This morning I dropped by the office of one of the pastors in town. We got to talking about different topics. During the course of conversation, it became clear that this person holds to a fairly rigid, authoritative, and literalistic view of the Bible. For this person, I got the sense that issues that come up in life always have a black and white answer.
I don't agree with it, but I respect this person's position. From our conversation, it certainly appears that God had worked and is still working through this person and through this particular set of lenses into the Bible and life.
That seems to be one of the themes in the Bible: God works through us imperfect humans, with our imperfect visions and imperfect understandings. God works in ways that do stretch our vision and understanding, but not so much so that his communications to us would be lost completely. In other words, I believe that God custom-tailors his communications to each person to allow it to fit each person's experience, understanding, faith, and expectations.
This quarter's Mission Quarterly (adult) contains stories from West-Central Africa that seem almost unbelievable and alm0st fanciful, at least from our perspective. (There is one story where a person dies and is resurrected three times in response to prayer...) If God worked like that in North America, most of us wouldn't believe it and would likely dismiss it as fantasy. So I do believe that God still today works within human cultures and experiences. He works differently in North America than he does in Africa, differently in Europe than in Asia, and so on.
If God works that way today, I believe he did so during the period in which the books of the Bible were authored. The Bible was written by people in a particular culture at a certain point in time for the same audience. North Americans in the 21st century was not the intended audience.
When we are faced with life issues, is it appropriate to ask, as the minister I spoke with this morning believes, "What does the Bible say about it?" Should we simply take the literal words that we find and apply it directly to the questions that we have?
Or should we take a little more time to understand the historical and cultural contexts, try to figure out what God was trying to communicate about himself, and then try to extract the larger principle that might lead to an application that is appropriate and fitting for our time, place, and individual circumstances? Some might say I'm being rather relativistic. And I won't deny that. But the more I read about God in the Bible, the more it appears to me that he deals with people one-on-one and adjusts his response accordingly. The one principle that doesn't seem to change is that God is always love: God always responds in a way to try to draw each person closer to him, to help each person personally experience his love and grace. The method God uses varies for each person.
I think it's important to know where we stand on our view of the inspiration of Scripture. How we understand the inspiration of the Bible has a big effect on how we see God and how we choose to interact with other people.
If you're interested in seeing what other people think (on both sides of the spectrum), there's a big, online debate going on over at The Spectrum Blog on the topic of Inspiration of Scripture.
Another place to gain insight into the topic of biblical inspiration is in the book (complete book posted online), More Than a Prophet, by Graeme S. Bradford. The first part of the book discusses the general nature of biblical inspiration. The second part discusses inspiration as applied to Ellen G. White.
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