THE PURSUIT OF TRUTH: SCRIPTURE- Part 2

Obviously, it was an extraordinary entry. However, I think that I actually covered all of my philosophical and theological arguments for my arguement in the other entries on truth. So even though my deletion of this entry is likely because I wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing, I am going to take it as a sign. I have argued about the search for truth from a pretty analytical perspective over the past few weeks. Perhaps as I approach the most sensitive area regarding truth, that being where we as a Christian community primarily look for it, I should back away from analytics and share a little more openly about my perspective on scripture and how that has changed over the past 20 years.

When I was a young Christian being able to rely on the bible for providing all the answers was pretty important to me. I was insecure and many of my actions in life were motivated by fear. I wasn’t an exceptional student, athlete, musician, or really anything. I was then, as I am now, fairly average at a lot of things and pretty bad at a few other things. At this point in my life I am beginning to appreciate being average, but when I was a teenager and young adult the failure I felt in life at being average caused me a lot of distress. Having something out there that was more certain than my personal sense of place in this world was the only thing that was going to keep me from completely disengaging. My religious life was such a thing that I could hold on to. I was able to find community in youth group. I was able to experience safety in morality. And I was able to develop some sense of identity in believing that I was special. To ensure that this identity I found in my religious life (and I need to stress, as I have done earlier, that this wasn’t a spiritual life or enlightened life, just a religious life) was secure, I needed to be able to have hard answers to substantiate it. Luckily there were plenty of people to give me hard answers. Each one of these hard answers was justified by select verses. And obviously, the only way that I could ensure that the answers I needed to substantiate my identity in Christianity were reliable and valid was to ensure the bible was completely “true”. The only way that I and those who guided me could make certain the bible was true was to prove that it was factual. Seeing the bible as anything less that completely accurate and factual could collapse my entire identity. So, with great effort, my study of scripture took on the role of defending its accuracy. I was occasionally able to simply read scripture and allow God to speak to me through it, but even that was always dependent on the absolute inerrancy of it.

This caused a significant amount of spiritual stress for me. Since there is always someone out there who can disprove whatever you believe, I was constantly vulnerable to a collapse in my religious identity. And the doubt that I already had in God could only be dealt with by holding to stricter fundamental approaches to spiritual development. This led me to see many things with rigidity. There was “Right” and there was “Wrong”. There was “True” and there was “False”. There was “What I Believed” and “wrong and False”.

When I first began to think of scripture as something that wasn’t dependent on its inerrancy, but rather a truth that transcends facts, it caused a lot of inner turmoil. Experiencing my shift in thinking about scripture while living in west Texas with most of my friends still believing that the truth of scripture was dependent on its inerrancy made the transition more difficult. Since my paradigm shift I have not come to believe that scripture is inaccurate, but simply believe that the truth of scripture is far greater than its accuracy. I have come to see that the truth of scripture is often told in ways that are understandable. I would say now that I believe everything from Genesis to Abraham is metaphor, everything from Abraham to Deuteronomy as allegory, from there through the prophets as historical (while believing that the prophets had a dual role), and everything New Testament as relational.

I realize that many will disagree with me, including many of my friends. And that is okay because my interest is not in discussing the accuracy of scripture anymore. Hermeneutics, or the methodology of interpreting scripture, has moved away from the modern, western approach for me and is becoming more interdependent on how scripture relates to the entire story of God told throughout history in the lives and cultures of humanity. The uncertainty of this new paradigm often leaves me with more questions than answers and not has cured my doubt, but it has given me the freedom to trust that God is in the process of revealing His truth to me in the way and time that He desires.

With my new paradigm I also feel I am also able to experience greater revelation of God through the spiritual experiences of non-Christians. Many would see this as universalism. There was a time not too long ago that I would have been offended by this accusation. Not so much anymore. I still believe that Christ is the only son of God and that salvation comes through Him and Him alone and I still believe that the only way to perfection is through Christian faith. But I also believe that the Spirit of God moves beyond the confines of Christianity. God’s mercy and love can be seen everywhere. I believe that because of this God is active in the lives of many, even those who don’t know Christ. I believe that Christians have the closest to accurate depiction of God, but that we don’t have the only experiences with God. This would mean that other sacred texts can also have truths and spiritual insight. In fact, I would say that I now believe in many more things being sacred then when I held to a more rigid belief about scripture.

I have used the word post-evangelical a few times recently. I think I came up with this phrase. I use it not to partner my beliefs with postmodernism, but because I feel that it is the best word to capture what I believe about Christianity and scripture. I have never considered myself liberal, but because my views are so different than evangelicalism it seemed like that it what I had to be, simply by default. But I actually hold to more conservative, evangelical values than liberalism. For example, I believe in social justice, but that the liberal church has put too much focus on government to regulate morality. I believe that the real goal of the church is to spread the name of Christ. Ironically, I also believe that this focus has given the evangelical church more direction in social action. I have fairly conservative values about what is right and wrong, but I also feel that most issues are more layered than the evangelical church is willing to explore. And as for how post-evangelicalism relates to this entry, I believe in scripture, I just believe in the living word a little more.

I would love to read any feedback you might have, just don’t expect an argument.