Categories: uncategorized
Date: 22 June 2012 10:32:54
When I hear somebody saying “the Bible clearly says”, what I hear is somebody using the Bible to back up their own thinking, and in the process using it to hurt others. Often they don’t mean to hurt others, they have good motivations, and they want to serve God the best they can. But what they are actually often doing is causing overs unnecessary hurt, but also depriving us all of the richness of the Bible. As soon as we are sure that seeing things in black and white is the right thing to do, it means that we don’t look at it in other ways and notice new things, see things that we haven’t seen before, that help to expand our view of God. By being so sure we hurt ourselves as we don’t allow God to show us more of who he is, of seeing a little bit more of God who is beyond our understanding, and also hurt others through imposing a view on them which can have serious consequences on their lives. I can look back at history and see how the church has used the Bible to for example back up slavery and apartheid. We now look back and say how can that be? What will the church in 200 years look back on about us and say, how could they think like that?