutions. Will truth win over traditions...we will see, social clubs don't need truth after all.

Faith is Accepting the Grace of God

Most people when they think of faith think of a belief in something or someone. Something that is not fully happened yet so it can't be claimed to be a reality yet it is something that is expected to occur. We have faith that the building we are in will not simply collapse on us. Just as that faith in the building is either based upon our visual perceptions or our confidence in the builders and the inspectors and the host of people involved in creating a building, faith is never based upon just beliefs it should always be based upon evidence.

This frustrates many traditional type Christians. I was led to the following quote of Ravi Zacharias from a comment on Spectrum, (an open letter to Educate Truth). The commenter said of tand article by someone who used the Ravi Zacharias quote; “He mocks the "blind faith" of Christians, relying on the writings of Ravi Zacharias, a critic of the Bible.” Here is some of what Zacharias wrote:

If a pastor says, “All we need is the Bible,” what does he say to a man who says, “All I need is the Quran”? It is a solipsistic method of arguing.

The pastor is saying, “All I need is my own point of reference and nothing more than that.” Even the gospel was verified by external references. The Bible is a book of history, a book of geography, not just a book of spiritual assertions.

The fact is the resurrection from the dead was the ultimate proof that in history — and in empirically verifiable means — the Word of God was made certain. Otherwise, the experience on the Mount of Transfiguration would have been good enough. But the apostle Peter says in 2 Peter 1:19: “We have the Word of the prophets made more certain … as to a light shining in a dark place.” He testified to the authority and person of Christ, and the resurrected person of Christ.

To believe, “All we need is the Bible and nothing more,” is what the monks believed in medieval times, and they resorted to monasteries. We all know the end of that story. This argument may be good enough for those who are convinced the Bible is authority. The Bible, however, is not authoritative in culture or in a world of counter-perspectives. To say that it is authoritative in these situations is to deny both how the Bible defends itself and how our young people need to defend the Bible’s sufficiency.

There is little point in giving quotes from the blind faith side of things because they have nothing to stand upon aside from their tradition. Tradition may be good, bad or indifferent but if it is not inquired about it has tremendous potential for harm. A few examples of harmful traditions would include these:

...”[F]female circumcision/genital mutilation, facial scarring, the force-feeding of women, early or forced marriage, nutritional taboos, traditional practices associated with childbirth, dowry-related crimes, honor crimes, and the consequences of son preference...”

Faith is not based upon tradition, it is not a product of blind choice and it is not merely the assumptions that what you hope for will happen or what you can't see is there. When the Bible says: Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. Hebrews 11:1it is an expression of the results of faith not the reason for the faith. As the Zondervan NIV Bible Commentary says:

“Instead, he treats faith with reference to the future. It is that trust in God that enables believers to press on steadfastly whatever the future holds for them. They know that they can rely on God. So the writer's method is to select some of the great people in the history of God's people and to show briefly how faith motivated all of them and led them forward, no matter how difficult the circumstances.”

Faith was based upon their understanding of God, their experience with God, tradition may have been involved but it is only one part of the overall experience and knowledge, information and reality that creates the understanding of God as someone who can be trusted, someone who is a friend and not an enemy.

Few of us would be so foolish as to say we believe in anything by blind faith. Religion seems to be the one clear exception...well perhaps certain conspiracy theories as well. But generally it is not seen as a reasonable position to base anything on blind faith. What happens in traditional Christianity however is that traditional understanding and practices of Biblical interpretation become the excuse to accept blind faith. If someone uses different techniques to interpret the Bible so that it does not conflict with scientific reality, the traditionalist scoffs at the more reasoned explanation.

But the traditionalist does not want to admit that his faith is in a particular form of Bible interpretation technique, so instead they will say that they are simply following the Bible, or the plain reading of the Bible. Thus if you disagree or have a different interpretation you are going against the Bible in their view. If reason, history, science or any other form of reality disagrees with their interpretation they assert their fidelity to the Bible by which they mean their traditional interpretation of the Biblical texts.

Faith is not found in methods of Bible interpretation, it is not found in tradition, it is based upon the reality of the historical person of Jesus Christ as the incarnation of God. A revelation of the love and acceptance of even His enemies and His power over death and His promises of reconciliation. Faith is built on evidence and it is only faith in God, not interpretations, because we can and historically have been wrong in interpretations. But faith is about who God is, Faith is the acceptance of the gracious character of our God. Other things may fail us but if our God is love, the love revealed by Christ then we have good reasons for belief in better things to come.

Bibliotatry

The Oxford Dictionaries define bibliolatry as:

1. an excessive adherence to the literal interpretation of the Bible.

Sometimes people misspell it as Bibleolatry but we want to use the official English word here. As Wikipedia points out the word is used as a pejorative, it is not that there really are Christians that literally worship the Bible. It is just the impression one gets from the way they use the Bible. A couple of examples from my wandering across the Internet.

Over on HeavenlySanctuary.com a person by the name of David begins a post by saying:

in Luke 19 "if they are quiet the rocks will cry out''. Truth? egw in DA p573 says
“That scene of triumph was of Gods own appointing. It had been fortold by the prophet, and man was POWERLESS TO TURN IT ASIDE. Had men failed to carry out His plan, He would have GIVEN A VOICE TO INANIMATE STONES, and they would have hailed His Son with ACCLAMATIONS of praise."

God does not want the praise or worship of robots (weve talked about this many times here). Would the rocks have been robots 'acclaiming paise' ? would that have made Jesus happy? forcing rocks to praise Hiim?

The post goes on into some more questionable thoughts but to this point it is pretty clever. It shows a very good example of bibliolatry in Ellen Whites writing's. It is the tendency to take something that could easily simply be hyperbole into something that is meant to be taken literally. Jesus speaks the following in Luke's gospel account:

Luke 19:37-41NIV When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen: "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!" ⁿ "Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!" Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, "Teacher, rebuke your disciples!""I tell you," he replied, "if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out." As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it”

It is easy to see this as a jab at the Pharisees who wanted to quiet the crowd, it is more difficult to see this as a possibility of God causing stones to speak human language, after all stones don't say much most of the time and they are not thought to be all that smart or connected to spiritual things. Why would God want to make stones praise God...that would be pretty cheap praise. If God forces you, or an inanimate object to praise Him is it really praise at all?

In this case we have a combination of bibliolatry and Ellenolatry, though that last one is not currently a real English word and I hope it never becomes one. But it is sort of the idolatry that the Whiteites do exhibit. Whiteites is a term I do hope becomes a legitimate English word for those who uncritically accept Ellen White as prophetic spiritual authority who is without theological, historical or scientific error.

Let's look at another frequent example of bibliolatry, this one from Sherman Cox II on his blog Sabbath Pulpit. Speaking about the 2011 Japanese Earthquake and some Adventist responses he writes:

Now there is the whole “God is trying to tell God’s true church something” bit. Ok it is possible to read this as “God killing of thousands of innocent lives just to tell the church something.” I don’t know, but I don’t think that is Boonstra’s interpretation. I would guess that Boonstra would mean that “God is withdrawing God’s hand of protection and thus the evil one is allowed to do more and more of these things. Thus it is a signal to us that the end is near.” Certainly folks may disagree with that due to having a different theology, but is it really an insidious attack on God’s goodness.

Last week in my Sabbath School class I encountered this very similar idea that God is withdrawing His hand of protection, it is an idea based upon the following verse in Revelation:

Revelation 6:16-7:4 NIV They called to the mountains and the rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?" After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth to prevent any wind from blowing on the land or on the sea or on any tree. Then I saw another angel coming up from the east, having the seal of the living God. He called out in a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm the land and the sea: "Do not harm the land or the sea or the trees until we put a seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God." Then I heard the number of those who were sealed: 144,000 from all the tribes of Israel.

This is another of those intersections between the Whiteites and bibliolatry, like the person in my class they did not seem to realize that their quote from Revelation about the four winds is very subject to interpretation, to the Adventist traditionalist when they point to that verse their minds actually refer to the following Ellen White quote:

The restraining Spirit of God is even now being withdrawn from the world. Hurricanes, storms, tempests, fire and flood, disasters by sea and land, follow each other in quick succession. Science seeks to explain all these. The signs thickening around us, telling of the near approach of the Son of God, are attributed to any other than the true cause. Men cannot discern the sentinel angels restraining the four winds that they shall not blow until the servants of God are sealed; but when God shall bid His angels loose the winds, there will be such a scene of strife as no pen can picture. (Testimonies to the Church Vol 6 page 408)

Now there is no real Bible teaching that God restrains His Spirit but the belief in the authoritative prophet with the aid of subsequent tradition, the interpretation of a specific Bible text though vague becomes an infallible truth. It then becomes bibliolatry.

At its heart bibliolatry is never really about what the Bible says it is about what the chosen interpretation is. The one particular interpretation is the truth regardless of the other options involved. So the people don't even come close to worshiping the Bible as much as their respect is limited to their particular interpretation. If you don't agree with that interpretation then you reject the Bible and if you reject their interpretation of the Bible you are rejecting God. It reminds me of the text I found when looking at the only other Bible text where stones cry out

Habakkuk 2:11-12 NIV The stones of the wall will cry out, and the beams of the woodwork will echo it."Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed and establishes a town by crime!

After that bit of poetic language the prophet moves on to another subject and we read:

Habakkuk 2:18 NIV "Of what value is an idol, since a man has carved it? Or an image that teaches lies? For he who makes it trusts in his own creation; he makes idols that cannot speak.

When the Bible text interpretation becomes an object of the human creator it becomes an idol, it can then speak lies, the text speak what the idol maker wants them to say because the trust is now in the idol (assigned meaning to the text by the idol maker). This is most easily done with vague and obscure texts such as the Latter Day Saints do with baptism for the dead or the reference to the Time of Jacobs Trouble or the four winds etc. Apocalyptic literature is ideal for this technique. Bibliolatry is a growing problem in Adventism. Next week. The myth of solo scriptura.

The Bible misused as a dictionary, Faith still needs evidence

Today let us explore some more of the irrationality that propagates itself contentedly in the Adventist church. Keeping with last weeks article let us again examine a statement made by Preston Foster on Adventist Today website:

What I am positing is that 1) spirituality is, by nature, irrational as it is based on faith which is, by definition, "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (that definition, alone, would repel the traditional rational thinker) and, 2) based on our limited ability to comprehend God, whose thoughts and ways, by His own admission, are different than ours is.

How many times have we heard this statement, as if the author of the book of Hebrews was actually trying to define the meaning of faith, as if his intent was to give us the once and for all time meaning of faith even though he had used it before and it had been used many times in the Old Testament and the Jewish religion. After all those using this statement will say that they are only letting the Bible define itself as if the simple common words needed to be defined by the Bible as if it was not only a compilation of books but also a dictionary. Think about that for a moment should I use that technique if I said to someone “I love you” and I used the Bible as a dictionary I could quote “God is love” (1 John 4:8) therefore my statement is now “I God you”. Oh we can work it out in a round about way, we can say God loves and because God loves we are able to love. But still the definition of love is not found in the word God, even less so if I don't capitalize god and I realize that there are many different beliefs about god and gods, after all, not all gods are that terribly loving are they? We can't just substitute one word for another because some place it was equated in a statement where “is” is used. “God God's you” it may be true but what does it mean. So are we really being wise to use Hebrews statement as the definition of faith. Let us look at the text in question with the surrounding context, because after all context gives meaning because we are rational:

^{HEB 10:37} For in just a very little while, "He who is coming will come and will not delay.

^{HEB 10:38} But my righteous one ⁿ will live by faith. And if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him." ⁿ

^{HEB 10:39} But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved.

^{HEB 11:1} Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

^{HEB 11:2} This is what the ancients were commended for.

^{HEB 11:3} By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.

^{HEB 11:4} By faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did. By faith he was commended as a righteous man, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith he still speaks, even though he is dead.

The purpose here is not to define faith as some kind of irrational thought that just gets into our head and we believe it even though we don't see any evidence of it. Faith is not even meant here to mean just because a person is sure of something and hope that their certainty is true that it is in fact true in all things one maybe sure of, rather that faith in Christ is something He is sure of and encourages other to be sure of. As the Expositor's Bible Commentary says:

The chapter begins with some general observations on the nature of faith. They do not constitute a formal definition; rather, the writer is calling attention to some significant features of faith. Then he proceeds to show how faith works out in practice.

1 In the Greek the verb "is" (estin) is the first word. Faith is a present and continuing reality. It is not simply a virtue sometimes practiced in antiquity. It is a living thing, a way of life the writer wishes to see continued in the practice of his readers. Faith, he tells us, is a hypostasis of things hoped for. The term has evoked lively discussion. Sometimes it has a subjective meaning, as in 3:14 where NIV translates it as "confidence." But it may also be used more objectively, and KJV understands it that way in this passage by translating it as "substance." This would mean that things that have no reality in themselves are made real (given "substance") by faith. But this does not seem to be what the writer is saying. Rather, his meaning is that there are realities for which we have no material evidence though they are not the less real for that. Faith enables us to know that they exist and, while we have no certainty apart from faith, faith does give us genuine certainty. "To have faith is to be sure of the things we hope for" (TEV). Faith is the basis, the substructure (hypostasis means lit. "that which stands under") of all that the Christian life means, all that the Christian hopes for.

Faith in the Bible is developed, it is practiced it is lived and thus Hebrews chapter 11 recounts several instances of faith. Not one of them simply based upon some irrational concept. God warns Noah and Noah builds and Ark, Abraham is called by God and goes to a foreign country, Abraham and Sarah have a child which they are promised by God. Now we may not know in all the cases how they received their messages from God but it does appear that it is not meant to convey the idea that their spirituality was based upon some form of irrationality. Instead they were trusting the one that communicated to them. The implication being that their lives included enough reason to come to the place where they could trust God rather then just following an irrational voice in their head. Think of the story of Israel's exodus from Egypt. Moses comes to Pharaoh and tells them what God wants. Pharaoh says who is this god and why should I do what he says and then evidence is provided. Pharaoh needed a rational reason to give up what was to him, his property.

We don't ever want to get to the position of faith without reason. There has to be a reason, there has to be some kind of evidence to create the faith. As Paul once wrote:

^{1CO 15:14} And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.

Faith that is not backed by evidence is usually useless. Irrational preaching and faith is useless if there is not reality to move the irrational into the realm of the rational. The problem is that today there are certain people of a fundamentalist perspective who despise logic and reason because reason dictates against certain of their beliefs. Their beliefs having become sacred truth because they hold them tight because they are traditions. When reality conflicts with their beliefs instead of re-evaluating their beliefs they reject reality in favor of their traditions and as in the above quote redefine Biblical material to support their traditional views. Growth however comes from changing, discarding things that don't fit reality and adapting to new systems of thought that function with reality. It is not perfect as you don't arrive at truth instantly it is a constant movement toward greater understanding. Not every theory will work out and when they don't they must be discarded, keeping the theory just because it has become your tradition insures that you won't ever change or grow. This failure to grow is so often the landmark of religion, it becomes why Fundamentalists whether Christian or Islamic fight against modernity. Because modernity and even post modernity refuse to simply accept tradition without evidence.

So we have to move past the irrational toward rational views in all things, and God is not irrational the very process of progressive revelation of the Bible indicates that God understands the need to grow and change and step by step lead people in a rational way while maintaining the necessary distinction between the natural and the supernatural. Which requires us to reason not only why miracles occur but why they don't occur. How best can we understand a God whose capabilities so outweigh our capabilities and the distinction between force and willing trust. It is unlikely that we can fully understand God but to end the rational pursuit of God is a fulfillment of the old commercial that said “a mind is a terribly thing to waste”. We can never get to the point as someone once claimed a church authority said regarding the Godhead and The Plan of Salvation :

“to wit: if we try to understand it, we will lose our minds; but if we don’t believe it, we will lose our souls.”

Traditon and the God that kills so Adam isn't naked

With the following I am beginning a new blog which moves away from the limiting tenancies of Adventism and denominationalism. For a while I will post the articles from the new blog here also. I have not decided if I will continue to cover Adventism as I have on this blog. Maybe just one more entitled : "you can't get there from here".

As we will see as this blog progresses there are so many ideas in Christianity that are simply accepted because of tradition or perhaps simply accepted because people never questioned an idea or belief. Much of them are origin ideas that color the Christians thinking in matters that range far from the original idea.

A good example of this is to be found in this comment from my article on Jimmy Swaggart’s Study Bible, the comment is as follows:

“i don't have his bible but i know from the bible that they did animal sacrifices back then.. because of God killed one.. to make there garments. thus starting the animal sacrifices because God covered them with animal so in turn they covered there sins they did and do back then till Jesus came for all.”

If one were to question the above comment they would have to ask did God actually kill an animal or animals just to make garments? Does it not take a good deal of processing before one skins an animal before that skin can be used successfully as clothing? Was this the same God who just spoke the universe into existence and now He has to kill in order to make clothes for humans? Was God really the very first being in recorded Jewish/Christian history to kill another living creature? If this was meant to be the first sacrifice why did the story not emphasize the killing as sacrifice idea rather then just making it about how God provided garments for Adam and Eve? And finally why does not any other part of the Bible reference this incident as emblematic for the sacrificial system?

Those are all very reasonable questions but I bet the writer of the above comment has not thought about even one of them. Reason is not the enemy of faith, in fact reason encourages faith because then there are reasons for the faith. The reverse however is not usually true; faith is often the enemy of reason. Because then they say if I had a reason to believe something why would I need faith. That is the problem that the traditionalist and the Fundamentalist have when they deal with what is written in the Bible. Their faith is in fact their tradition, their belief is not evidence based but tradition based, to question their tradition is to question faith in their minds. That however is not how the entire Bible lays out faith. Faith in God was based upon the multitude of stories that fill the Bible, the evidence of the Messiah, as Jesus came and lived among us. Those stories, the very pages of scripture are evidence to base ones faith upon.

Blind faith is exactly what it says, a faith that is not seen, a faith without evidence, a belief without reason. It cannot be reasonably explained to anyone it is accepted or rejected based upon nothing because it stands on nothing. As Gandhi said: “Faith... Must be enforced by reason...When faith becomes blind it dies.” Unfortunately that is not quite true because it does not die it instead becomes a vice. A more accurate quote by Ray Cove would be “If you don't have faith in your people in the field, you are lost. If that faith is blind faith, then it is not faith at all, just maladministration.” Blind faith is very problematic.

So how do we answer the traditionalist? We must take them back to their source material and ask them to explain their presuppositions. That is why this is a blog rather then simply an article. The subject is simply too vast, it is too vast for one book, with such a vast field of thought to engage in not every possible objection can be covered or every possible explanation given. Thus this is a conversation, a dialog that continues and evolves as we learn more and as we examine more implications. For our friend who believes that God was the first to kill we can answer fairly simply by going to the source. Because the Genesis story never once says that God killed an animal to make the garments for the people.

As the Exposititor’s Bible Commentary says: “The mention of the type of clothing that God made--"garments of skin [`or]," i.e., tunics--is perhaps intended to recall the state of the man and the woman before the Fall: they "were both naked [`arummim], and they felt no shame" (2:25). The author may also be anticipating the notion of sacrifice in the slaying of the animals for the making of the skin garments, though he has given no clues of this meaning in the narrative itself.”

Tunics that is coverings, it does not say animal skins that is the from the early English translations. When you look at the text and then the interlinear of the words here is what we see using the King James with the

Strong’s numbers following the word:

Adam 120, wife 802, Lord 3068, God 430, coats 3801, skins 5785, clothed 3847

When you look at the word skins 5785 we see that it includes man’s skin also:

5785  `owr (ore); from 5783; skin (as naked); by implication, hide, leather:

KJV-- hide, leather, skin.

5783 says:  `uwr (oor); a primitive root; to (be) bare: KJV-- be made naked.

It is not all that hard to see that God made tunics to cover the skin of the people and thus they were clothed. You don’t have to kill anything with such an interpretation. You don’t have to have God kill an animal and then perform a miracle to immediately make the skin usable for sewing or to become supple and move about comfortably in.

Remember “animal” is not in the Hebrew, just skins and skins can have varying meanings. It could be the cover layer of something else, wool is the covering layer of a sheep, various barks or leaves could be considered to be coverings, a snake sheds its skin, so there are other options available.

All we have is the quick aside in the story that God had seen their nakedness and covered them. God cares, He assists them even when they disobeyed He maintained their interests at heart. It is a simply line in a simple story that people want to pour so much meaning into that it eventually loses the initial meaning.

After this we have to consider what the author was trying to say. Was he trying to reference sacrifices and just did not know how to create the implication very well? Was he trying to express his idea of how God could have done things, without the conception of God that the Bible progresses through. Say for example God in his estimation could kill anything and anyone with impunity and it would not matter because God is the ultimate power and as such can do what He wants and the character…the very essence of God…how He acted and how He loves would be of little concern in his story. God cared enough to cloth them it did not matter how he did it.

We have a lot of questions and perhaps not a lot of answers. The people with all the answers like the original commenter seem to have none of the questions. They don’t know how to ascribe original meaning to the text or application to the present but they do have the answers that their traditions maintain. I prefer the method of the late A. Graham Maxwell who would constantly ask “what does this say about God”.

If that is you, stay tuned to this blog as we explore past the traditions.

Eisgetical sermons

One thing that I have consistently noticed is that when I listen to sermons there is inevitably something theological horrendous being expressed. Not that they are purposely trying to teach human garbage as if it is facts about God but almost invariably it is there in their sermons. There is, as in almost any sermon, some good material something, uplifting and intelligent. It is just often overwhelmed with the foolishness that pretends to pass as enlightened expositional preaching. I often think that most of this is simply accepted by the congregations…for what reason, I guess it is simply because they don’t want to think about what was just said. The Pastor is a good man he must be giving a good message leading them to accept the message. Perhaps it is why Barack Obama could attend 20 years of Jeremiah Wright’s church and think he never heard any of the terrible things Jeremiah Wright was saying. (If one were to assume that Barack Obama really did not know what Wright was saying.) We acknowledge that the people in the pews listen and are influenced yet don’t connect enough to analyze the material they are hearing. Yet there is little doubt that it does affect people. That it will color their accepted theology.

Following this article is a transcription of a recent sermon segment offered a few weeks ago by the former pastor of the church I attend. Granted I attend less and less frequently and sermons even less frequently because not only are they long (this sermon was  probably an hour and a half) poorly reasoned and boring but because they are a poor method of communication and usually destructive to a reasoned faith.

In the segment of the sermon I transcribed I would say as a description of sermons styles an eisgetical sermon where he starts with an assumption and attempts to find Bible texts to support his assumptions (I looked it up eisgetical is really a word). Thus the Bible texts are used as pretexts to support a questionable beginning assumption. If we were to fit the sermon into a category of sermons we would have to say that it is a Textual sermon. Here the text he begins with is:

Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. (Mat 28:18 NIV)

Pastor Decker then stated: “Why does He have all authority? And I would say that a lot of it is well I would say that it is because He resurrected.” Thus Decker is asserting that Christ’s authority comes from the fact of the resurrection rather than the fact that Jesus Christ is God who has authority because He is God. Something that the book of Matthew set out to demonstrate fairly early on with such verses as:

(Mat 7:29 NIV)  because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.

(Mat 9:6 NIV)  But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins. . . ." Then he said to the paralytic, "Get up, take your mat and go home."

(Mat 10:1 NIV)  He called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out evil spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.

To indicate further Decker’s misunderstanding he ignores further that Jesus Christ was/is God by indicating that Jesus was raised from the dead by God the Father.  “… So there and a dozen other places it is saying that God the Father raised Jesus Christ from the dead.” In fact there is not even one text that says “God the Father” raised Jesus, only that God raised Jesus from the dead. The closest verse to that idea also includes Jesus Christ saying:

(Gal 1:1 NIV)  Paul, an apostle--sent not from men nor by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead--

 But Jesus is also God and Jesus had in the Gospel of John said that He would raise Himself from the dead.

(John 10:17-18 NIV)  The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life--only to take it up again.  No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father."

(John 2:19-21 NIV)  Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days." The Jews replied, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?" But the temple he had spoken of was his body.

Interestingly enough in some email conversation with Pastor Decker through a friend Pastor Decker supplied his texts to prove that Jesus was raised by God the Father his list being:

Acts 2:24, Mark 16:19, Rom 4:24, Rom 10:9, Heb 13:20, Acts 13:34, Gal. 1:1, 1 Cor. 15:15

That list of texts uses nothing from the Gospels or the quotes of Jesus in the book of John. Though it includes the questionable text in Mark chapter 16 but that texts says nothing about the resurrection. Mark 16:19:

 After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God. (NIV)

How one thinks they can talk about the resurrection and not even use the quotes that John gives of Christ about the resurrection is strange unless one remembers that the purpose here in the sermon is not attempting to see what the Bible says but to make it say what the assumption of the Pastor wants the Bible to say.

When we look at what the New Testament actually says we see that all three aspects of God are credited with raising Jesus from the dead. We have seen that Jesus said He would raise Himself. The Pastor has supplied us with some texts where it says God raised Jesus from the dead and there is another verse in Roman’s 8 where the Spirit is cited as raising Jesus from the dead:

(Rom 8:11 NIV)  And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.

The sermon makes us wonder after all who does Pastor Decker think Jesus Christ is? Is He God or not, did He only have authority after His resurrection as Tom claimed that then all power and authority was given Him. That would come as a surprise to the writer of the gospel of John.  Jesus said He would lay down His life and He would take it up again. God and the Holy Spirit are also declared as being the power behind the resurrection. Rather like the creation of the world references where in various places in the Bible all three are given credit for creation. Because these three are the aspects of God that are we may refer to as the modes of operation of the one God. Pastor Decker’s sermon has confused the issue of who God is, fitting more closely with Arian or Semi-Arian view points. This confusion is carried further as the sermon continues but I won’t deal with the part about Jesus either dying for His sins or humanities sins and not understanding Himself what He was dying for, as he does not even try to justify his fanciful speculations, suffice it to say the New Testament account makes no such indications. Though we all know how the Psalms 22 quote Christ used is assumed to mean all kinds of things to some people.

As Pastor Decker continues we see he does not understand the sacrifice of Christ either. This is perhaps the root of most of his confusion because when one accepts the penal Substitutionary view of atonement they often forget that God presented the sacrifice so it was not a sacrifice to God it was a sacrifice of God. Pastor Decker says:

“So everything stalled in terms of salvation for those three days while Christ sat in the tomb. Is He going to resurrect, is He going to come back to life? If He resurrects if He comes back to life what does that say? It says that God the Father accepted the sacrifice. If He stays in the grave It says that God the Father said no it was not a pure unblemished lamb that was sacrificed He was marred He had sinned. He has to die for His own sins. And Remember God the Father is defending this to the universe to the angels to all who would come and ask. So God the Father resurrects Jesus, when He resurrects Jesus what is He doing? He’s saying I accept the sacrifice…”

(Rom 3:25 NIV)  God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished—

(John 3:17 NIV)  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

The sacrifice is not to God, the sacrifice is offered by God.

(John 1:1-4 NIV)  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men.

Unfortunately Christianity has made an idol out of the penal atonement theory. That theory being that God had to punish somebody for sin so that when they read a verse like Hebrews 9:14:

(Heb 9:14 NIV)  How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!

They will interpret as if God demanded the blood rather then through the voluntary acceptance of the plan of salvation of God and the successful completion of that plan as Jesus Christ offered Himself to the submission of death, not to satisfy God’s demands that someone has to die but to cleanse our consciences so that we may be persuaded to serve God. After all He is God, and even in this verse we see the three aspects of God working together of one purpose and that purpose is to help us not to satisfy God’s demand that someone pay a penalty. After all this is God the God who freely forgives how can we then say that such a God demands punishment? It is illogical it is counter productive, yet it is the traditional Adventist view, the traditional Christian view. It is the codification of tradition treated as the gospel. It is not the gospel it is a distortion of the gospel. And if fills our sermons and destroys the gospel and prevents us from truly progressing in our knowledge of God.

I like Pastor Tom, I simply wish he could open himself to the real gospel. Though I realize the Christian world no longer accepts Christian philosophy not of its particular tradition. Teaching a Christian religion like the following sermon segment, reading into the Bible their presuppositions which make God foolish and arbitrary and vengeful all the while saying He is a God of love. It is no wonder Christianity is dying in the Western World. Christians have been killing it for hundreds of years.

Tom Decker’s Sermon “Go” segment transcription:

After noting that Jesus has all authority and that Jesus is with you always Pastor Decker in his sermon stated the following (I will cut out Umms and such time fillers.)

-----

The other question I have to ask in here is why does He have all authority? Where does that come from? He has all authority in Heaven and on earth we sometimes don’t feel like He has all authority do we? But He has all authority He claims to. Why does He have all authority? And I would say that a lot of it is well I would say that it is because He resurrected. Who resurrected Jesus? I remember getting in a fight with Linda about this, do you remember us talking about this? And she had one assertion and we argued about it for a while and made me study it a lot deeper and I went and started looking at passages and you can look and see a half dozen or 10-12 passages that reaffirm that God the Father resurrected Jesus. Let’s look at Romans 4 OK. Just flip over to Romans 4 not very far. OK after the Gospels Mathew Mark Luke John Acts and than Romans. Romans 4 verse 24; But also for us to whom God will credit righteousness for us who believe in Him who raised our Lord from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins he was raised to life for our justification. But also for us to whom God will credit righteousness for us who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. So there and a dozen other places it is saying that God the Father raised Jesus Christ from the dead.

Why is that important? What does that do to give Jesus Christ authority? How does that affect me? How does that impact my life? You see the crucifixion of Jesus was Jesus dying for sin. If He didn’t have to die for sin He would have lived His three score and ten or He would have never come here Okay, but Jesus had to die for sin. When Jesus died He died for one of two things. He either died for His own sin if He had sinned or He died for the sin of humanity. Which is what scripture claims. It seems by some of what Jesus said that He wasn’t even so sure Himself which of those two reasons He had died for when He went to the cross. He felt very far from God and He did not understand it, had a very hard time coping with that. If Jesus had died for His own sin it was because He was sinned He would have died and in that state He would have stayed in the ground. God had no right to resurrect Him. If He had died sinless had died not for his own sin but for the sin of us then He would have died a legitimate sacrificial death. And in dying that death God would have been empowered to resurrect Him afterwards.

So everything stalled in terms of salvation for those three days while Christ sat in the tomb. Is He going to resurrect, is He going to come back to life? If He resurrects if He comes back to life what does that say? It says that God the Father accepted the sacrifice. If He stays in the grave it says that God the Father said no it was not a pure unblemished lamb that was sacrificed He was marred He had sinned. He has to die for His own sins. And Remember God the Father is defending this to the universe to the angels to all who would come and ask. So God the Father resurrects Jesus, when He resurrects Jesus what is He doing? He’s saying I accept the sacrifice. Jesus Christ has all authority in heaven all authority in earth and He is the King of Kings the Lord of Lords. That is the foundation the resurrection is the solid foundation of our assurance of justification our assurance of salvation and our entry point into sanctification and eventually the glorification where we are able to join God in heaven. The resurrection validates the sacrifice until the resurrection we don’t know if the sacrifice is valid. When God the Father resurrected Jesus He told the universe the sacrifice is valid salvation is a reality. You can count on it you can bank on it. Therefore because I have resurrected, because I have all authority in heaven and earth Jesus turns to His disciples and says all authority in heaven and earth has been given me therefore go.

 

Creation Confusion

I recently received a fund raising letter from a group called Reasons to Believe. In it the author Hugh Ross, who I actually had formerly thought was intelligent reflected on a conversation he had with an apologetics professor who noted that he got himself into trouble when his students brought up Genesis 1 with disputes over creation days 1 and 4.

“The professor listened intently as I pointed out how other biblical creation accounts, including Job 38-39, Psalm 104, and Proverbs 8 amplify the Genesis story of God’s activities on the six creation days. Since God inspired all of these accounts, the best interpretation of Genesis 1 will be one that yields an appropriately literal and consistent reading of all these relevant Scripture passages.”

“This integrative approach reveals that God created light when He created the physical universe before rather than on day 1. He also formed the Sun, Moon, and the stars before rather than on day 4 (even before day 1). His work on day 1 involved transforming Earth’s atmosphere from opaque to translucent, allowing light to penetrate Earth’s initially thick, dark cloud cover. His work on day 4 brought about transformation of this translucent (permanently overcast) atmosphere to a frequently transparent one, allowing the Sun, Moon, and stars to become clearly visible objects for the first time.”

“Not only does this approach to the Bible’s creation accounts resolve textural incongruities but it also removes apparent contradictions between what Genesis 1 teaches about cosmic history and what the book of nature—God’s other “book” of revelation—tells us about the Universe, Earth, and Earth’s life.”

It is surprising to me that Hugh Ross or the apologetics professor would think that this application of wisdom literature would clear anything up. Apparently though, the belief that something is inspired means that the inspiration is meant to only reveal literal, historical facts. That in itself is a huge problem but what about the idea that before day 1 of creation there was on Earth an “initially thick, dark cloud cover”. Would not that assumption cause a problem with Day 2

Gen. 1:6  And God said, "Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water." 7  So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. 8  God called the expanse "sky." And there was evening, and there was morning--the second day.

Apparently working on the atmosphere was a two day job, calling it light on day 1 because He made the dark heavy clouds transparent and then on day 2 separating the mass of water into water and sky. Of course you still have the problem of day 4 with the creation of the Sun, moon and stars so maybe the atmosphere clearing was a 4 day process and it did not really clear up noticeably until day 4 when the inhabitants, none of whom existed yet, could actually see the Sun, moon and stars.

Of course this is, as per the letter, based upon the book of Job which clearly was not trying to set out the order of creation. Such passages as this:

 (Job 38:5-12 NIV)  Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone-- while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy? "Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness, when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place, when I said, 'This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt'? "Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place, that it might take the earth by the edges and shake the wicked out of it?

Does that really sound like we are meant to take it literally? The poetry of Psalms and Proverbs won’t really supply much to the problem either. What they do is provide ways that one can read whatever ideas they want into the poetry. Naturally since they are all inspired they must also all be saying the same thing and since inspired they must be telling us the literal historical truth about creation. They are in fact in agreement. But that agreement is on the creation and the Creator, not at all about the process. Christians that try to explain the process fail in the logic of agreement even between Genesis chapter one, not to mention the differences between Genesis chapter one and chapter two. We can never get past the reality of our universe and our planet in the universe. Surely God knew that man would some day understand space and planets and distant suns and galaxies and He would have meant that His inspiration would not be held to literal understandings which were used to reveal God to a primitive people. Inspiration is not meant to indicate literalness of the account but the import of the account: the establishment of God as the first cause, not how the First Cause worked. Thus the Genesis account reveals a world just like the world we see around us, it does not and cannot tell us about a world that the author or we don’t know or understand. We are here but we don’t see God, He has chosen to reveal Himself slowly over time in a step by step process that culminated in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, inaugurating the reconciliation between God and man, the now and not yet of the Kingdom of God which will never end.

As I recall Hugh Ross is not a young earth creationist, he understands the evidence is too much against that idea but he has not realized the limitations of inspiration that is meant to relate to all people for all time. That just because at one time people believed inspiration said the earth was created in 6 days and inspiration listed genealogies that could only go back a few thousand years (Ussher’s 4004 BC date) that we must continually believe what those people believed because they lacked the scientific knowledge which would have led them to different interpretations had they had the knowledge we have. In other words they have accepted the traditions as inspiration rather than allowing the inspiration to work with us were we are today.

Without realizing how it is tradition rather than inspiration that has created the confusion of creation even someone who is not strictly trying to read the Bible as a literal document gets into trouble: making poetry behave as if it is literal by just picking and choosing choice bits of the imagery. It however does not work, the Christian religion has no need to embrace scientific materialism but it also does not need to accept tradition simply because we, like the scientific materialists, can’t explain origins. Somewhere there is a middle ground and we never get to the middle ground as long as we refuse to move from the ground we hold now. We are in a time when knowledge increases so quickly that it is hard to remember a time when we had to use a coin operated pay phone. All those phone books now sit wasting space because it is faster to look up the local business or address on the internet. We can’t live in the past in a world that advances so rapidly and we only hurt ourselves when we try to live in the past.

We need to realize that we don’t have all the answers and that some of our answers were simply wrong before and move on.

The Adventist Myth of the Bible Only

John McLarty has an interesting article on Adventist Today entitled, Answering Fundamentalists. It has a couple of problems however. The first is the definition of fundamentalist. He follows the same definition that the makers of the Last Generation Movie used. His definition is:

“…In this sermon, when I speak of "fundamentalists" or "fundamentalism" I have two dominant characteristics in mind. First, is a radical commitment to a single text as the only source of authority? In Christianity, this is exemplified by the slogan, The Bible and Bible Only. Or the bumper sticker, "God said it. I believe it. That settles it." The second characteristic of fundamentalists is their belief that the best religion is that which is most similar to the pure, authentic religion of their spiritual forebears…”

It is that first characteristic that is the problem. Because no matter how you look at it, it is simply not true. The Bible is not their only source of authority. The second characteristic is however the most revealing of the Fundamentalist. Tradition is the source of the fundamentalist’s authority. That tradition is then read into the Bible and once incorporated it becomes their truth and the truth that they declare they find in the Bible.

There is a simple example that we can use to demonstrate this fact. I wrote about the subject in regards to Jimmy Swaggarts study Bible. Here is the example from that article, (Swaggart’s commentary in red):

“Consider what he says: even though the Lord had explained to the First Family the necessity of the Sacrificial System, that is if they were to have any type of communion with God and Forgiveness of sins. There is nothing in the Genesis account about anyone explaining a sacrificial system to Adam and Eve or Cain and Abel. To back up his false statement or at best his assumption stated as fact he says: There is evidence that Adam, at least for a while, offered up sacrifices. Really? Where is there any such evidence?”

Growing up Adventists it was always assumed that Adam and Eve offered Sacrifices, why we even have paintings on our Sabbath school Quarterly of the offering of Adam and Eve.

We don’t get that from anywhere in the Bible, we do get something similar from John Wesley who was the founder of Methodism and had a major impact upon Adventist theology through Ellen White, a former Methodist, and no doubt other Adventists pioneers. Here is what Wesley notes on the Bible says:

“3:21 These coats of skin had a significancy. The beasts whose skins they were, must be slain; slain before their eyes to shew them what death is. And probably 'tis supposed they were slain for sacrifice, to typify the great sacrifice which in the latter end of the world should be offered once for all. Thus the first thing that died was a sacrifice, or Christ in a figure.”

It is now a common belief among Christians particularly Fundamentalists. Yet it can not be found in the Bible at all. It is inserted into the story and used from there on as evidence for several other subsequent ideas.

A similar example can be illustrated in Isaiah 14 and the funeral dirge of the Prince of Babylon called Lucifer in the Latin and carried over into the King James Bible. Lucifer through  teachings of some early Christian leaders in the 2^nd and 3^rd century became equated with Satan, but that is not found in the Bible and it is not found in the beliefs of the Jews. (see Who is Lucifer or Satan Mis-identified).

As you can see those are simply two examples where non-biblical ideas are accepted and inserted into the Bible.

The rest of John McLarty’s article deals with the idea of the Bible and the Bible only. Because this is what Fundamentalist have told themselves that they believe. McLarty shows some examples where people from Adventist backgrounds hold to some differing beliefs while each one claims that they accept and follow the Bible and the Bible only. The truth is that in the cases and the people he mentions not one is really following the Bible and the Bible only. Because it is a fiction, it does not exist. We simply cannot tear ourselves away from all the traditions that infiltrate the Christian religion. Some of us have tried for years to remove from our thoughts the ideas that previous traditions have inflicted upon us only to learn of some more hiding in our interpretations or in the interpretations of people we listen to or read. It is a constant noise in Christianity and it magnifies with each passing generation.

Within Adventism itself the problem is amplified because we have incorporated a vast amount of additional writings that we refer to as the “Spirit of Prophecy”. As one Anti-Adventist fundamentalist website says:

“… The proper scriptural rule is: "The Bible, and the Bible only, as the rule of faith and practice." Seventh-day Adventists do not abide by this rule, but add to the Bible the writings of Mrs. White, and make them superior to the Bible;”

Some may argue that Adventists don’t make the Spirit of Prophecy superior to the Bible but that it is an authoritative addition to the Bible cannot be argued. Hence if you do a Google search of the term "Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy" you get 31,800 hits. We heard it recently from the new President of the Adventist church Ted Wilson who said:

“When we are transformed by His grace, we will preach, teach, and witness to

the straight message from the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy in a humble, loving, winsome manner.”

“I praise the Lord that Nancy and I were both raised by godly parents. In neither of our homes did we ever hear one disparaging word about the Bible or the Spirit of Prophecy. We were both brought up to fear the Lord and reverence His Word.”

It is such a common term in Adventism I don’t even see why an Adventist would make the claim that we find in this Adventist World article by Kwabena Donkor is an associate director of the Biblical Research Institute.

“At a time when creeds had a strong hold on churches, Ellen White was instrumental in encouraging the church to stand by the Bible as the only source of faith and practice. She was firm on the principle of “the Bible, and the Bible only, as the standard of all doctrines, and the basis of all reforms.”² This commitment to the primacy of Scripture that permeated the thinking of the pioneers continues to be emphasized in Adventist thinking today.”

If you think of some of those reforms of the nineteenth century, Health Reform (Alcohol Temperance, Tobacco Temperance), Dress Reform even Abolition of slavery; are these really ideas that are from the Bible and the Bible only? The answer of course is no they are not reforms predicated on the Bible they are reforms that one can find a few texts that may say something that the reformer will use but they are not developed from the Bible and the Bible only. Remember also that these reforms though we connect them to Ellen White were common among the reformers of the nineteenth century.

Adventist still hold to a lot of the old Puritan beliefs, some of which some of us grew up with. The idea that one should not go to theaters, the idea that one should not play a game or go swimming on the Sabbath. These were Puritan beliefs established hundreds of years before Adventists even existed and none of which are Bible and Bible only beliefs.

The problem is that we can and people do read all kinds of things into the Bible and then pretend that they have gotten their ideas out of the Bible. Fundamentalists deceive themselves and deceive others by proclaiming that their accepted views are the truth and their accepted views are the products of the Bible and the Bible only. It is this deception that produces the intolerance and the absurdities that predominate the religious thinking of Fundamentalists. It is not their respect for the Bible that is the problem it is their disrespect of the Bible, their ability to shape the Bible to their traditions that is the problem.

Unfortunately it appears that the fundamentalist deception is in the midst of resurgence in Adventism today if the appointment of our new President is any indication and I am certain it is a pretty accurate indication.