Continued from Bad Questions, Part II: How Much of Y Can I Do Before It Becomes a Sin?, which examines bad questions that Christians ask.
How can the Bible say Z?This is one I've run into a lot lately, but hadn't at all until recently. The straight answer: The Bible says everything it does with ink and a pre-constructed language system. That's how it does it. The fact that the Bible says incredibly paradoxical things, like "Take joy in grief," or, "Be perfect like God," does not mean the Bible is false.
What does it mean? What can we learn from these confusing passages? These are better questions. But asking "How can you believe any of the Bible when it contradicts itself by saying 'we are judged by works' and 'there is no need for the law'" is the start to a frustrating conversation with no end, no resolution, no closure, and no productivity. Asking why God would put that in there is like asking why recessive genes evolved or why the evolutionary processes didn't remove our appendices. It's searching for an answer that is completely and utterly unknowable and has no practical significance. So instead of asking, "how can God say that?" ask "What does that mean? What's the historical context? How does this apply to my life?"My intent is not, as I hope I made clear in my intro, to say that questions are bad. Nor is my intent to bash anyone who's ever asked these questions, because I'd wager a bet that everyone (myself included) has asked all three types in various forms numerous times. My intent is to save some people some trouble and some hassle by encouraging them to ask good, productive questions that will help them along on their search for truth, rather than getting sidetracked by bad questions.
Comments (29)
right on
I've said "Practice makes perfect", "No body's perfect", "You can't teach an old dog new tricks", as well as "You're never too late to learn".
I hope I'm not discounted as lacking credibility.
@wayne_etc
Woo! I agree with you.
I agree with you too. But any honest definitive clear question is a good question.
Either my eyes are going bad, or your last paragraph is in a lighter color than the others. Good to see you on here, Black Sheep!
Paradoxes in the bible are the things that stimulate me intellectually and spiritually. Looking at the contexts of James' view on faith and works and Pauls' view on the same opened up whole surfaces and depths of ideas that are so complex it was true.
Jesus said you shall be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect. The standard of righteousness needed in order to enter the kingdom is perfection. We are not perfect. What this is meant to do is drive us to our knees and cry out for mercy. When we repent and trust in Christ alone, His perfect righteousness is then imputed to us [applied to our account] so that judicially God sees us as perfect, even though we will not be perfect in an actual sense until glorification.
I don't know where you get the no need for the law thing. Gal.3:24 says the law was our tutor to lead us to Christ. When we look into the moral Law [ten commandments] and find that lying stealing blashemy make us imperfect , we then see our need for a Savior and grace. Eph.2:8,9 For by grace are you saved by faith and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God not of works [law keeping] lest anyone should boast. In other words God gets all of the glory for saving you.
i'm reminded of a quote from one of my favorite shows... just because may never be able to find the right answer, doesn't mean that there isn't one.
the problem with your examples of questioning the existence of recessive genes and appendices is that there IS a practical significance to knowing why things are in the Bible (at least, in my opinion). after all, if you're Christian then you're committing to following this book your whole life. i would certainly never do that unless i understood the importance of every passage. choosing which parts to be fascinated and passionate about is something i see a lot in Christianity, and the fact that i can't think in such minimalist ways is probably what contributed to me leaving the faith.
I disagree that this is a bad question to ask. I agree with nyclegodesi24@xanga that the paradoxes (and I would add contradictions) are stimulating both for my faith and mind. The examples of paradoxes presented are rather weak, in my opinion. There are harder things to confront.
For example, how do we handle these two verses: Romans 10:9 and Matthew 7:21?
Romans 10:9 - For if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (This is Paul writing.)
Matthew 7:21 - "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven." (That was Jesus speaking.)
I believe these are questions worth asking.
"Nietzsche had an almost pathological weakness for one particular kind of ambiguity, which, to be sure, is not irremediable: he loved words and phrases that mean one thing out of context and almost the opposite in the context he gives them... The former is bound to lead astray hasty readers, browsers and...nonreaders."
--Walter Kaufman on Nietzsche's Ecce Homo
When a writer uses superficial contradictions that make sense only in context, he's called a man of genius whose writings are full of depth and suggestive ambiguities. When the Bible has superficial contradictions, no one should trust it because it contradicts itself. Either that, or it has "hasty readers, browsers, and nonreaders."
We must remember one of the rules of hermeneutics is that scripture interprets scripture. We are never to isolate a verse of scripture to make it say what we want. While Romans 10:9 says what it does, it is also evident through other passages that men must repent [turn from their sins] in order to be saved. Please read the context of Matt.7: Jesus is talking about false prophets. you will know them by their fruit. Please read on to vs 23 ...depart from me you workers of lawlessness I never knew you! Jesus is talking about those who called Him Lord, but did not turn from their lawlessness or sin. In other words there will be lots of false converts who stand before him believing themselves saved maybe because then prayed a prayer once and asked .Him into their hearts ,but never really forsook their sin. It is common practice in many north American circles to leave out sin, righteousness and judgment from their message. They tell people that Jesus will improve their lives or fix their problems but they leave out the fact that God is angry with sinners and commands them to repent and trust the savior. In order to be seeker friendly they have left out the only message that can really save!
So instead of asking, "how can God
say that?" ask "What does that mean? What's the historical context? How
does this apply to my life?
My intent is to save some people some trouble and some hassle by
encouraging them to ask good, productive questions that will help them
along on their search for truth, rather than getting sidetracked by bad
questions.
This particular question is not a bad question. You know and I know what people mean when they say ask it... your pen and ink explanation is a bit absurd and smart-alecky. If there are statements in the Bible that appear to contradict each other, it is very good to ask "how can God say that?" and to allow people to ask it. For some, something that initially appears to be inconsistent, fickle or ungodly representing God's values can be mind boggling or seem to discredit Christianity. In my opinion, anyone who discourages that kind of questioning is not confident in their faith. Of course things like exploring the historical context can help us understand "how can God say that"... but theres nothing wrong with asking the question unless you dont want to really look for the answer.
All I am saying is that these passages are not confusing when the right principles are applied!
My intent is to save some people some trouble and some hassle by encouraging them to ask good, productive questions that will help them along on their search for truth, rather than getting sidetracked by bad questions.
That's like saying, "Don't confuse the issue with the facts," or "Since the Great and Holy Me is unable to answer Little Ignorant You's questions, they are all "bad questions."
The Church has been answering questions on faith and morals AND Scripture for a very long time. Disciples and aspirants must have their questions answered, even the "bad" ones. If not, the unanswered questions fester into doubts and the doubts into loss of the faith.
this is one good reason to remember that there are many different ways to interpret scripture, and to not automatically assume that since you read it in the bible, in a complete sentence, that your opinions on that verse are always correct.
@TrumvilleOrbison@xanga - You're right that people interpret the bible differently however there is only one interpretation and that is the one the author intended.
@soy_esteban@xanga - @LoBornlite@xanga - @cornerstonechwk - @subSacred@xanga - I'm not saying working through apparent contradictions is bad. On the contrary, it's somewhat of a hobby of some of my friends and mine to hang out and bounce scriptures off each other to try and determine their meaning. I'm not saying how to resolve the apparent contradictions between the sentiment in James and the sentiment in Galatians is trivial or should be avoided...it most certainly should (as most of you pointed out) be wrestled with and embraced.
I think your confusion of my intent stems from my lack of background given to this genre question of questions (admittedly a fault on my part, I didn't want to include too many anecdotes here, but it seems I over-corrected). I would not include things like apparent contradictions in this genre of questions. But I've been asked things like, "how can Jesus say in the beatitudes that we should be joyful when we greive? That doesn't make sense, how can you trust Him when He's clearly out of touch with reality?" I've seen similar questions raised regarding Old Testiment Law regarding rape and how a loving God can have such laws. Those (and others) are the types of questions this post was calling bad. When approached in a way that questions the real-nees or pertainance of God, then these are bad questions because a paradox or plays on words as Pass_The_Aura alluded to does not mean the speaker is necessarily out of touch with reality or not real. However, when approached in a way that begs for answers regarding the meaning of the contradictions or paradoxes, these are great questions as you and @nyclegodesi24@xanga - all noted.
I hope this post makes more sense to you now given that context. I apologize for being vague; thank you for calling me out on it.
@too_pretty_to_die@xanga - I would agree that knowing what things mean is very much of practical significance. I think my comparison still works though because knowing God's mental processes before he did or said something is really not that important. He did/said something, and our goal shouldn't be to get inside the mind of God to psychoanalyze Him; it should be to determine what he wanted us to learn from said action/sentance. There's a very subtle difference that often gets blurred. Like appendices, it doesn't matter anymore why we have them. We have them. The question now is what do we do about them? Does that make sense? Like I said, it's a fuzzy line, especially when one starts asking questions regarding the nature of God, but do you kinda see where I'm coming from?
@subSacred@xanga - The ink and paper comment is very smart-alecky, but to date it's always gotten at least a chuckle, and just for the record, that's not where I end the conversation. If the question is regarding contradictions, then I answer it to the best of my ability, usually falling back to the much wiser ideas of Phillip Yancy who said that the truth is at the extremes. If the question is of this genre, then suffice to say that the conversations are far less productive...logic can only provide so strong a rubuttle against emotionally-based arguments. Knowing the historical context usually helps (which is why I used it as an alternative question), but that's about it.
I have to disagree with LoBornlite that the Church answers questions. The church is the body of Christ with Him as the cornerstone and His disciples the living bricks. Answers come from the inspired Word of God given to us in the Holy Bible.
These examples of contradictory verses that we can't understand are not. Usually, the contradiction comes from your knowledge of the scriptures that may have been taught to you wrong. An example of this was brought up by nyclegodesi24:
Romans 10:9 - For if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (This is Paul writing.)
Matthew 7:21 - "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven." (That was Jesus speaking.)
The false assumption is that confessing and believing are the only requirements to salvation. That teaching will cause confusion when you see in Matt 7 and Luke 6 that confessing believers are turned away by the Lord because they did not obey. The Lord says to hear what he says and act upon it in obedience.
cornerstonechwk, you are mistaken about Matt 7: 21 being all about false prophets. The chapter includes judgement, hypocracy, false prophets and verse 21 begins another paragraph about believers who did not obey the gospel. They hear the Lord but do not do what He says.
cornerstonechwk siad, "In other words there will be lots of false converts who stand before him believing themselves saved maybe because then prayed a prayer once and asked .Him into their hearts ,but never really forsook their sin." The Lord never said to pray Him into your heart in the first place, but you are correct that they think they are saved and they have in fact accomplished great works in the name of Jesus. Their problem is they were not "in Christ" and that is where all of God's blessing are found.
@JoyB4Him - Amen to your reply! I think we are in total agreement here. My leaving out other topics attached to Matt.7 were a bit sloppy on my part. I was simply trying to make a point. You are right on about judgment, hypocracy, false prophets etc. However I struggle with your saying believers who did not obey. I see them as false converts. They were not true believers in the first place or like you said [not in Christ]. And your point about asking Jesus into thier hearts is exactly what I was meaning. It's not biblical language. It would be better to say repent and trust in Christ.
If someone is a true believer he will hear what Jesus says and act in obedience. I would simply be careful not to say that our obedience contributes to our salvation. Salvation is a work of God, and if it is genuine it will show itself in bearing fruit.
too pretty to die: Knowing Gods thought processes is not so much what I had in mind but knowing his character and nature based on what scripture says is. It is also scary to approach scripture without the presupositon that it is Gods word and that it is infallable and innerrant, therefore any thought of it being contradicting is false automatically. In other words it's not so much how can God say that but rather [what does this mean]. From all of this we learn the mind of God and then apply it to our lives by saying [how does this apply to me and how does He want me to change that I may become more like Christ.
@cornerstonechwk - i disagree. i don't think it's always necessarily able to be eliminated down to only one interpretation or application. and to state the obvious, if one has questions about something, it's impossible to learn exactly what the authors meant to say, since they're all dead. news flash.
But isn't that all christianity is, questions? No body will ever be able to disinguish what is true and what is false until they find out for themselves. Either we will have eternal life, or we will have no eternal life.
@TrumvilleOrbison@xanga - I didn't say we always have the right interpretation, I merely said there is only one and that is what the author intends to convey!
@TrumvilleOrbison@xanga - Oh! and also you are correct about one thing. While there is only one true interpretation there can be multiple applications.
@d34thbreath@xanga - Actually no! Christianity is not merely questions. A Christian is a disciple of Jesus Christ. God became a man and lived the perfect life we were not able to live. Because we are sinners or law breakers [see 1John3:4] If you have lied even once you are a liar, if you have stolen anything you are a thief, if you have looked at someone with lust ,God sees you as a lying thief and an adulterer at heart. These are a violation of His moral law which we commit against our conscience see Rom. Chapter 2 where it says His laws are written on our hearts. If you stand before God on judgment day and he judges you according to His standard [perfection] you will be found guilty and end up in hell for all eternity. But when Jesus went to the cross, the Fathers wrath against our sin fell upon his innocent son so that He wouldn't have to pour it out on you! If you will repent [turn from sin] and put your trust in Christ alone for your salvation God can then allow you to live. He will give you a new heart with new desires. He will make you His child and welcome you into heaven. Make sense?
@d34thbreath@xanga - Also in John chapter 17 in Jesus high priestly prayer to the father He said concerning His disciples [Father sanctify them by Your truth, Your word is truth] Don't ever believe anyone who tells you the truth in unknowable, the bible is the word of God and it is truth. With maybe the exception of a few verses it's pretty easy to understand.