Flickr Photo by: Ars Electronica
I found the conversation following the last post thoughtful and encouraging.
Yet my heart aches for the friends who, as Jeff1 suggests, have been led to distraction, disappointment, and disillusionment by false leads about the Bible. In that regard, I think Pooh’s questions about how to recognize misinformation about the Spirit and Word especially helpful.
And, Jeff1, hope its O.K. with you if we think together about your experience of wanting to protect the simplicity of faith by keeping our focus on what Christ did for us on the Cross—yet without the resulting confidence in Scripture and discernment Pooh described.
I get why some might be hesitant to study the Bible because of the ways it has been misused to mislead. Yet as Pooh and others have pointed out, the Scriptures provide the perspective and food for the soul that we desperately need.
Some of you who have followed this blog may have noticed that I’ve become increasingly convinced that most of the New Testament references to the Word, the word of truth, the engrafted word etc are references to the message of or about Christ the living Word. Some of these passages refer specifically to Him—rather than to the message about him.
Seems to me that such a conclusion comes with a needed simplicity and focus in the Son who offers to lead us to his Father. Yet, as we’ve also noted along the way, that simplicity is deepened and enriched through—rather than at the expense of— the whole revelation of God that we find from Genesis to Revelation—and Nature.
It is in this sense that I’ve come to think that the whole of inspired Scripture, as all Creation, helps to tell the story of our need of the living Word. Everything that is shadowed and twisted by self-centered desire and pride shows our need for his rescue. Everything that is good, beautiful and wonderful points us to the life that has its source in Him.
The simplicity is ours to cling to in the Gospel (good news of Christ)…
….And in our shadowy, broken world of fallen complexity, every story, song, and prayer of inspired Scripture… (and in their light— maybe even the flight and plight of Philae)… all can add perspective and illustration for the help we need to find ourselves and our way, again, in the most personal Word of all.
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