By Whose Authority?

By whose authority does any Christian condemn anyone else?

I see and hear condemnation every time I turn on talk radio, I read a Christian forum, I watch Christians on TV, I listen to right-wing politics... It is every-frickin'-where!

Yet, when these people are confronted about their force of personal views upon everyone around them, they deny it...

They attack individuals views that do not line up with their own, "If you live/do/think this way, you aren't of Jesus, and if you aren't of Jesus, you go to Hell..." They argue that they say these things out of love.... Yet they speak in a tone of judgmental authority... They condemn people to hell before they even try to understand why people live/do/think the way they do!

Everyone believes they have the right interpretation of the Scriptures, everyone believes that they are right... No one believes that they might have the wrong understanding... No one is willing to admit that the interpretation they have of Scripture is Holy Spirit inspired...

What makes your Spiritually inspired interpretation better than mine, because I know as well that the Holy Spirit has inspired my understanding... And if I listen to you then I am going against what the Holy Spirit has revealed to me... How can you tell me I am inspired by something other than the Spirit?

Here's the thing though, that Christians get tangled in...

Personal interpretation...

Every interpretation started somewhere. The idea of spiritual adversaries evolving into the belief of the devil... the Trinity... Prosperity Teaching... Catechism... Baptism... Grace Salvation... and many others... All of these are a doctrines that someone came up with and others have identified with them... People have argued for and against all of these doctrines, and the people arguing believe they are lead by the Holy Spirit in their belief...

Most people read that read the Bible are already indoctrinated with a set of beliefs that flavor the words they read... Most people have some familiarity with a certain denomination of Christianity, and are already familiar with terms and ideas that are not specifically named in the Bible...

There are ideas that are simple, and almost all Christians can arrive at the same conclusion about, but then there are other ideas that take teachers teaching to arrive at... In the end, I have to wonder if we are taking too much time being taught what to believe than we should... It seems that the direction of the Holy Spirit has taken a back seat to subscribing to a denominational belief.

I am convicted... and YES... I said CONVICTED... by the Holy Spirit to step back and re-evaluate the Word.... And I believe that others are having the same conviction... but maybe most people are still too scared to stand up to their long history of being told what to believe.

I want to explain a realization that I came to awhile back... We are all given a PERSONAL interpretation of the Word... That is the AWESOMENESS of our spirituality... We each have the opportunity to read a Word that is written for us personally... We can arrive at this interpretation through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, if we allow it... That is how, each time you open the Bible, you see something new, even though it might be in a Scripture you had memorized when you were 4 years old in Sunday School...

Two people can have different understandings of the Word, because the Spirit will counsel each person according to their needs... Someone may have a revelation that you have not had yet, and likewise you might have a revelation that others have not had yet...

So... Who is anyone to tell someone else that they are going to Hell?

A personal interpretation is just that, PERSONAL... Because you have a PERSONAL relationship with God...

Every time you refute someone with Scripture, you are quoting an interpretation of that Scripture's meaning... Someone had to translate that verse for you... You had to accept someone's explanation of meaning for that verse... You had to accept a doctrine to frame the context of that verse...

So did the person you are refuting...

What makes your version right? Is it just because it's what YOU believe?

Every time you quote a Bible scripture, you are quoting an interpretation... not all interpretations are created equal. The difference is one of love versus judgment.

If you really want to minister through the Word, you should direct people to find what the Bible says by not speaking. Use your actions to reach others. Make them ask. Don't speak what you think the Bible says... The Holy Spirit is much more effective in bringing personal conviction than any person ever will be...

What Exactly Is The Bible?

As Christians, we are told from the start that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. We are told to read it, to memorize it, to quote it, to venerate it, to love and cherish it, to defend it, and so forth...

... But really...

The church puts more emphasis on the Book than it does on God!

The Bible has become no more than an idol to so many Christians. They have replaced God with a Book that they believe tells them what to do...

To top that off, many Christians believe the Bible without knowing anything about its history and how it came to exist in the MANY forms it exists in today. Yet they believe all they need to know to be a fully mature Christian exists within the bindings of their Book.

Many people believe that all translations of the Bible say the same thing. Many people never realize that some words were substituted, dumbed down, smarted up, created, or just straight-up changed for the purposes of ideas that have lost expression as time has passed.

Some people don't allow for changes in culture or tradition, and want to believe the Bible never changes. Well, we all know there is really only One thing that never changes, but I would like to state for the record that it isn't the Bible...


Let's examine my line of thought, shall we?

The Bible is said to be "The INSPIRED Word of God"... Think about it a minute...

What does "Inspired" mean? Well, it doesn't mean that God Himself wrote it... It means that someone, some HUMAN, was inspired to pen something down on behalf of God.

So, some guys, thousands of years ago, wrote down what they understood to be God's Will to share with others, and those books or letters have underwent a few hundred translations, transliterations, compilations, and rearrangements to reach you in the forms it has in this day and age.


So. What's my hangup?

I think allot of Christians have taken for granted just what the Bible has went through to become what it has in our time. Many Christians seem to think that English was the original language of most of it. It bothers me that many Christians pick a particular translation to claim as the "ONLY TRUE" translation (much like they talk about their denomination) without knowing just how recent that translation is!

It also blows my mind that some people will tell you that if God wanted us to read something, He would have put it in the Bible.

The fact is, men compiled the Bible. Plain and simple. Men are prone to have an agenda. A group of men wanted to create an organized structure to lead and heard peoples' minds into a collective awareness, that is what religion does... 

There are other books and letters that early Christians study. They hold meaning and give insight into our early roots. They explain some of the contradictions that many Christians have convinced themselves don't exist in the Bible (guess what, they do)...

The argument that they would be in the Bible if God wanted us to pay attention doesn't hold water with me... I think it is clear that we are supposes to check them out since they have resurfaced after being thought to have been completely eliminated... I think God protected those writings because he wants us to question our long held beliefs.

Besides, people check out modern Christian inspiration writings, how are they better than books that were meant to inspire Christians a couple thousand years ago? Max Lucado isn't in the Bible, does that mean you shouldn't read what he writes?

Is it wrong to read books that might have actually been inspiration for writings we have in the Bible today? Jesus and Paul both quote from books that aren't in the Bible, but they are books that we have access to now. Why would it be wrong to read what Jesus and Paul studied? Remember, the Bible as we know it didn't exist yet for them. Some of the books that they studied were renounced by the men who had real influence on what Christians today read.


You might think of it this way....

Imagine that your best friend went away on a mission trip across several countries, and you were so eagerly awaiting word on how they were doing and what they had going on...

While your friend is abroad, they inspire the locals to write about their exploits. Your friend is doing wonderful things and the people they are in contact with notice.

While your friend is doing their thing, a journalist, who has been to a couple of places your friend has been has realized the people who he has ran into are talking about the same person. That journalist is intrigued by what he hears, and even more impressed when he realizes that the peoples have been writing down everything your friend has done...

So the journalist makes copies of all the writings he has come across in regards to your friend, it will make a fantastic article! The problem? The writings are all in different languages. He is going to have to translate all of the information from the different countries (and different languages) your friend has visited, and then write them into one language for his articles.

In the meantime, he realizes there are so many writings, and a few he even questions whether they are about our friend or not, that he leaves some out because he doesn't find them as important as the ones he wants to feature. Some are just to hard to explain in a way his readers will relate. Either way, much of the inspired writing doesn't make the cut.

Well, you just so happen to get this magazine that this particular journalist writes for, and imagine how excited you are when you open your newest issue, and find a nice long article inspired by your friend. You are so excited you clip the article... and next month there is more... and this goes on for awhile.

Sooner or later, your friend returns. They call you on the phone, you can hear their voice, it's really awesome... But you went through all the trouble of clipping those articles and putting them altogether in that scrapbook over there... Your friend is pleased that you took the time, but tries to tell you that some of that stuff might be exaggerated, that you are missing the point of others because some info got left out, and the journalist didn't quite get some of the ideas right when he translated the writings... But you won't hear it. You read and re-read those articles so many times, that it has become more real to you than your friend.

At parties, when people ask you about that scrapbook you display on your coffee table, you tell them you "...Actually know the person that is in those articles!" ... But even though, your friend just lives down the block, you never introduce them at said parties... You would rather show off how well you know what is in the book you put together...

There it is in a nutshell... Our Bible... A conversation piece for our coffee table turned into a substitute for a real relationship.

How many Christians cling to Bible verses over a relationship with God? How many people take more pride in their ability to quote than their ability to practice? How many people have forgotten God because God is less tangible than their Book?

I have seen people misquote Scripture to state that The Word (they mean the Bible when they say it) IS God... That's about the time I started questioning whether the Bible is really as important as they say it is.


The Bible doesn't change? Think again!

Over the years, with each new translation, minor changes have been made to the message of the Bible. It's like the game 'Telephone' that you might have played as a kid, where one person whispers a message in someones' ear and then that person passes that message on down to the next person, and so forth... The message never came out the same at the end of the line. Each change was minor, but by the end there was enough minor changes, that it made a major difference in the overall message.

 There were additions to some passages, there are different reasons for those additions, but the fact still remains, it wasn't how it was originally written...

We also have to account for the way meanings of words change over time... Such as how just half a century ago, 'gay' just meant 'happy'. 

Examples:
*The English word "love" is used to convey 4 separate Greek ideas in the NT. It doesn't quite convey the strength that was originally intended in some passages.

*Junia- an woman's name and an apostle- was changed to Junius in some Bible translations because it was argued that women were not allowed to be officials in the church.

*"Sorcerer" in the OT was a term used to indicate people who mixed poisons for the purpose of murder. Now people think it means that people who practice magick, or read Harry Potter books are in line for God's merciless wrath.

*One word- ArsenoKoites... Which is actually 2 words... and they don't necessarily relate to homosexuality... but we may never really know, because only Paul ever put those words together and he isn't around anymore to explain...

*The end of 'The Lord's Prayer' wasn't in the original texts. It was added later.

*Another example that might be of note to any feminists reading this... It is believed and even demonstrated by some scholars that 1Cor 14:33b-36 were added later.

I could go on, but I think I have made my point. There are many other instances of additions, changes, and so forth... Maybe you should start looking for them yourself.