What is your real view of God and the Bible? Not what you think intellectually or what you experience emotionally, but your inner-most belief of God, the one your base all of your actions and responses on?

What is your real view of God and the Bible? Not what you think intellectually or what you experience emotionally, but your inner-most belief of God, the one your base all of your actions and responses on?

These questions may appear confusing or even contradictory. However, I believe more and more that their answer represent the true state of Christianity in the world today. Most Christians intellectually accept God and Jesus. They proclaim the Bible is the Word of God. They cry out with deep emotion occassionally. However, when it comes to making decisions, the Bible is just one of several sources they use and God does not directly participate in the decision process.

As a result Christianity has no power.

I taught Sunday School yesterday. I approached the Armor of God passage (Eph 6:10-20) from a different perspective, one that says the point of the passage is to incorporate the Scriptures, the Word of God, Jesus, into our lives and to pray for boldness to tell others about the Gospel. Only in this fashion will we be able to resist Satan and defeat the demons. I will try and clean up my notes and get them posted on the site.

To understand my discussiion you must believe that God is really God and that the Bible is the Word of God. This does not mean that it is a book about God nor does it mean that men wrote the book in some form. It means God specifically guided each word, phrase, comma, and period. God directs our entire understanding of the Bible. The first point is inspiration and the second is illumination. We cannot understand the power of God's Word without both.

As humans we are too weak to accomplish anything for God, but under God's power we can do all things. As such when we rely upon God, His Word, the Bible, no matter what copy or translations we have in our hands, becomes a mystical, supernatural book. God can use it to accomplish any purpose. If only we would believe with every fiber of our being that this is true.

Unfortunately, too many people do not really believe the Bible is supernatural. They tallk about where Paul developed this tradition or how Peter came to present his letters in their current form. Did Peter and Paul really disagree with each other?

What if we simply sat down and said to ourselves, "Self, God wrote the Bible. Therefore I will take all of it at face value. There will be hard sayings and symbols I do not understand, but I will not question any specific, clearly understandable statement I read because it comes from God."

Paul writes in Galatians he obtained his doctrine from Jesus. Ok. Fine. Who cares how Jesus conveyed the doctrine. Paul's doctrine came from Jesus, Jesus will not contradict Himself, so Paul and the Gospels will agree with each other. Paul did not create Christianity, Jesus did.

Jesus says we need to believe in (or on) Him to enter eternal life. What could be simplier?

God says love our enemies. That's pretty simple too.

Get the idea? If we just let the Bible do its thing and allowed God's power to operate, the world would be such a better place. Trouble is, we want to help interpret what the Bible means. We get lost arguing about how things work rather than simply accepting the fact they work.

I just finished a scholarly work on whehter or not Paul followed Jesus in his theology or if Paul created a new religion. The author's position is a conservative view that Jesus and Paul agree with each other. Still, he questions the actual words of the Bible in places by suggesting that someone changed them or that the traditions from which they arose called for editing.

What if they are exactly the way God provided them to the authors? What if they are not Matthew's editorials but God's Words?

I think in our efforts to be strong and smart and intelligent, we make the Biblical story too hard. If we just went back and believed the actual words of the Bible, maybe our faith would be easier and we could make great advances for God and Christianity?

Jim A