Well, when I thought Christians mighty be touchy about re-looking at our viewpoint of the church, I discovered that was nothing compared to re-looking at the Bible.
Funnily enough I had just said to Kim a week or so ago that I was thinking of wrapping up our discussion group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/everyhomeachurch/?yguid=268246046 Because I felt that I was giving all the opinions and not a lot of dialogue was happening. THEN I posted an article that wondered about how we view the Bible, well 60 posts later I'm thinking along the lines of the Crocodile Hunter (CRIKEY). The Bible is truly the centre of the protestant church, I think people are less bothered about Jesus Christ, the Church or the trinity then they are about the Bible.
Protestants are in the end defined by there reliance on the Bible compared to the Orthodox and Catholic Churches, so I guess it's not surprising. I am just starting to wrestle if I am really comfortable in the Protestant sheep fold. The more I study the early church, and actually look at what the Bible says about it self (and its history as well) the less comfortable I am with my previous positions. To be honest, to believe how the typical Christian (e.g. me a year or two ago) views the Bible would force me to leave my brain in bed each morning. I think the Bible is important (I read it every day) but I feel there is a sense of idolatry to how we treat it these days. People appear to think that without the Bible we cannot know God, but it seems sometimes that they know the Bible but not God?Yet the early church did not have the New Testament, and most (Gentiles) had no awareness of the Old Testament (they were not heading to the synagogue to hear it read each week). Yet it didn’t seem to do them any harm. And why does the four oldest churches in Christianity (Coptic, Ethiopian, Orthodox and Catholic) honour and use the Bible but not worship like we do. I am no longer prepared to say that simply they are wrong and we are right, I really would like to know there point of view.The most interesting thing in this dialogue which is happening at the moment is how most of us are mature Christians who have been in church for many years, but we have never really discussed or thought through these issues. Most of what we believe has not been tested and thought through. I am only now working through what I believe after 17 years of being a follower of Christ, ten of them being a minister telling everyone else how they should think.
It is fantastic that we can wrestle with these things at last.
