Zeb (and Ivan),
If you are willing to grant that the bible is a work that requires interpretation, then you will have to grant that I have the ability to interpret it differently than you at times.
This means we can all, in good conscience, be acting as we see appropriate, but be in disagreement. This is an important insight.
Zeb, sometimes the ability for another to have a differing view but still be following the correct path is excluded from possibility around here. You only have to read Ivan’s post to see that.
Ivan’s interpretation is exclusionary, such that if you don’t agree with his viewpoint on everything, well then, you can’t really be a Christian.
Ivan also feels that there is no source of information, no source of wisdom, other than the bible itself. He reveres it, placing it above man, on a level with God, and that is wrong.
As quoted to me above, it is a source of instruction, it is a source of wisdom, it helps one know how to live correctly. However, it is very difficult to know exactly how to apply it in our lives today.
Let me try to tell a little story, a small illustration, as that is the way this whole thing works anyway.
Let’s say you are drawing a picture with a dot matrix printer. Let’s say it has a low resolution and no color. You may do the best you can to reproduce the original image, but it will be greatly lacking.
So, we have the wisdom and grace of God, and we have the minds of men. The bible is of course of low resolution and lacking color, and we are left with only what the human mind can both grasp and relate.
Further, there is no way to pass a message into and out of a mans mind without the message being viewed through the lens of the mind of the person hearing it. You only have to look at how a simple statement here can be interpreted by each reader in a different way.
So, to understand the bible, not only do we have to realize that it is of very low resolution compared to reality, it is also slanted based on the minds of those that wrote it.
If this is so, and I believe it is, then I have a lot of leeway to decide what may be artifacts of the minds of men of the time and what may truly be the messages intended for us.
Please, show me where I am mistaken, but you’ll have to avoid simply claiming that the bible is the literal word of God, because I do not accept that.
[Note: Ivan, where in the hell did you ever get the idea that I have rejected the life, death and rebirth of Christ? This is just another example of the lens of the mind seeing what it expects to see instead of reality!]
