Trading in fortune cookies for Biblical understanding (1/3)

This blog has been dominated so far by discussion on the nature of the Bible. We haven’t covered science, politics, the end times, movements of the Spirit, or any other such topics. I’m not surprised since our understanding of the Bible builds a foundation for our opinions on the other subjects.

And although my first few posts may have raised your suspicion as to my dependence on scripture, let me make something clear: Although I believe treating the Bible as the center of Christianity is misguided, I also think the importance of the Bible for Christians cannot be overstated.

It is not the center of our faith, but it is the infallible, authoritative source and God’s word on his nature, the nature of our lives, and our relationship to him.

Therefore it is of highest importance to me to take the Bible seriously, to find out what’s really in it and to corrupt its message as little as possible with my own agenda.

What’s the problem?

I have come to believe that our most common Bible-reading techniques to not meet any of the three above objectives. The main problem is how much we read each day. Reading a verse, a paragraph, or a chapter at a time is a really bad idea.

Reading, studying, discussing, and preaching on the Bible in short bursts doesn’t take the Bible seriously in that it ignores the Bible’s self-established format of books. When you read any other book, do you commonly cite one sentence to make an important point? How about reading it one paragraph or one page at a time?

Worsening the situation further is that our current Biblical divisions (chapters and verses) are totally arbitrary and don’t have much to do with the original authors’ words. Would you read a book that someone else had gone through first, inserting lines and divisions all over the place that had little to do with the actual book content? The Bible is a collection of 66 books, not 31,000 fortune cookies.

The combination of reading such short segments and breaking them up with little numbers all over the page is that it is very hard to tell what the books of the Bible are truly about. Knowing, though, that we are supposed to glean truth from the Bible nonetheless, we concentrate harder or pray or expect revelations from God’s Spirit to just reveal what the heck we’re reading.

The Bible isn’t supposed to be boring or difficult to understand. Just the opposite, it’s the most exciting and transcending book ever written! With a little historical/cultural background info, a notebook to take notes in, and someone with which to discuss what you’re reading, I can’t imagine or more exciting, enjoyable, motivating, or spiritual process.

In the next post, I'll expose more of how the way we tend to read the Bible is so... unbiblical.

I hope my church converts to this format.

Found this one on YouTube, put together by BlueFishTV.


Oddly enough, instead of making me think about how much emphasis is put on Sunday services, it just got me thinking about how I can't wait for football season to start.

Infallibility: Can we trust the Bible?

In my last post, I offered thoughts about what Christians mean when they refer to the Bible as the “Word of God.” While discussing the role of human authorship in the scriptures, we must confront this question: Can we trust a book written by sinful people.

Because God was actively involved in the creation of the scriptures, I believe that we can completely trust the scriptures when they speak on certain matters. These matters would be doctrine and ethics. Doctrine is a collection of beliefs (usually in the form of statements) about God and humanity. We develop doctrinal statements through the process of theology, which is the study of God. Ethics are beliefs about what is right and wrong, and by extension Biblical ethics are beliefs about what is right and wrong according to the Bible.

Christian theology must rely primarily on the scriptures to develop our doctrine; they are the most reliable resource available for understanding God. No mere man could fathom the reality of God. So through the centuries, God gave insight and wisdom to the authors of scripture so they could write truthfully about the character, attributes, and values of God. When Jesus Christ walked the earth, those qualities became manifest in the man who was “the image of the invisible God.”

The Bible should be important to Christians because it is our most valuable resource for understanding the person of Jesus Christ and our relationship with him. In his series “What is at the center of Christianity,” Joe writes that Jesus Christ is the center of our religion, and the Bible points us towards him. The greater purpose of every book of the Bible is to draw the reader closer to Jesus Christ.

My simple thought on Biblical ethics goes like this: a Christian’s beliefs about right and wrong should be based on God’s beliefs about right and wrong, which we learn through studying the character, attributes, and values of God found in the scriptures, and direct statements about right and wrong found in the scriptures reveal aspects of God’s character and values. The Bible is not a set of rules or instructions, but it does help us understand the character and values of the God we are called to emulate. It is written in Leviticus, “Be holy, because I, the Lord your God, am holy."

So as we come to the Bible with a desire to understand and know Jesus Christ better, I believe that the scriptures will not fail to guild us into a greater understanding and deeper relationship with Jesus Christ. This is the explicit purpose of the scriptures, and it is the matter on which they are infallible. But what about questions of history, chronology, and science? In my next post, I will discuss the issue of inerrancy.

Codex Sinaitacus Uploadicus

The oldest full copy of the New Testament, the Codex Sinaiticus, is going digital..

That's pretty neat. It means anyone can look at it for themselves. Of course, they can't read it unless they know Koine Greek, but it's neat, nevertheless.

The CS has been studied for a couple hundred years and has been an important text for figuring out what the original authors of the Bible meant. It, of course, has been important in the authoring of modern English translations, such as the NIV, TNIV, ESV, RSV, NASV, etc. So it's neat that it's online, but it's not world-shattering.

Looking up stories on Google News, I was surprised and pleased for the most part with the way the press has handled it. They did not run with the popular "The true Bible is so different from the one in your house" story. (It is clear most of the stories on the Codex Sinaiticus are written from a press release.)

There were exceptions, though:

• TechRadar reports that the CS is different from today's Bible's in that it doesn't include the resurrection. But the CS affirms the resurrection in all four Gospels. What it doesn't include are the last 12 verses in Mark (which contains all of Jesus' resurrection appearences from Mark, not his resurrection). These twelve verses are noted as probably unoriginal in most modern translations of the Bible.
  
• Slashdot made the same mistake. Whoops!! (I'm not sure how this site works. Was this on the front page, selected by the editors? Perhaps not.)
  
• The AP contends that the CS has "a few interesting differences" from my Bible, such as missing the resurrection appearences of Mark. But my Bible, which is TNIV, makes it very clear that those verses likely don't belong.
  
• This website highlights the many differences between modern Christian belief and this ancient manuscript. (Actually that site is a nice jab on the unbiblical thinking of most Christians. I found it to be quite humorous.)
  

I have to admit, I do hear Christians quote the end of Mark more often than I'd like. But its absence from the CS is neither troubling nor surprising. (Nor is it indicative of the level of difference between the rest of the CS and a modern Bible.)

Overall I am pleased with the media's reporting of the event. The only thing that makes me sad is how many Christians are surprised to discover the end of Mark doesn't belong there!

Inspiration: Who wrote the Bible?

In Part 2 of “What’s at the center of Christianity,” Joe mentioned that the Bible is often referred to as the “Word of God.” What does this mean?

Many Christians believe that God inspired the Bible. This type of inspiration is different from that of an artist who responds emotionally to some external factor (nature, people, etc.) by creating a work of art. The authors of the Bible were not merely responding to an experience with God, but God himself was active in the creation of the text.

But how was God involved? Are the words of the Bible a heavenly dictation or human musings? Neither option is very appealing. Either God directly manipulated the authors, or the text was written by humans… who are prone to mistakes and misunderstandings.

We do have Biblical text that was dictation from God. We call it prophecy, and you need only turn to Isaiah to find a very obvious phrase like, “The Lord has spoken this word.” The mark of a good prophet was speaking only the very words of God… often to people that did not want to hear the truth. In the Old Testament we have a collection of prophetic oracles, words directly from God, which were written down. But what about the Psalms, the narratives, and all those letters?

Perhaps God and the authors worked in some type of partnership. Each author brought his own personality, style, and cultural background into the writing. God brought insight and wisdom so that the authors could understand and explain things that only the mind of God could comprehend. Most books in the Bible were written to address particular situations, and through insight and wisdom from God, each author was able to respond to those situations with divine truth and understanding. The words themselves belong to the author, but the ideas they express belong to God.

If the authorship of the Bible was a partnership between God and men, then can we trust the written text? To address this question it may be helpful to discuss two terms: infallibility and inerrancy. I will discuss these concepts in my next post.

Book Review: Misquoting Jesus

Do you remember that controversial 2006 movie about Mary Magdelene and Jesus having a kid and the Catholic church changing the Bible and cryptology and the Mona Lisa?

Me neither. But about the time that came out, so did, conveniently, a book called “Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why,” written by Biblical scholar Bart D. Ehrman.

I only read the back of the book, whose three bullet points told what Bart Ehrman would “reveal” inside: The King James version is not very good, John 8:3-11 doesn’t belong there, and Biblical authors threatened with curses those who would change their words. I thought, “These are the spine-tingling revelations he has to offer?” Three less controversial scholarly facts about the Bible I do not know of.

Later I caught Dr. Ehrman on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. There he offered the same pedestrian report: That story about the adulteress and Jesus writing in the sand? Probably not originally in John’s Gospel. He of course neglected to mention that this is explicitly noted in almost every modern translation of the New Testament. Stewart and Colbert, however, were impressed. They seemed blown away by how easily Ehrman shot holes through the supposedly perfect scriptures.

I still hadn’t read the book, but I became very angry, because Ehrman argued unethically: He was relying on his reader/interviewer’s ignorance about scripture in order to mislead them by making a common truth sound like a Da Vinci Code-esque secret.

So last week after criticizing him in this way for the 12th time, I figured I better actually read the book before I badmouth Dr. Ehrman any more.

My feelings after reading “Misquoting Jesus” are mixed. On one hand, I was surprised and pleased by Ehrman’s love of textual criticism and his passion for the general population to understand it. His stories about early textual criticism adventures make his subjects seem exciting the same way Indiana Jones makes archeologists seem like movie stars. I’d say 80% of the book consists of Dr. Ehrman trying to convince me how cool textual criticism is, and I have to say: I’m convinced, and I thank him for that.

But this alone makes me wonder. Why title the book “Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why?” Combined with the publishing date, it comes off like confirmation of the ideas in The Da Vinci Code, when really the thesis is, “Textual criticism is cool and you should learn about it.” I’d like to think Ehrman was pressured by publishers with the publication date and the title in order to sell copies. However, his misleading comments on talk shows and wrong ideas he lets readers of his book believe cause me to question his integrity as an author.

A note before I launch the rest of the review: Ehrman and I happen to disagree on the battlegrounds of early Christian theology. I think the basics of theology we have now were mainstream back then; he posits that perhaps dozens of Christian theologies were equally vying for supremacy, and our current theology just won out. He mentions this a few times, and I can respect his (non-mainstream) scholarly view and not criticize the book on those grounds. There are plenty of other reasons.

Ehrman reports there are perhaps hundreds of thousands of differences between New Testament manuscripts. This is likely true. He also says that some changes were made for theological reasons. Also not a lie.

My problem is that Ehrman lets people who want to see the Bible as totally untrustworthy run with those thoughts and imagine the world of The Da Vinci Code is true, that the message of the original Gospels are lost, that Biblical textual criticism is in complete chaos, and that the Bibles we have in our homes are irrelevant to the real thing.

Ehrman, of course, knows for a fact this is not true. And when you read his book closely, he can’t help but admit the facts. He concedes at points that the Bible’s manuscripts are not any harder to reconcile with each other than any other ancient book. He concedes that the vast majority of differences are irrelevant, accidental, and easy to fix, and that the ones that are on purpose are because a scribe was trying to make more clear what (s)he thought the text meant. Ehrman knows that manuscript differences are a basic consequence of hand copying texts, a practical reality of not having a printing press or a laptop, not insidious scribes with political agendas.

Ehrman concedes, at points, that what the large number of differences between the New Testament manuscripts speaks to is that there are so many more old copies of the New Testament than there are any other ancient book. The more copies, the more errors/differences. But also, the more copies, the easier it is to figure out which copy was right.

Ehrman affirms all this, and yet he writes in such a way that (in my opinion) encourages people who want to believe the Bible is profoundly different from the originals. Although he knows it, Ehrman never explicitly points out that the original Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John always had Jesus rise from the dead and that none of them ever had him sleeping with Mary Magdelene.

Ehrman also never explicitly mentions that modern translations of the Bible all take into account the most recent textual criticism. He could certainly assure us that the Bible we have is largely up-to-date and formed by consensus of good textual critcism. Instead he focuses on three examples of minor points he disagrees with the mainstream consensus on, implying the falsehood that Biblical scholars’ Bibles look much different from ours.

In short, he makes mountains out of molehills, and if you read closely, you see that he even has to admit that they’re molehills.

So then, if he knows the Bible is more dependable as any other old book, what is his final argument for agnosticism? As it turns out, it has nothing to do with doubt over the basic reliability of the New Testament in a practical sense. He knows what a silly and ignorant perspective that is. Instead, Ehrman paints a philosophical picture of the nature of ideas, positing that the stories change from person to person no matter how reliable they are trying to be. He says the New Testament stories went from Jesus’ followers to others, then into the New Testament, then copied by scribes, then read and interpreted by you and me. His idea is that once someone states an idea, it means something totally different to every person, and the original person can never truly be understood, even on some basic level.

What??

Believe it or not, this is Ehrman’s reason for losing faith in Christianity. As a Christian, he put the Bible in such a tight little box as to need to defy basic practical realities of copying texts, people telling the story in their own words, etc, and be a magical book that’s passed down through history in a vacuum. He doesn’t lack faith because of the way the Bible is, but because of his (ridiculous and contrived) worldview that two people’s ideas are just never enough alike as to be the same. And so he is an agnostic.

There are plenty of reasons to be an agnostic, but this one I don’t get.

Haven’t you ever talked to someone about a topic and realized you totally agree even though you’ve never talked about it before? Or how about if two people witnessed the same event, spoke about some details differently but ultimately agreed on the story? Ehrman can’t wrap his mind around this idea and loses his faith as a result. I’m stunned.

Ehrman’s book makes some good points. He points out how cool textual criticism is, and tells fun stories about its history. He also rightly points out that most Christians have a flawed view of the Bible, thinking that it is some magical perfect book never influenced in the original texts or their copies by human personality.

But in the end, his book is misleading. His title is misleading, and he purposely avoids striking down silly views like the resurrection not being in the original Gospels so that people keep believing a lie. He lets people go on thinking that the many manuscript differences argue for the Bible’s unreliability, when the large number actually speaks to the large number of manuscripts and our potential to get closer to the originals than for any other ancient work.

I would assume, because of his bizarre view on the nature of ideas, he does not see his misleading words as unethical. But I am deeply troubled by them and am sad that so many people have been taken in by his book.

What's at the center of Christianity? (3 of 3)

Sorry I said I’d post this yesterday and I’m just getting to it today. Life is unpredictable! This is part 3 of a series of posts on the center of Christianity. If you haven’t read part 1 or part 2, please read those first.

In those two posts, I challenged the way we ask the Bible questions, wondering if it’s the lens though which we should see Jesus/God and our relationship to him instead of a spiritual encyclopedia to serve our questions. I have just a few closing thoughts:

I typed in “Bible answers” into Google, and the very first link, at Bible.com, was typical of the results. Twenty topics are covered on that page, and none have to do with answering the question “Who is Jesus?” or “What does who Jesus is mean?” Instead, they include masturbation, school shootings, finding a spouse, tattoos, beer, gender roles, being gay, and smoking.

My mom once bought me a shirt that had a picture of a Bible on it along with the words, “When all else fails, read the instructions.” I appreciate my mom’s high reverence for the Bible, but to think of it as life’s instruction manual misses the points it’s making, as well as insulting our own ability to think things through if we’re given a framework to work with. It’s silly to suggest that the Bible addresses some of these topics, like school shootings and smoking, since they didn’t exist when the Bible was penned. Still other topics are not addressed directly, while others are of secondary importance at most.

If you investigated that site more, you might say their answers are taken out of context, and there are better, opposite answers elsewhere in the Bible. But why not avoid the controversy by not asking those questions at all? After all, if the Bible is not the center of faith, maybe we should look to who is at the center in order to answer those questions. The Bible does not point to itself for all the answers, but points beyond itself to a man who was God in the flesh.

If we look at Christ’s life, his death and his resurrection, and use the Bible to think about the implications of these events, I argue we would then be better equipped to answer those 20 questions than if we did a Bible word search and just went with what we felt like it said.

And even better than that, revolving our faith around Jesus would allow us to go beyond addressing the issues we care about by actually molding and influencing the questions we even want addressed, fixing my agenda to make it God’s agenda.

Jesus is the center of Christianity, and the Bible is the important, authoritative middle man, telling us about Jesus and fleshing out some implications of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, so that we can know him accurately and respond accordingly.

Let’s never cut out the middle man. But let’s also never mistake the middle man for the for the ultimate source of faith, hope, love and all things. It’s Jesus Christ.

What's at the center of Christianity? (2 of 3)

This is part 2 of 3 on Christianity’s center. I suggest reading Part 1 before you read this part.

After posting yesterday that we need to depend on what the Bible says about Jesus (and then depend on Jesus for everything) instead of depending on the Bible for everything, I realized that sounds like I don’t take the Bible seriously. I do take all of it quite seriously, and I think we’re lost without it. I think the whole thing from Genesis to Revelation is the Word of God. But I have a beef with what other people sometimes mean when they say the Bible is the “Word of God.”

I never want to jump to conclusions that since the Bible is the Word of God, the Bible is more or less God’s substitute teacher for us. God does have important messages for us in the Bible but to use the Bible to confront other things besides those messages is nonsense.

Imagine a religion where people believed Shakespeare was God. Clearly, even if he’s God, his plays are for entertainment. If you started using them for other purposes, you might end up becoming a cannibal, biting your thumb at people, talking to your friends in early modern English or thinking the best result of a conflict is for everyone to just die. It would be downright crazy.

Yet think about the way we approach the Bible with questions. If we take it as our ultimate authority on all matters, then we end up assuming every possible issue is in there if you just look hard enough.

At The Bible Answer Machine you can do just that, asking any question about anything and getting the Biblical answer. Luckily, it barely works, so not too many people are running their life via the Bible Answer Machine. Still, the perspective of that site is very much in line with how most of us use the Bible.

On the other hand, if Jesus is the center of Christianity, and the Bible is our “Complete Idiot’s Guide to Jesus,” then what sort of questions should we be asking it? I would argue for these sorts of questions:

Who is Jesus?
What did Jesus do?
What sorts of principles and values does Jesus emphasize?
How should I respond to Jesus?

Of course, only 12% of the Bible, generously, is directly about Jesus’ life. Much of the Bible is about our faith in Jesus or the history of faith. So when reading those parts, we should ask these sorts of questions:

What are the implications of what Jesus did on earth, in terms of who I am and how I live?
What are the implications of Jesus being God in terms of the way the world is and my role in it?
What are the implications of Jesus being the fulfillment of the Old Testament?
What kind of life should I live, and what should I do, in view of who Jesus is?

Since the Bible is about Jesus, all these questions, and others like them, are questions the Bible is designed to answer, questions that the Bible expects you to ask. The more I read the Bible asking these questions, the more blown away and taken in I am by both the Bible’s message and, more importantly, Jesus of Nazareth himself.

Tomorrow I’ll wrap up what’s going through my head on this topic.

(Click here for part 3.)

What's at the center of Christianity? (1 of 3)

It's an easy argument that human culture's most influential person has been Jesus of Nazareth.

It's silly, right? He was a typical Jewish Rabbi in a Roman occupied state with a few wise teachings and--allegedly--some unexplainable acts, like healing diseases, restoring sight for the blind, and commanding the weather with his voice.

Let's put aside whether we think he actually performed those miracles. We know what he didn't do: He didn't lead an army. He didn't run for office. Nor did he write a book. On the contrary, he was executed over some theological objections to some of his teachings' implications. On paper, you or I should be more famous.

Nonetheless, this otherwise trivial contributor to human history is quite relevant--to history, to religion, to politics, and to culture, and will continue to be into the next few millennia. Why?

Something convinced those men and women who made up his first followers that he was alive despite his public hanging, and that he was God incarnate (God in human form). They started telling people. As a result, here I stand today, one of a couple billion who thinks this guy is it.

In one sense, that's what Christianity is, to think that Jesus is the one, the man who is not like other humans, the human who shows us the face of God.

Yet we don't seem to pay attention.

I'd like to spend my first three posts exploring a pressing question: Why do we treat the Bible as the center of Christianity when Jesus of Nazareth should be?

You may think I'm asking a stupid question; the Bible is the authoritative book about Jesus, so the more central Jesus is, the more important the Bible, right? I affirm that statement. But I've observed that we often accidentally replace Jesus with the Bible at the center of our faith thoughts instead of explaining him with it.

Often on weekdays I listen to a radio program called “Back to the Bible.” Now, setting aside that this program sometimes has very little to do with getting back to the Bible, why would Christians want to title a radio show like this in the first place? Why not call it, “Back to who Jesus Is” or “Back to what the Bible has to say about Jesus”? Last week on this show they talked for two entire days about one single verse of Job, scrutinizing over the sequence of Job mourning and shaving his head and worshiping. Little to no mention of Jesus. Whaaa??

Once again, I say: What are we putting at the center? “Back to the Bible” is the not a fringe show. In fact, I'd say "Back to the Bible" represents the way most serious Christians think about their faith, if not all the time then some of the time.

I suggest we be more careful to depend on what the Bible says about our all-encompassing almighty master instead of depending on the Bible as the all-encompassing almighty master. The difference can be difficult to see.

In the next post, I'll talk about the kinds of questions the Bible has answers for.

(Click here for part 2.)

Head Scratchin' and Thought Hatchin'

In 1956, at a Christian revival meeting, a preacher prays for a boy with polio and declares him healed. The preacher encourages the mother to take the boy’s braces off his legs, if she has real faith. The boy collapses onto the ground. They keep the braces off anyway, and later, his legs swell and he is taken to the hospital.

Christians insist the Bible is our most reliable guide for life. But what does it say? This website claims the Bible condemns rock music, this site emphasizes the “Biblical” teaching that the sun revolves around the earth, while these people proclaim hate for practically everyone, based on “adhering to the teachings of the Bible.”

What’s the deal?

These are fringe nutcases, right? Probably, but they also speak to the more subtle ways we manipulate our own faith. Why are these activities able to masquerade as Christian? Why is the faith so easy to hijack for whoever’s agenda? I know Jesus referred to his followers as sheep, but I think he meant we blindly follow Him, not every flimsy idea that floats by with the label “Christian” or “Bible.”

The solution is simple: our brains. We contend that Christianity would be a lot better off if believers learned to think. God created our minds, and He transforms and renews them as He jolts us to life by revealing Himself through Jesus Christ. Our brains might be the best tool we have for following Christ and understanding what he has to say. As a scarecrow once said, “My head I’d be scratchin’ as my thoughts were busy hatchin’.”

We strive to understand Christ and the Bible, but when there is a moment of confusion, instead of thinking it through, we fall back on traditions, our instincts, or just whatever random thought happens to be on our mind. Worse, we rely on our own agenda, which our old, self-reliant flesh wants.

Enter the blog.

This blog exists to encourage, talk about, promote, and advocate the idea that Christians should use their brains. Basically, we want to be an incubator for hatching genuine thinking about faith in Jesus. To accomplish our goal, the authors plan to do the following:

• give our opinion on spiritual matters in commentaries and other blog posts
  
• keep up on religion in the news
  
• produce thought-sparking videos
  
• provide interesting and educating links
  
• compile and write resources
  
• review books, and
  
• interview important thinkers of our world.

Four promises

There are plenty of melancholy ramblings that miss the point out there, so the authors of this blog will enhance your blog-reading experience by adhering to four unbreakable laws:

Enjoyable. We will make every effort to craft each post as relevant, enjoyable and well-written. This blog is not for our vents and rants. We want you to be able to depend on us to provide regular fuel for your spiritualized brain. We hope you will subscribe to our RSS feed or visit regularly to get your fix of things to think on.

Open conversation. Being young and uninformed on many topics, we will boldly speak opinions in the hopes of hearing your views and the information we’re ignorant of. This blog will be unique in that over the course of time you will likely change our minds on many topics as we converse as a community about Jesus Christ in posts and comments. Please leave comments!

More than criticism. We promise to avoid merely tearing down others or poking holes in what braver men and women do and say. We will never criticize without offering an alternative viewpoint, strategy, or methodology that we think makes more sense.

Centrality of Jesus. Hopefully the dominant theme of this blog comes to be the outrageous unmerited reality that we can know God and know about God because he showed up on earth and turned it upside-down. We want to be people who are so excited about God’s grace that we can’t stop talking about it. Every topic we speak on will be used to emphasize this point, never to detract from it.


What else to expect

The only question left is, what will we actually talk about day-to-day here? The answer: anything to get those thought eggs a-hatchin’. Early topics beside the centrality of Jesus will include how we read the Bible, science and faith, the end times, the inerrancy of scripture, the Holy Spirit, and current events. But none of these are the meat of the blog. The meat is, as Reese Roper once said, “Use your mind to use your soul.”

And so begineth The Faith Thought Hatchery. Welcome. Please visit daily or subscribe.

About the Contributor: Adam

When I was younger, I learned some about God, Jesus, and the Bible through my church. During high school, I thought about God, religion, and Christianity, but my ideas and opinions were not informed; they were only my personal musings. It was not until college that I began to honestly explore Christianity and the Bible.

I attended Muskingum College four years, and I graduated with an undergraduate degree in Biology. At heart I am a scientist, and I enjoyed every biology class I took, and I value everything that I learned in those classes. My professors were good people that I still admire.

During college, I became involved with a Christian group on campus called Campus Crusade for Christ. I learned about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit on conferences and retreats with Campus Crusade. But I also learned about Christianity through exploring the Bible, taking classes in Biblical studies, and having long conversations with good friends. Both of these sources were vital in developing my beliefs about Christianity and the Bible.

I have learned that Christianity is more than commands or rituals. Jesus of Nazareth was a real person who had lived on earth, and he was more than human. He was deity incarnate, literally God in human form. Jesus was the answer to the problem that had plagued humanity for millennia: the separation between a righteous God and a disobedient people, a separation that warranted our death. Jesus paid the penalty for our disobedience when he died on a Roman cross, defeated death when he was resurrected three days later, and offers anyone who trusts him eternal life.

I spent my first year after graduation working with Campus Crusade in central Ohio. When my internship ended, I decided to join the full-time staff of Campus Crusade. Through my experience in college ministry, I have talked with many people, listening to their thoughts and perspectives on Christianity and the Bible. Some ideas seem more reasonable than others. Some ideas sound absurd. But these discussions have always helped me to better understand and articulate what I think and believe.

There are still many questions that need addressed. What about evolution? Is the Bible reliable? Is Christianity the only legitimate religion? Where does postmodernism fit into all of this? I hold strong opinions on some issues, but I want to learn more, hear what other people think, and dialogue about these important topics. Discussing these topics openly and honestly has only served to deepen my faith and appreciation of my God. I hope that this blog can serve you in the same manner.

About the Contributor: Joe

Click here to visit Joe's personal website.
Click here to view all posts contributed by Joe.

Although I grew up a religious kid, it wasn’t until I attended a yearly Christian weekend retreat in junior high that I was told there was a conflict of interest between my faith and science. Concerned, I asked my dad, a strong Christian example in my life and in the lives of many, what he thought.

“It’s not very important whether Adam and Eve were real people or whether Genesis is a literal history,” he said. I was confused.

Anyway, it didn’t matter much because around that time at one of those retreats my eyes were opened to the more basic details of life: The world is tragically broken beyond man’s repair and I am just as much a part of the hurt as anyone else. But God wouldn’t stand for it and arrived on earth to simultaneously introduce himself to us and bridge the gap between people and him, proving to be a very different God than anyone would imagine. I was told that if I believed in Jesus as the real deal, I could enter a new, eternal world in harmony with God.

Over the next couple years I grew in knowledge and maturity in Christ. Part of that was struggling with belief and the dependability of scripture. I used the internet to research all the arguments, but found them unsatisfying in a genuine search for truth.

Meanwhile, I flailed spiritually, at best, during my first semester of college. But my sisters managed to drag me to a Christian conference where I learned that Christ is truly at the center of everything and is a trustworthy caretaker of my whole life.

Since then, so far that’s been true, and I have learned more and more how to serve Jesus with everything in me. This has included a leadership position in our spiritual movement on campus and a very fulfilling year-long internship with a college missions organization.

But part of that growth in spiritual maturity that has surprised me. As I took really good classes—classes on the Bible and ethics, classes in scientific disciplines, and classes on church history and ancient Near East culture—and talked through all these topics with my friends, I came to believe in the important role learning and our brains should play in our faith.

Many I knew were at the same time rejecting this, trying to rely solely on authority and tradition or trying not to “quench the Spirit” with too much intellectual fluff. For me it was the opposite. The more I opened my mind and made my faith vulnerable to new information, the more excited and sure I got about being a Christian. Academic classes and intellectual freedom were becoming an important driving force in my spirituality.

These days, I live in Columbus, Ohio with my beautiful, intelligent, Christ-like wife. I am involved with Xenos Christian Fellowship and am a freelance writer looking for full-time work. I’m starting to think I should eventually go to seminary to learn more about the Bible.

I pray that this blog causes thoughts to hatch in your brain as well as mine.