What the Bible teaches us

This is an attempt to distill the Bible's teachings in to a single page. No doubt I've left out important ideas. I welcome your comments.

What does the Bible teach us?

There is a deadly sin problem, but Christ has solved that problem. God hates sin, but He loves us. We can be forgiven! (We must also forgive others.) The Holy Spirit helps us to be holy, and to live above sin. (Holiness: “… to be set apart to reflect God’s character in all of our ways – his goodness and love, his kindness and compassion, his concern for justice and the poor” – Rankin Wilbourne, Union with Christ: The Way to Know and Enjoy God) God wants us to tell others that there’s a cure for the sin problem, by our life and our words. Our lives are part of God’s plan for redemption.

Individuals, including children and females, are important to God. (See, for example, the “begats,” and the genealogies in 1 Chronicles.) God is especially concerned about the poor and oppressed. God can speak to us, and do miracles, but He almost always does these things through some human agent. (Examples: Moses, Gideon, Deborah, Samuel, Esther, Peter and John.) Since Pentecost, the Holy Spirit guides believers in these things. Such guidance is often through the Bible, and we should study it prayerfully.

Worship, private and public, is important. Praise and giving should be part of worship. So should Communion.

God answers prayer, but not always in the way we expect or hope for. Believers sometimes get sick, have accidents, are rejected by others, become poor, and die.

God expects to be first in our affections. Pride – putting ourselves first – leads to destruction. Examples: Saul, Uzziah/Azariah (2 Chron 26:16-21), Judas. We are to have, and show, unselfish love for others. Allegiance to a flag or country, a prominent person, or an earthly cause or group, should be secondary to our allegiance to Christ. One way of showing allegiance to Christ is baptism, which is expected of believers.

The world, as God planned it, was good, but sin has messed it up. Part of that goodness was diversity. (Psalm 104:24-5) God apparently loves diversity, in beetles and flowers, and in human personalities and characteristics. God will fix the world so it is, again, entirely good, and sin free. Those redeemed from sin will live in that world, with Christ. Eternal issues are far more important than current politics, sports, or the stock market.

Thanks for reading.

Bible interpretation - the fundamentals

The Bible is a complex book. Some parts of it are difficult to understand. (Mark Twain is supposed to have remarked that it wasn't the parts he didn't understand that bothered him, but the parts that he did. Perhaps he was referring to some of the things Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, where he put forward a radical morality.)

I'm not an expert on Biblical interpretation. But I think there are some principles that we should follow in interpreting the Bible. Here they are:
1) Don't take something literally it if wasn't meant to be. If a phrase is poetry, or irony, or a figure of speech, then it may not have been meant to be taken literally. For example, Psalm 46:2 speaks of not being afraid even though the mountains be moved into the sea. The whole Psalm is poetry, and this phrase seems to have been a figure of speech. See Psalm 114, for another example.

2) Don't use a single verse, phrase, or sentence without considering the context, and what the rest of the Bible says on that subject. For example, in Romans 11:26, Paul says that all Israel will be saved. Does that mean that all Israelis will go to heaven? Almost certainly not. In chapter 10 of the same book, Paul says that his desire is that the Jews be saved. He also calls them a disobedient people. And, more importantly, Paul's message in the entire book, indeed in all his letters, is that salvation comes by faith in Christ as savior, not by birth.

This principle should be applied to many passages in the Old Testament. The Jews were under a different regime than Christians. The Jews were often commanded to destroy other nations. Christians aren't. In fact, based on the New Testament, God seems to deal much less with nations than in the Old, rather now dealing with us as individuals. Various Old Testament laws, for example dietary laws, do not apply to Christians, unless they have individual convictions about these matters. The New Testament makes that clear. (Some moral laws, first introduced in the Old Testament, do apply to Christians, but that's another topic.)

3) Be careful in interpreting prophecy. The New Testament points out some examples of fulfilled prophecy about Jesus. Those, it seems, we can understand. The Old Testament has some examples of the same sort of thing. But be careful about prophecy that has yet to be fulfilled. Very careful.

One of the most quoted prophecies about Jesus is in Isaiah 7:14, where it says that Jesus will be born to a virgin. Notice that I linked to the entire chapter. The reason is that I want you to look at the context. That prophecy, which the New Testament tells us is about Jesus, must not have seemed to be about that at all, to those who first heard it, and perhaps even to Isaiah, who spoke it. It's in the middle of a prophecy to King Ahaz about two enemy nations. Not only that, but it seems to be saying that the boy born to a virgin will, at first, not know the difference between good and evil. How could Ahaz, or even Isaiah, have understood that part of this prophecy would be fulfilled after Ahaz was long dead? And that the fulfillment would be in a Messiah Redeemer? There are many other examples. Revelation, and the other prophecies about Christ's return, may be as obscure as Isaiah 7, at least until their fulfillment. How can we be sure that we really understand what they mean, as, for example, the Left Behind franchise seems to claim? (For a critique of the dispensational interpretation found in those books -- and in many other places -- by a New Testament scholar, see here.) 

4) Don't ignore or reject scripture that you don't like. In fact, I suppose that sections of the Bible that are clear, for example about gossip being a sin, and that we don't like (if we like to gossip) are the ones we should pay the most attention to!

I should carefully consider that some one else's interpretation, be that someone an individual or a denomination with doctrines somewhat different than mine, might be correct. I should consider that God may be trying to discipline or instruct me, through scripture that I don't particularly like.

Thanks for reading! Read the Bible. Carefully and prayerfully.

Homosexuality and illegal aliens

This is not original with me. I'm taking off on a post by Henry Neufeld.

One of the anti-homosexuality arguments often used is Leviticus 18:22. Neufeld points out that many of those who use this verse as a scriptural argument do not apply Leviticus 19:33-34, which seems to be part of the same discourse by Moses. Here's what it says:
Leviticus 19:33 “When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. 34 You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God. (ESV)

As Neufeld says, all too often, what scripture we think applies to our daily lives is selected on the basis of what we like and don't like, which doesn't work as a good way to live out what the Bible says.

Ouch!

Thanks for reading.