Jesus in the Weeds - Day 262 Month 9-18 Week 36-3
Today's Reading (Bible in 1 year)
2 Kings 18, Ecclesiastes 2:12-26, Daniel 3:1-18, Ephesians 5:22-6:9
Jesus in the Weeds
This may seem controversial but in my last few years of employment, 2015 - 2022, I worked for an Anabaptist Church. One of the things I would often hear from our teaching pastor is the following quote. I agree whole heartedly with this quote.
“We believe in the inerrant, infallible, authoritative Word of God, and his name is Jesus.”
To simplify my point, we often hear from both mainline and evangelical denominations that the Bible is inerrant and infallible. The ideas behind those words are much older, but the terminology and the detailed theological formulations we use today developed much later. I am not an apologist nor would I describe myself as a theologian, so if you are questioning my facts, please go back and verify them. However, my point is that these particular terms and the way we use them today came long after Jesus walked the earth.
If you are really ticked at me and calling me a heathen right now, I’d love to hear from you. Maybe you can set me straight. I have a hunch that I may hear from my theologian friends after reading this and I look forward to them “theosplaining” (my new word).
As a Jesus follower who would refer to myself as an Anabaptist, I have learned to use the Jesus filter as I study scripture. I am thankful because quite honestly because I don’t like the apostle Paul in Ephesians 5:21-24. This is where he states “be subject to one another in the fear of Christ. Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything.” A former pastor of mine, from many moons ago, said that Paul is talking about mutual submission. Though the wife is to be submissive to her husband. Paul states in verse 25, “Husbands love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her.” The idea is that if you are loving your wife as Christ loved the church, you are putting her interests ahead of your own. I suppose that is a form of submission.
I don’t know the answer to my own dilemma in this passage but what I can say is that I believe the Bible is to be read through the filter of the character of Jesus. If you don’t believe that, I challenge you to get a hold of a “Jesus Centred Bible” and leaf through the old testament. You will see frequent blue writing. The blue writing in the Old Testament are scriptures that refer to Jesus. In fact, I have highlighted old testament passages that refer to Jesus as I’ve been writing the daily blog.
So where does this leave us? I’m just going to talk about Jesus. And since I’ve spent enough time in the theological weeds, let me take a completely different turn. This same Jesus was there at creation.
If you don’t believe in the seven day creation story, fair enough, but I believe God is ultimately responsible for creation, whatever process He used! I do believe in creation but for me to believe in creation it does not need to be a literal 7 days. So God created!
Syl and I went to explore some of creation a couple of days ago. We went waterfalling! We went to one waterfall called Crystal Falls and the other one was Shinglemill Falls. Shinglemill Falls is located reasonably close to Aylesford, Nova Scotia. To get to Shinglemill Falls, we drove down a gravel road for about 5 kilometres and then when we could not find the trail, we drove down a narrow road, well maybe more like a rocky cowpath.
We went down that road about 3 kilometres. When we got to where we thought the waterfall was, we opened a car window and we could hear it loud and clear.
We enjoyed our day in God’s creation. Exploring the beauty and power of what God has provided for us and all nature to enjoy. So what does this tell me? God loves us!
So after all the heavy reading I did in the passage today, I am reminded that all the theological discussion means very little if it does not lead me toward Jesus. When we experience God’s love, no matter what form that takes, I look at it as God looking down on us with love. So I love God in thanksgiving for what He has done for me. He sent Jesus. Jesus died. Jesus is “I AM.” Rather than getting caught up in theological disagreement, I choose to love Jesus back.
Have a great day!
Steve
You can subscribe to this blog and receive an email each day or week. Just visit the following link. https://follow.it/my-faith-view-from-here-daily-readings-and-thoughts?leanpub
Comments
Post a Comment