A Fresh Look
I wrote an essay about two years ago when I lived in Chicago and hosted a forum on Ryze network called God Talk. It always amazed me how much people argued from preconceived notions and handed-down phrases. The essay has a mild Christian slant, but has much to offer for anyone concerned with seeing things with your own eyes.
A Fresh Look
It's hard to take a fresh look at the Bible (Hebrew Scriptures plus the books of the New Testament approved by Catholic of Protestant authorities.) After all, in the West, we have been born into a heavily Judeo-Christian-influenced culture. Even some leftists who have rejected God as a mistake of the past are still influenced indirectly by Judeo-Christian culture (e.g., in Marxism there is a compassion for the poor not unlike that in the Bible. I believe it is no coincidence that Marx grew up in a Judeo-Christian culture.) So we have pre-conceptions when we come to The Book.
I grew up Southern Baptist, become an atheist in college, became a born again Pentecostal Holiness in my early twenties, became a Roman Catholic in my thirties, and have been influenced by Eastern thinking since then, while remaining Catholic. Leaving aside what all this movement says about me personally, I can attest that each of these cultures has different assumptions about the Bible and how to apply it to daily life.
Southern Baptists focus on the Bible as an inerrant document that can be taken as literally true. It is the guiding star pointing to the Messiah Jesus Christ. For Southern Baptists, disagreeing with part of the Bible is dangerous and tantamount to rejecting the authority of the whole. Baptists start with the assumption that the Bible is the Word of God
Atheists tend to reject the Bible as a mistake of the past, a book filled with fabulous stories from pre-scientific cultures that believed that spirits animated everything. Monotheism was just the abstraction of this principle. Atheists can look to the Bible for some insight (e.g., when I was an atheist, I liked Ecclesiastes because of its existential, world-weary tone. ("Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.") It has some great quotes (e.g., “the sun also rises,” borrowed by Ernest Hemmingway and others.
Pentecostal Holiness and Catholic charismatics are like other fundamentalist Christians except they emphasize certain experiences recounted in the New Testament about the Holy Spirit descending on people, who then speak in tongues and work miracles. People get saved, and then they experience a Baptism in the Holy Spirit (a mystical experience of sensing the in-filling of the Holy Spirit and sometimes of speaking in tongues.) I experienced this when I was about 23.
Catholics tend to emphasize church tradition and passed-down apostolic authority over the Bible (The Church decided what the Bible is.) This approach allows Catholics to look at the Bible as written by men who had inspired insight. Nevertheless, these men could be wrong about matters of fact, and were definitely located in a culture and had human limitations.
Eastern thinking tends to view the Bible and religions like Christianity as one of many ways to the truth. Personal experience is more important and teachers who help lead people toward trusting themselves (their own personal experience) to find their own truth (what works for them). There are also elements of renunciation, also found in ascetic Catholicism.
Currently (at the time this was written two years ago), I live in an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Chicago. My neighbors’ view of the Bible (they don't call it that) is different from that of any Christian, and they all read it in the original Hebrew, not in translation. Their tradition is written in the Talmud, a collection of rabbinical writings and has a heavy influence on how the scriptures are applied to daily life.
So, it's hard to come to the Bible with a fresh view. When I try, I see certain passages that are really interesting--for example, the Roman Centurion with the sick servant. He approached Jesus and said he had a sick servant and could Jesus help. Jesus started to go with the man, but the Centurion stopped him and said something like, "Look, you are a man of authority; just say the word and my servant will be healed." Jesus was stunned at the depth of the man's faith.
What to make of this? Was the man already "saved" in the Fundamentalist sense? Had he been baptized into the Church in the Catholics sense? Had he received the Holy Spirit in the Pentecostal sense? Is it all a fable as the atheists believe? Or, had the man simply sensed (experienced) the spiritual power of Jesus and relied on it in the Eastern sense? Certainly, we have no record that Jesus asked him to profess any faith, get baptized, or agree to any facts, join anything. Jesus just marveled at the man's faith.
So the challenge is how can we see with our own eyes, and not the eyes of others?
A Fresh Look
It's hard to take a fresh look at the Bible (Hebrew Scriptures plus the books of the New Testament approved by Catholic of Protestant authorities.) After all, in the West, we have been born into a heavily Judeo-Christian-influenced culture. Even some leftists who have rejected God as a mistake of the past are still influenced indirectly by Judeo-Christian culture (e.g., in Marxism there is a compassion for the poor not unlike that in the Bible. I believe it is no coincidence that Marx grew up in a Judeo-Christian culture.) So we have pre-conceptions when we come to The Book.
I grew up Southern Baptist, become an atheist in college, became a born again Pentecostal Holiness in my early twenties, became a Roman Catholic in my thirties, and have been influenced by Eastern thinking since then, while remaining Catholic. Leaving aside what all this movement says about me personally, I can attest that each of these cultures has different assumptions about the Bible and how to apply it to daily life.
Southern Baptists focus on the Bible as an inerrant document that can be taken as literally true. It is the guiding star pointing to the Messiah Jesus Christ. For Southern Baptists, disagreeing with part of the Bible is dangerous and tantamount to rejecting the authority of the whole. Baptists start with the assumption that the Bible is the Word of God
Atheists tend to reject the Bible as a mistake of the past, a book filled with fabulous stories from pre-scientific cultures that believed that spirits animated everything. Monotheism was just the abstraction of this principle. Atheists can look to the Bible for some insight (e.g., when I was an atheist, I liked Ecclesiastes because of its existential, world-weary tone. ("Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.") It has some great quotes (e.g., “the sun also rises,” borrowed by Ernest Hemmingway and others.
Pentecostal Holiness and Catholic charismatics are like other fundamentalist Christians except they emphasize certain experiences recounted in the New Testament about the Holy Spirit descending on people, who then speak in tongues and work miracles. People get saved, and then they experience a Baptism in the Holy Spirit (a mystical experience of sensing the in-filling of the Holy Spirit and sometimes of speaking in tongues.) I experienced this when I was about 23.
Catholics tend to emphasize church tradition and passed-down apostolic authority over the Bible (The Church decided what the Bible is.) This approach allows Catholics to look at the Bible as written by men who had inspired insight. Nevertheless, these men could be wrong about matters of fact, and were definitely located in a culture and had human limitations.
Eastern thinking tends to view the Bible and religions like Christianity as one of many ways to the truth. Personal experience is more important and teachers who help lead people toward trusting themselves (their own personal experience) to find their own truth (what works for them). There are also elements of renunciation, also found in ascetic Catholicism.
Currently (at the time this was written two years ago), I live in an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Chicago. My neighbors’ view of the Bible (they don't call it that) is different from that of any Christian, and they all read it in the original Hebrew, not in translation. Their tradition is written in the Talmud, a collection of rabbinical writings and has a heavy influence on how the scriptures are applied to daily life.
So, it's hard to come to the Bible with a fresh view. When I try, I see certain passages that are really interesting--for example, the Roman Centurion with the sick servant. He approached Jesus and said he had a sick servant and could Jesus help. Jesus started to go with the man, but the Centurion stopped him and said something like, "Look, you are a man of authority; just say the word and my servant will be healed." Jesus was stunned at the depth of the man's faith.
What to make of this? Was the man already "saved" in the Fundamentalist sense? Had he been baptized into the Church in the Catholics sense? Had he received the Holy Spirit in the Pentecostal sense? Is it all a fable as the atheists believe? Or, had the man simply sensed (experienced) the spiritual power of Jesus and relied on it in the Eastern sense? Certainly, we have no record that Jesus asked him to profess any faith, get baptized, or agree to any facts, join anything. Jesus just marveled at the man's faith.
So the challenge is how can we see with our own eyes, and not the eyes of others?
posted by David Orr | 2:39 PM
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