God's Word

A friend of mine said something to the effect of "Isn't God big enough to give us a book we can understand with a straightforward reading?" Absolutely. We don't need to be Biblical scholars to understand the word of God. We don't need to be experts in history or archeology to understand the word of God. We don't need to learn Hebrew or Greek to understand the word of God. We don't need to understand ancient Jewish culture to understand the word of God. These things are all helpful and give us a deeper, richer, understanding, but you know what? We've been given revelation about God's creation, man's sin inclination and way to salvation, and God's final restoration -- that anyone literate can pick up and read.

But do you know what so many individual people and groups do with the simple teaching found in God's word?

They take away from it. It's just history. It's mythology. It's corrupted. It's not inspired. It's not authoritative. It's just a book. When you go there, it reduces Christianity to just another religion of the world and reduces Jesus to just other great teacher and example like Buddha or Ghandi. And so on.

They add extra cruft to it not found in its pages. We have tradition that is equally as important. We have new special written revelation that was written down. We have special messages from God that only our leader understands. And what's the common line among many groups that purport these things? We are the one true church. You must join our organization and abide by our rules to be truly saved or to reap the biggest rewards. And so on.

They twist it. Everyone else translated it wrong, we have a special translation. You don't understand the language of the day, here's a 40 page argument on why my false doctrine is really what this one verse means. Jesus was really just a created being and not fully God. Abortion is really okay. Homosexuality is not really a sin. There's no such thing as the devil. There's no such place as hell. And so on.

You know what? We can have a simple faith as presented in the pages of the Bible without resorting to diminishing or twisting the word of God or making up new teachings that are nowhere to be found in its pages.

If left to my own analysis, I would certainly be baffled that so many mishandle God's word and so many more buy into it; however, all these were issues the first believers had to deal with, and its only gotten worse in the last 2000 years. I am somewhat calmed by the facts that we were told this would happen by our Lord, and that my eyes were opened to the truth of God's word by his grace, rather than being left to my own reasoning or interpretation.

I pray earnestly that all would come away from false beliefs to have salvation through Christ as laid out in the Bible, but, sadly, I know that such a thing is not going to happen.

Grace and Peace