Sunday, February 13, 2011

Don't Take My Word For It

I posted this over on my Facebook page after having a few different discussions. Thoughts?

If someone tries teaching something as Biblical, it is fair to ask them to defend their view. If they give you a Biblical line of reasoning, Paul suggests that it is a good thing to check out whether what is taught is true or not. And if folks can question an Apostle, surely we can question others who claim to speak for God. Just as I would expect other believers to do to me.

If someone gives no Biblical foundation for what they claim is Biblical, is it fair to assume it is not Biblical? I think it is. At the very least, we should be skeptical of their view. If they tell you to just accept it and don't question it, run...Or at the least, check the Kool-Aid.

I am not saying there is not a time for simply trusting that your pastor or friend or family member is telling you the truth, but we must be careful to take what someone states, with regard to spiritual matters, with a grain of salt at times. And study it out for ourselves. And not pull back from discussions when it makes us a bit uncomfortable.

If what we believe is true, it will bear out. If it doesn't, it is a good thing to consider an opposing view, and when necessary change our paradigm to fit in the new information. (Acts 15)

Know WHAT you believe and WHY you believe it. I think that is a good idea whether you are a believer or not.

Acts 17:11-"Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true."

1 comment:

Kwame E. said...

Um, good point.

It’s actually remarkable to me that there are still people in this Internet age who still hold teachers and pastors in high regard. You saw a decline of such things, I think, with the rise of the Internet and the ways people were now able to easily happen upon arguments and points of view contrary to their own. People were able to do research without visiting a library, able to receive lectures in Calvinism, in Arminianism, in Open Theism, etc. without having to step foot in a church or a place in the real world were such things are preached. And regular people sort of became their own scholars, perhaps rejecting bits and pieces of what their own pulpit men at church preached while embracing other ideas preached there.

Then again, the more the amount of sophomoric attempts at theology and philosophy increases in Internet blogs and personal pages, the greater the amount of noise, dregs, information, and misinformation one has to sift through to read all the available writings on a given subject. This in turn is why team blogging arose, I guess, and why there should be (if there hasn’t already been one) a trend back toward people’s relying upon church pastors for instruction and wisdom.