Things I Think…
1. For the record…I don’t believe in protesting in a church and interrupting a worship service. It is neither lawful, nor effective. For the record, I also don’t believe in ICE thugs taking people out of churches, work places, hospitals, or homes…or murdering American citizens…
2. A New Hampshire bishop has warned his clergy that a new era of martyrdom is upon us. I, for one, am heeding his words…a once unthinkable thought in our once great country is closer to reality than any of us want to admit…
3. We are dangerously close to creating an echo chamber here…an outcome I do not relish. On the other hand, there is need for a safe place to speak for those of us in opposition to the current situations in both the church and state…
4. While I no longer consider myself an evangelical in any way, shape, or form, I have great respect and love for those in evangelicalism who are resisting what is happening in their own sect…
5. I am not waiting for God to intercede and stop the evils taking place … especially when the church is complicit. When God moves in judgment, the faithful suffer too…
6. God will balance the books in the eschaton…but I have no clue when that will happen…
7. The current situation in this country reminds me of when the town I lived in burned down…I remember hastily evacuating and thinking over and over, “this can’t happen here’…I smell smoke…
8. I enjoyed the discussion about inerrancy we had the other day as well as the emails declaring me a heretic…not one of which asked me “why” I no longer hold to it…because for some people, asking questions is too dangerous…
9. Certainty robs people of the joy of interacting with the Holy Spirit and learning afresh from the Scriptures they think they are defending…
10. I’m considering expanding to YouTube…if I can figure out how to do it well enough. Yes, I’m way behind the times…
This will sound odd at first, but hear me out. I want the President to reveal who really is, what he really thinks, and all the motives of his heart when he shares at DAVOS tomorrow. I want the Biblical definition of Apocalypse, the utter revealing of the man and his intentions. Some might say “I’ve seen enough”. I want it to be 100% clear to his devoted followers not only who he is but what they are choosing.
It was sad to see Pres. Biden at that last debate, but it was also a revelation. We then knew what we suspected, and no one could spin it in any other way than the reality we all saw.
Terry,
That makes all the sense in the world to me…
Unfortunately, the true believers can’t see…perhaps because they’ve been blinded.
“…Yes, the time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God a service.”
John 16:2
Duane,
I almost put that verse in the body of the article…
Hey Michael,
Time for me to say goodbye to the Phoenix Preacher. Take care, all.
PS: I’ll stay in touch, Michael, and please say hi to Trey!!
Phil,
No worries.
I’ll tell Trey when I see him…since he found girls…it’s not that often. 🙂
I do believe in inerrancy, but not in the sense that there is no wiggle room on certain issues. I think if we are in agreement on the historical creeds, then the discussions on the less major points of doctrine might not be as critical. Just a thought that crossed my mind.
I have a friend who works in Minneapolis with African immigrants and Somalis. He has traded in his gaiter for a scarf as he is too afraid of being taken for an ICE agent
If congress can’t come up with something to keep Trump (aka Our Toddler President who felt slighted because he didn’t win a prize) out of Greenland, then I am afraid we are failing as a country. I hope that I am wrong.
Such are my random thoughts for the day!
Linn,
Oddly enough, the historic creeds (which I affirm) say nothing about how to view or interpret the bible.
If one can affirm those, we’re in communion…most of the time. 🙂
Michael,
I think the only Creed the Eastern Orthodox Church affirms and/or uses is the Nicene. They don’t use the Apostles’ or the Athanasian Creeds. I tend to think that if one can affirm the Nicene, that is enough for recognition of mutual Christian faith across different communions.
The Creeds don’t mention the Eucharist either or how we should understand it either.
It is deeply and tragically ironic that the internet, which was hailed by so many at its advent as the technology that was going to bring down walls between people around the planet, resulted in social media that have made the walls between our echo chambers even more unbreachable than they were before.
Robert F,
You’re correct about the Orthodox and creeds.
I settle for the Apostles Creed and long discussions…
Robert F,
Not only are the walls unbreathable, the result is more isolation than at any time in history.
Michael,
So much so that people reach out to AI for the relationships they lack with other human beings.
Scott Hicks, an immigration lawyer I have immense respect for…has a different take.
“Sunday a group of protesters disrupted a church service in MN because one of the pastors is also the FOD for ICE in MN.
What I have heard mostly is people think that is inappropriate.
Let me state, I would not do this, unless compelled by the Holy Spirit. But let me go further.
The prophetic tradition, starting with the Hebrew prophets, and continuing into Christianity, is both oral, written, and sign actions.
Sign actions in particular were actions designed to make a prophetic statement through the act. And prophetic sign acts have a long tradition of being confrontational, shocking, offensive, and even crude.
In other words, the prophetic tradition is not a tradition of polite, civil, sanitized protest. Instead, it is a tradition that is always offensive to power, and is viewed as rude and hostile and inappropriate by power.
So, would I have showed up and disrupted. No, not unless I was absolutely certain the Holy Spirit was insisting on it.
But it’s wrong to just condemn what happened as if it is not consistent with the witness of the prophets.
And if you are more upset about the manner of the protest and how it disrupted a church service than you are at why they are protesting, well, that says quite a bit about whether you are choosing the Empire or the oppressed.”
Michael,
I find myself in agreement with Scott Hicks. William Stringfellow, an American lay theologian and social activist lawyer during the the civil rights movemen, took this kind of position with regard to making a public Christian witness against oppression in the U.S.
I will ask the question. Why do you no longer hold to inerrancy?
Long story, but I’ll try to be concise as I have to spend the day at the car repair shop…a duty that fills me with existential dread.
I’d always been aware that there were alleged errors and contradictions in the text, but I was also aware that acknowledging that reality would put me outside a lot of the camps that I had once found comfort in.
It dawned on me that I was being intellectually and spiritually dishonest, so I chose to read all the people I’d been warned not to read.
These scholars weren’t demonic entities trying to ruin my faith…they were simply working in their disciplines and these were the conclusions they found.
If there is one error or contradiction in the text, the text is not inerrant or infallible.
There are many.
Then I came to understand the lack of archaeological or historical evidence for many of the stories in the Old Testament.
That may have rattled my cage harder than the textual issues.
I came to understand that the Scriptures don’t speak with one voice (ie; the voice of God) but many voices…all describing how they experienced and thought about God in their times in their situations.
There are authorship issues and dating issues and all manner of other issues that demanded I think and pray seriously about my position on the Bible.
This all was terribly scary…if the Bible isn’t what I was told it was, what is it?
I’ll talk about that later, but suffice to say that I now find it more authoritative, more powerful, and more precious than before…
By the way…thanks for asking.
I enjoy conversations around these issues…
Michael – I think most Evangelicals assume Inerrancy as the most extreme version imaginable. In the NBA there is a thing called the 50/50 ball. A referee call could have gone either way. Games get decided by these random too-close-to-call plays. There are places in scripture like that. Some academics will push inerrancy to the point that no one before maybe Ezra actually existed as scripture describes. If it’s impossible to prove the author, they claim that the named author didn’t write it.
Likewise it doesn’t take fundamentalism to believe Daniel wrote Daniel or King David existed. What is most needed is the ability to look at the Bible as 66 separate books, of different genres and with different (lack of better word) agendas. Its not heresy to believe Isaiah was more a collection of writers, which also doesn’t mean that Isaiah didn’t exist. Is it possible that Jonah and Job are fictitious accounts of people and places that existed? The events formed to tell a story with a purpose, but not perfect history.
I’ve heard a case made that Jesus’ parables were all real people and events that actually happened or will happen in the future. Why? Because to say otherwise is to make Jesus a liar.
Terry,
“The events formed to tell a story with a purpose, but not perfect history.”
Exactly!
Once we understand that, all the picking over details ends…
I grew up in a nominally Catholic family and went through all the sacramental milestones. As part of that I was presented at some point with a children’s Bible, I still have it somewhere, the St. Joseph edition of the New American Bible. It had plenty of footnotes and study notes. I did sometimes read that Bible, and the notes that went with the texts. When I read the texts wherein God commands the Israelites to utterly destroy other nations, to in effect commit genocide, the notes plainly said that God would never give such an order, that those stories were the result of revelations filtered through the imperfect and sometimes sinful understanding of the authors and redactors of the Bible, and that there were other stories that were similarly in their imperfection throughout the Bible. The notes in my children’s Bible did not embrace the idea that the scriptures were inerrant. I got out of childhood without having been taught to believe that the Bible was inerrant. I was taught other things that were bad for my spiritual development, but that wasn’t one of them. I never was taught to believe that God was a genocide-ordering ogre.
“I am not waiting for God to intercede and stop the evils taking place … especially when the church is complicit….”
A Tibetan Buddhist monk was away from his monastery when the Chinese invaded Tibet and occupied the religious city in the 1950s. Learning of the situation, the monk sent a message to the abbot of another monastery, inquiring what he should do. The abbot replied, “From now on, Brother, everybody stands on his own two feet.”
“Before God, and with God, we live without God.” — Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Letters and Papers from Prison”
Robert F,
I’m enjoying a couple of Catholic study Bibles I’ve acquired…in many ways, I’m more in agreement with them on a number of things…
@ Lin & Michael,
There was a time, way back in my Calvary Chapel days, when I didn’t dare and question inerrancy
I now see the inerrancy thing as a tiresome shibboleth.
I hold to the tenets of the Apostle’s Creed as non-negotiable parameters of my faith.
The rest of the stuff?
I pick and choose as I see fit.
For example, I now reject the doctrine of PSA (penal substitutionary atonement).
Michael, thank you for taking the time to answer my question. Would you say that believing the Bible is inerrant and infallible is a matter of faith? The big question I have is from your end statement: “but suffice to say that I now find it more authoritative, more powerful, and more precious than before…” Where does the power and authority come from? Thanks for your time.
So yeah….in Minneapolis/St. Paul area. 0/10 do not recommend right now.
I’ve been doing quiet things around my city, mostly involving food and watching bus stops when I can. Shopping at immigrant-focused stores. Not getting into details in public. It’s tense everywhere, and everyone knows a story of someone perfectly legal in this country but afraid to leave their home because others have been detained. Even children forced to lie to their parents. This is evil. If you look for food shelves in MSP areas and donate, you are on the right path — let’s at least start there.
And I have to be honest, no to storming churches. EVERYONE thinks Jesus is on their side when acting like this. Everyone will justify “their side” and their cause when this type of stuff is done, be it J6, hijacking church service streams, or screaming at 16 year olds at Planned Parenthood, whatever. That one of the organizers gave a “please like and subscribe” to the camera as people fled shows this isn’t about justice — it’s about the clicks.
This is horrifically bad PR for those us wanting ICE to leave. “All things are permissible, but not all things are beneficial” indeed.
But I will grant this is quite low on my list of concerns for right now. Won’t get into it too much but I’m far more disturbed by a 9-year-old asking me why they can’t leave their house.
My kingdom for a functioning adult in leadership, please.
Linn,
You ask good questions…
If you believe the bible is inerrant and infallible, then you have to believe that all the people in various academic specialties like archeology, ancient literature, and history are all wrong. you also have to deny what you can glean by simply reading the text.
I don’t have that kind of faith.
Now…I do believe that there are times when the bible is indeed inerrant and infallible…and that is when the Holy Spirit illuminates something in the text to such a degree that you know you’re hearing from God…something that happens to believers over and over again on their journey of faith.
The Gospel of the kingdom is utterly other worldly and compelling…the person of Jesus Christ is unlike any person who ever lived or any god that humans have imagined.
When read inside the tradition of the church and in conversation with believers through the centuries…it is awesome in its transformative power.
It is… a means of grace.
David P,
Praying for your city…which may be a harbinger of things to come.
I think you nailed it on the church protest…it’s really bad PR and self defeating.
Thanks, Michael.
Like others here I have a thousand thoughts: Honestly I’ve lost count the number of times I’ve heard people (all over the political spectrum) say it’s well and good for extreme cases to be dealt with. There are legit concerns, and I do not think Biden handled things well.
But that does not excuse what we’re seeing with bus stops being monitored and secret memos about ignoring the 4th Amendment. A friend has a neighbor who was whisked away despite numerous papers showing his legal status. He finally got out a month later and is safe now and says he was treated better than he feared, but this still doesn’t justify 30+ days of wrongful incarceration.
Take care of yourself out there, DavidP.
5. With all of the aberrant behavior of the past few years endorsed by so-called evangelicals, a title by Tony Campolo comes to mind:
*Following Jesus Without Embarrassing God”
#10: Please jump on YouTube. Although I have multiple areas of disagreement with you, I genuinely value your take on things. Hence, why I check in to this website every couple of weeks just to read your “Things I think.” Expanding to YouTube will reach a lot more people in my opinion. I vote yes!
I’m considering YouTube strongly, especially with the cost of maintaining this site and the constant hacking.
The downside is that I have to learn new skills…which is harder and harder at my age.
The other issue is that, according to my housemates, I’m growing increasingly anti-social and “feral”…
It’s definitely a challenge. May the Lord guide you.