Hmm. How often have you heard those words?
I lifted the title from chapter seven in Tim Keller’s book, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism (Dutton, 2008).
In New York urban style, Keller seeks to challenge your thinking:
Now, what happens if you eliminate anything from the Bible that offends your sensibility and crosses your will? If you pick and choose what you want to believe and reject the rest, how will you ever have a God who can contradict you? You won’t! You’ll have a Stepford God! A God, essentially, of your own making, and not a God with whom you can have a relationship and genuine interaction. Only if your God can say things that outrage you and make you struggle (as in a real friendship or marriage!) will you know you have gotten hold of a real God and not a figment of your imagination. So an authoritative Bible is not the enemy of a personal relationship with God. It is the precondition for it. (114).
Thinking of heart issues . . .
Jesus in Idaho Falls 
Amen to that brother!
So how about you believing the Bible when it says we are made in the image and likeness of God, rather than changing it to fit with Catholic concepts?
How about where it says that people saw God and God even says they did that you believe your Bible?
And when Christ says he’s going to the Father and sending back the Holy Ghost that you believe THAT God rather than the one you like about filling the universe and all those other airy-fairy invented concepts?
Yes, you really like your fancy god. And it may offend your sensibility and cross your will to accept that he isn’t real. But is he the God of the Bible?
“A God, essentially, of your own making, and not a God with whom you can have a relationship and genuine interaction.”
A very real danger. But the memories of long nights spent with my Father help guard against it. My Father is very much a reality for me and has often intervened on my behalf in life despite me not deserving it in the least. God’s hand has been in my life from the start, for which I’m sure I’m not nearly grateful enough, but I try.
Hmmm… So are you saying that we should take everything in the Bible literally? Cause if that is the case, watch out for people turning into pillars of salt.
I don’t think that is what you mean. Many things are figurative, allegorical, and metaphorical, in order to teach points of doctrine. We don’t reject those things that aren’t meant to be taken literally in the scriptures, we try to find what God meant by it. Often these lessons are much deeper than any literal lesson could ever teach… Think parables.
Also, I don’t know how you can have a relationship and genuine interaction with God if He is not an exalted man. The only true relationships I have are those with living, breathing, seeing, feeling, moving, touching, smelling, hearing, caring, loving, embodied people. God is such a person, with all those qualities developed to perfection.
Doug, I think you seek to remove the divide between God’s being and God’s likeness.
Here is some more March discussion on the matter:
Bryce, I agree with your second paragraph. But here is my problem with Joseph Smith, he sought to remove the fuzziness that he found in the Bible.
John captures a good quote by Idahoan author, Peter Leithart, on this topic:
And I don’t think God needed any attributes to be developed to perfection. Are you thinking of the scripture in Hebrews?
I’m not certain it is useful to claim that the only way to read a text is either to take it completely literal or to not take it literal. No one reads the bible completely literally.For example, when John the Baptist exclaims that Jesus is the Lamb of God (John 1:29), no one takes the literal reading that Christ is an actual lamb (Ovis aries). When Jesus says he is the true vine (John 15:1) no one takes the literal reading that Jesus is an actual vine (genus Vitis). These may seem like silly examples and one might say, “Well, come on, of course we shouldn’t take that literal.” But then notice one is making an exception to the rule of taking the bible completely and totally literal.
Let’s take a couple of examples of literal readings from the New Testament narrative. When Jesus tells Nicodemus that he must be “born again,” Nicodemus takes a literal reading and asks Jesus, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” (John 3:4). Notice that the literal reading was not the correct reading in this case. When Jesus speaks to the Samaritan woman at the well, he tells her that he has living water, the Samaritan woman understands him to be speaking literally and responds, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?” (John 4:11). Again, in this case, the literal reading was the incorrect reading and it hampered understanding the words of Jesus. In fact, immediately following this encounter, the disciples of Jesus return from the city with food and encourage Jesus to eat. Jesus tells his disciples, “I have food to eat that you do not know about” (John 4:32). The disciples take the literal and incorrect reading and say to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” (John 4:33). Again, Jesus must correct their literal reading. In these three cases—Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman, and the disciples—their initial literal understanding was incorrect, and in each case Jesus corrected their literal readings. These examples show that not every statement in the biblical text should be taken literally. Here too, one might react by saying, “Well, come on, we know we shouldn’t do that, that’s just silly.” However, if so, notice one is still making distinctions between literal readings that don’t make sense and literal readings that make sense. It is better to be more precise when discussing these issues rather than make a sweeping statement that we should reject anyone who says “You can’t take the bible literally.”
Aquinas, if Joseph took John’s Gospel literally, why did he try to revise it, beginning with John 1?
On the “streets” here is the meaning of the phrase:
“You can’t take the Bible literally” = “You can’t expect all 66 original books of the old world scripture to be uniform in agreement and inerrant.”
When people on the streets usually make that statement in the title of this post, they are showing their disagreement with the fundamentalist/conservative evangelical’s biblical assertions in the conversation.
Check out Keller, Aquinas. I like the term. The Spirit through the word does make plain what should be taken literally.
I appreciate the response Todd. From the short excerpt you have cited from Keller, it sounds like he isn’t talking about inerrancy or even literalism, but rather it seems he is talking about a problem with people “picking and choosing” which parts of the bible to believe. That to me is what your quote from Keller is driving at. That isn’t the same thing as inerrancy or literalism so the title of your post seemed incongruent to me. I’m not sure what examples that Keller gives of “picking and choosing.” Perhaps you can offer some concrete examples of this problem.
I would have to say that in my discussions with people, my observations, and in my own studies, I think everyone “picks and chooses” what to believe in the bible. However, they don’t think of it in those terms. Rather, they think of it in terms of interpretation. Some Christians, for example, might accuse other Christians for rejecting Paul’s teachings in 1 Corinthians 11:5. However, those Christians who do not make it a requirement that women should have their heads covered when they pray interpret Paul differently. They come up with some kind of interpretation which gets around it. Some people might argue that we should worship on the Sabbath and that the Sabbath actually refers to Saturday and not Sunday. They might accuse Christians of simply picking and choosing out of convenience and not accepting the whole bible. However, other Christians who worship on Sunday simply have a different interpretation of the bible. So what I often see is that one side thinks the other is picking and choosing (apparently this is a negative thing) and the other side makes the same accusation. But both sides feel they aren’t picking and choosing.
I don’t think this is a fair criticism to use. Some may for example criticize Christians for picking and choosing by saying that Christians are unfaithful to the Paul’s teaching that women should remain silent in the churches (1 Cor. 14:34). Whereas Christians who have women speak in their churches simply have a different interpretation of the passage. I think it is important to be open enough to allow someone to have a reasonable interpretation of scripture which differs from your own. I emphasize the word “reasonable.” That doesn’t mean you have to accept it, but it would be nice to be able to say, “You know, I can completely understand why you would have that understanding and I can see it makes sense from your perspective.” When I hear critiques of people “picking and choosing” I often feel that these critiques simply aren’t honest because they fail to appreciate that everyone has interpretations of the bible which look like rejections or “picking and choosing” to someone from the outside but to someone on the inside it does not.
The “picking and choosing” phrase: I realize that the interfaith dialogue rules once again would disavow me from using that terminology and even label me as dishonest for allowing such words to escape in passion from my computer keyboard.
But, Aquinas, there are characters in the Bible provided as examples for smoothly picking and choosing scripture to promote their own schemes. And these characters thought they were being very reasonable.
I Corinthians 11 and 14 are important. I was mentored in a church family (http://www.mountcalvarybaptist.org/ ) who consistently practiced head coverings . . . so careful were they in seeking to take the Bible literally.
Todd, passion is a wonderful thing. However, in our zeal, let’s hope we can bridle our passions, so that we do not alienate the very people with whom we are trying to communicate.
Who are these characters in the bible that are picking and choosing scripture? Let’s discuss some of these specific examples. It’s always illustrative to deal with specific examples.
Should truth be fettered in cold chains to the fears of alienating others?
I once lived that life of fear in the Mormon corridor, Aquinas. But living, black-and-white, redeeming truth set me free.
Why go back to fearing the myriad of accusing opinions and interpretations of others?
___
I am in final preparation for the Lord’s Day, tomorrow. But Aquinas let me get back with you after tomorrow on false teachers and such.
It has been a fantastic week here in S.E. Idaho.
aquinas
What you are saying is related to a post I recently made on the problems of the Bible as an ultimate authority. However I do believe that church members believing in evolution and an ice age have taken avoiding literalism to ridiculous extremes. So I do agree with Todd’s sentiment in that regard.
Todd
The Hebrew speaks of “likeness” being a phantom. ie we are a phantom of God. It also mentions “image”. Which means “something that looks like”. So we look like God in seeing us. And we are like God in all the unseen ways.
Now that is what the Bible says. But what do you say?
Todd, I appreciate learning a little bit about your personal history. I hope you realize that interfaith dialogue as I understand it is not based in fear of being unable to speak. I do not think we should be afraid of speaking. People often need to overcome their fear in order to speak out. However, after a person overcomes their fear and gains the courage to speak, there is another consideration which becomes paramount.
The question is whether one’s communication, one’s message, is effectively communicated to the intended audience and whether the audience receives the message. This requires more than the courage to speak. It requires that one is intimately concerned that their language is created in the way most optimal to deliver a message to the audience.
It requires that the message sender intensely evaluates whether the message is received and moreover, whether the message achieves it’s intended result and not the opposite effect. Too often we are only concerned whether we “get the message” out. However, this effort is in vain unless we fervently focus on whether the message is delivered and received. It may be hindered because we fail to present it in a way it can be understood, or because we lack the attention to whether another person is actually receiving the message. Too often we get in the way, or we allow our passion for the truth get in the way of our communication having any meaning.
We might rejoice in the reverberations of truth as it sounds in our own ears, but if our goal is to actually transmit truth to others, and for them to actually receive our intended message, then we have failed miserably unless that becomes our concern. One shouldn’t fear conveying truth to others. If one is to fear anything, one should fear getting in the way conveying truth to others because one simply fails to effectively communicate.
Thus, when I am concerned about alienating someone, it isn’t born from a fear of speaking out, it is born from a fear that my language will actually have the opposite effect, rather than a person receiving my message, my language creates barriers of understanding, and I push them away. That isn’t a fear of speaking out, it is a fear that I was so concerned about getting something off my chest, to make me feel good, that I failed in my responsibility to communicate something of great importance to another. It would be self-deception to rationalize and shift the failure to communicate solely on the other person; to say that they simply choose not to listen to me. However, it is often the case that we have failed to take the time and effort to effectively communicate. It is true that ultimately our audience has the choice of whether to receive a message, but we have a lot to do with that, much more than people are aware. I am convinced that unless we accept responsibility for the failure to communicate that we ending up speaking to please ourselves alone, because it surely has no effect to anyone outside our own minds.
We must not allow ourselves to become barriers to communication. If the truth is fettered at all, it is because we get in the way of our own message. Maybe I have just gotten in the way of my message to you by failing to communicate my message in a way you will respond to favorably. Maybe my language comes across as offensive to you, but I am hoping you can at least appreciate where I am coming from.
Aquinas, this is a good consideration.
If one is to fear anything, one should fear getting in the way conveying truth to others because one simply fails to effectively communicate.
May the Lord help me in this area.
But I do have a greater fear. I pray that I am not obscuring or being doctrinally unfaithful to the scriptural doctrine of God’s message.
Do my LDS friends share this fear?
(For would the most glorifying communication to God be that communication which is the most faithful to biblical scripture in its full counsel?)
The wresting of scriptures – http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2006/11/wresting/ –
is a chief concern.
Aquinas, here is another concern of mine before we get into more discussion.
Jim Wallis writes in his latest book, The Great Awakening (HarperOne, 2008):
“Imagine a revival of faith that didn’t result in sectarian warfare but rather respectful dialogue between diverse religious communities and a new interfaith collaboration in overcoming the social crises that confront us all” (308).
I don’t believe a great awakening will occur through interfaith dialogue. I believe individual heart regeneration and community healing comes through the Spirit and the Word.
Todd, I’m not offering interfaith dialogue as a panacea to all of life’s problems. If you want to revitalize your own faith community, then you don’t have to talk to anyone outside your community. However if you are going to engage in communication with someone of another faith—if that is what you are going to do—then there are many suggestions as how to go about this effectively and fruitfully without negative consequences and without wasting time and effort.
If you are alone on a desert island with your bible and you want to engage in prayer and study and worship with God, then suggestions about how to improve interfaith dialogue don’t apply.
If you are on a desert island with your whole church congregation and you want to pray and study and worship together, and people of different faiths are not on the island, then again, suggestions about how to improve interfaith dialogue don’t apply.
If you are on an island with your whole church at one end and at the other end there is a different church and religion but you have no intentions of talking to them and you keep to your side, and they keep to their side, then suggestions about how to improve interfaith dialogue don’t apply.
If you are on an island with your church and a different church at the other end and you want to eradicate or exterminate the other religion and co-existence is not an option for you, then you don’t need to worry about suggestions for interfaith dialogue.
If you are on an island with your church and a different church and your only concern is to gain as many converts as possible from the other side. Now, if your only strategy is to demonstrate the superiority of your beliefs by refuting the beliefs of the other side and showing the inferiority of their beliefs, even here, interfaith dialogue is probably not triggered, because this becomes a kind of debate rather than dialogue.
Now, if you are on an island with your church and a different church and you wish to co-exist and you desire to better understand your neighbor, and also have them better understand you, either with the acceptance that they might not convert, or with the hope that they will convert through evangelical efforts, then it is at this point, that interfaith dialogue becomes extremely important.
If you have a blog titled “Heart Issues for LDS” then I am assuming you fall into the last example and not the first example.
Aquinas, good humor in your comment.
To help you understand my thinking even a little more, I see these ideas in Scripture.
A public marking and separating from religious false teachers professing to be Christian and professing lay-believers who after considerable attempts at reconciliation are still in an ongoing, rebellious, blatant sinful posture. I do not accept these folks in the Christian faith community. And interestingly, false teachers (claiming to be Christian) are some of the sweetest people you would ever meet; they are not foul-mouthed, beer belly, growling jerks with blood-shot eye balls. 🙂
Out of love for God and His gospel of truth, it behoves a Christian to evangelistically rebuke/debate with religious false teachers and gainsayers who show no interest in a heart conversion or turning but display a brow of brass and a neck of iron sinew (if I can borrow some biblical euphisms).
Because of the love of Christ that constrains us, it behoves a Christian to evangelistically converse with the ones (inclusively – any and all) who are open to truth proclamation in the conversation and preaching.
_______
Some more quick rambling . . .
1. I don’t see biblically how one can separate evangelism from dialogue conversation. Unfortunately, some evangelicals do. Does the dialogue then become some kind of garbled idea of self-edification that one obtains from unbelievers?
2. I don’t see biblically how one can prohibit spontaneous Spirit-prompted heralding or refuting in the evangelistic dialogue conversation. Some seem to promote only co-existing dialogue and never heart debate with a false idea promoted by someone outside their faith community.
Just think, Aquinas, if you and I, were stuck alone together on an island. I would love it. I would debate you fervently when the topic of conversation centered on spiritual, biblical truth (hopefully, we would have our Bibles), but hopefully I would display an easy-going complicity in everything else. And even as a fundamentalist Christian, hopefully, my passionate debate would present to you the laying down of all my self-interests for the advancement of the gospel in your life.
Why does it behoove a Christian to evangelistically rebuke/debate with religious false teachers and gainsayers who show no interest in a heart conversion or turning? What do you hope to achieve by doing this? What effect do you hope to bring about? Why don’t you instead use all your energies and efforts to reclaim this soul instead of merely rebuking? In my view the easiest thing is for a human to rebuke another human. That comes quite naturally. It is also very easy to assume someone is a lost cause. That gets you out of the responsibility to actually help them. That is the easy way out. The more difficult path, the one that really requires love and hope, is to aim to reclaim.
If a Christian wants to evangelistically converse with someone who is already open to the truth, that’s great. This is a wonderful thing to do and I highly encourage it. However, I want to point out that this is very easy to do. It is quite easy to talk to someone who listens. If they are already open to the truth. The problem I see is that the minute a Christian begins to preach to this person who is open minded, the more the Christian pushes and repels the person a way from Christ. Why does this happen? It happens because people don’t care, they don’t care about the results of their communication. They are satisfied to throw out a few polemical statements, to only give the statements of others a half-hearted attempt at understanding. They seek to please their own sense of self-righteousness all the while pushing the soul away from Christ. If they go too far, they cover this up by claiming they were filled with the Spirit. They don’t do it for Christ, they do it for themselves. This happens far too often. It isn’t enough to have good intentions, it isn’t enough to have passion for the truth, you must actually communicate this passion and this truth to another soul. No one can do that for you. That takes effort and love and a perspective that you are wrestling for the souls of men.
Back to the original post, to tell someone they pick and choose from the scriptures but that you don’t, is completely ineffective and no one will respond to this. But don’t let that stop you. Instead think about what you are really trying to communicate and try again.
You seem to assume that a “heart debate” with a false idea will do anything of significance. What evidence do you have that this has ever worked? At the end of the debate you may feel you have triumphed and you might feel you have discharged your duty to God, but as the months go by, has this soul you debated grown closer to Christ through your debate? If not, then why are you doing it? The reason I am an advocate for dialogue is because year in and year out I observe countless debates between people of different faiths that do not have any positive influence on the other side. Why? Because no one bothers to ask the question. They never ask the question: What was achieved? Was it effective? How can I improve? How can I more effectively get my message across? How do I know whether my message was even received?
Rather, each side walks a way victorious, and they have their backs patted with those who already agree with them (no surprise), but neither side comes away with a better understanding of why the other person holds to the beliefs they do, other than to conclude they are irrational or ignorant. This is repeated ad infinitum and ad nauseum. Some people however like this cycle, it is comforting to them, it is all that they know, it is replayed every minute of every hour in the streets, in chat rooms and on message boards, all day, everyday. People continue to go around the process until one day they realize that they actually want to influence someone in a way that is real and lasting. They are no longer satisfied simply to get words off their chest for their own self-satisfaction. They begin to become concerned with the soul of another human being.
You only have so much time to live in this life, every hour and ever minute is a gift of life. You have to ask yourself how you want to spend it. Will you spend it trying to rebuke people or will you spend it nourishing souls? The choice is yours. Our words can have power. The power to heal. The power to destroy. The worst is when they have no power at all, just noise.
“Only if your God can say things that outrage you and make you struggle (as in a real friendship or marriage!) will you know you have gotten hold of a real God and not a figment of your imagination.”
Not at all;
God is evident in Life; The days of life are the pages of God’s most meaningful Bible.
Our lives frequently outrage us, make us struggle, and point at all the errors in our beliefs and ideas and- yes, even interpretations.
God will always be beyond us, the eternal progression really is eternal.
An authoritative Bible becomes an enemy of a personal relationship with God, once it reaches out to us and tries to wrest us from our Hearts. A given text can bring us higher and higher, but if it them begins to tell us things that, in our hearts, we know are wrong — and if the given text does this in a way that, we can clearly see, unequivocally, is wrong — then it must be dropped, in the name of God.
The human heart perpetually discriminates towards the perfect Heart.