What conclusions would you arrive at?
This week preparing for small group, I read something that Francis Chan said in his book "Crazy Love" which really got me thinking, in addition to some thoughts from my Theopraxis class a few weeks ago.
The thought is this: If I was trapped on a desert island, and all I had to feed my thinking and my knowledge of God and life was the Bible. No commentaries, no other books, no teachers, no systems of theology. All I had was what was written in that book... and I read it without anything anchoring my thoughts... what conclusions would I come up with?
Add another thought: If I read Paul's letters as if I was a citizen of Ephesus, Rome, Galatia, Phillipi, etc., and did not have a systematic theology to break apart what Paul was saying (it may not be too hard to get that idea... watching Spartacus or Gladiator may be enough to at least put your mind into that of the late 1st Century Roman world) and I didn't have the letter broken up into chapters & verses (because they didn't arrive to their readers that way), would I reach the same conclusions that I arrived at through what I was taught? If you read it as if you were a 12 year old that has never heard one of {insert your favorite teacher or your pastor's name here} talks before, what would change about your thinking?
I would hope that it would confirm some things... especially if you have had the privelege of having great teachers in your life. But I do think that in all of our cases, especially in America, we would have our thinking challenged and that's a good thing. The $64,000 question then is: what do we do with that?
The thought is this: If I was trapped on a desert island, and all I had to feed my thinking and my knowledge of God and life was the Bible. No commentaries, no other books, no teachers, no systems of theology. All I had was what was written in that book... and I read it without anything anchoring my thoughts... what conclusions would I come up with?
Add another thought: If I read Paul's letters as if I was a citizen of Ephesus, Rome, Galatia, Phillipi, etc., and did not have a systematic theology to break apart what Paul was saying (it may not be too hard to get that idea... watching Spartacus or Gladiator may be enough to at least put your mind into that of the late 1st Century Roman world) and I didn't have the letter broken up into chapters & verses (because they didn't arrive to their readers that way), would I reach the same conclusions that I arrived at through what I was taught? If you read it as if you were a 12 year old that has never heard one of {insert your favorite teacher or your pastor's name here} talks before, what would change about your thinking?
I would hope that it would confirm some things... especially if you have had the privelege of having great teachers in your life. But I do think that in all of our cases, especially in America, we would have our thinking challenged and that's a good thing. The $64,000 question then is: what do we do with that?
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