This coming Sunday (Oct 12) Amazing Grace looks at HEARING God address us with a word of Grace. And, as time allows we’ll begin to look at how Lutherans TEACH the faith. See Chapters 2 and 3 of Baptized, We Live.
Come with a favorite bible passage of yours to share. And questions you may have about the Bible.
The way we understand the Bible is critical. Too often we’ve used the Bible in ways that have distorted God’s Word for us. Here’s a quote that may open up some discussion among us.
“The Bible, as I read it now, is not a catalogue of absolutes, as its champions sometimes imply. Nor is it a document of fantasy, as its critics charge. It is an ancient record of an ongoing encounter with God in the darkness as well as the light of human experience. Like all sacred texts, it employs multiple forms of language to convey truth: poetry, narrative, legend, parable, echoing imagery, wordplay, prophecy, metaphor, didactics, wisdom saying. In the Christianity of the modern West, we’ve largely left the vivid storytelling of the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, in Sunday school. We’ve consigned it to the world of childhood figuratively and literally. And in our time a superficial Christian rendering of these biblical texts underpins false dichotomies that plague our public life— chasms we’ve set up between sacred text and truth, between idealized views of the way human beings should behave and the complex reality of the way they do.”
Tippett, Krista (2008-01-29). Speaking of Faith: Why Religion Matters–and How to Talk About It (Kindle Locations 624-631). Penguin Group US. Kindle Edition.
What do you think? Comments invited! (Both here and at the class this Sunday.)
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