Wisdom for today

[Pastor Gary]

Everyone — everyone — interprets the Scriptures through their interpretive framework or tradition. Human bias of experience and personal prejudice is virtually impossible to avoid.

The people who fervently believe they don’t do this probably do so more than most people.

[Gerald Creasy]

Everyone — everyone — interprets the Scriptures through their interpretive framework or tradition. Human bias of experience and personal prejudice is virtually impossible to avoid.

The people who fervently believe they don’t do this probably do so more than most people.

A person believes that Jesus was not God in direct contradiction to scripture, and the belief based on scripture that Jesus was God ARE NOT EQUAL BECAUSE HUman bias is unavoidable.

A complete embracement of this "wisdom" renders the Bible meaningless and Everything you preach then becomes your opinon based on personal prejudice.

Why then preach anything at all?

[Pastor Gary]

Everyone — everyone — interprets the Scriptures through their interpretive framework or tradition. Human bias of experience and personal prejudice is virtually impossible to avoid.

The people who fervently believe they don’t do this probably do so more than most people.

A person believes that Jesus was not God in direct contradiction to scripture, and the belief based on scripture that Jesus was God ARE NOT EQUAL BECAUSE HUman bias is unavoidable.

A complete embracement of this "wisdom" renders the Bible meaningless and Everything you preach then becomes your opinon based on personal prejudice.

Why then preach anything at all?

You are becoming a one-trick pony, Gerald, reminiscent of a certain 9/11 conspiracy theorist who once turned every post on every thread into the same discussion.

[Gerald Creasy]

The same can be said opposite.

Do I have a point or do you deny the point?

[Pastor Gary]

The same can be said opposite.

Do I have a point or do you deny the point?

Your point has zero relation to my post. I am posting quotes from my past week in class and the books I am reading. Take the diatribe elsewhere, because I don't intend to play.

If you insist upon intruding in every thread with your witch hunt for heretics, I will ban you.

[Gerald Creasy]

Your point has zero relation to my post. I am posting quotes from my past week in class and the books I am reading. Take the diatribe elsewhere, because I don't intend to play.

If you insist upon intruding in every thread with your witch hunt for heretics, I will ban you.

It has absolute relation to your post.

It is the logical conclusion of your quote without qualifications.

If everyone interprets, then there is no axiomatic truth.

If there is no axiomatic truth the Bible is pointless.

[Full Quiver]

2 Peter 1:20
Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.

Those that do as you say, and we all are probably guilty from time to time, are out of order. Those that do so as a practice are, well........

[oletimer]

Some beat their path so much and soooo hard that after a while they no longer have a path, but a ditch going no where. What is sad is that they may never know how they got there.

[Gerald Creasy]

Some beat their path so much and soooo hard that after a while they no longer have a path, but a ditch going no where. What is sad is that they may never know how they got there.

Are you taling about the multiple TCOG assemblies or something else...I'm confused.

[oletimer]

Don't be, just find yourself a mirror and turn the light on. Should cease the confusion, OH, I forgot OPEN you eyes and your heart.

[Gerald Creasy]

Don't be, just find yourself a mirror and turn the light on. Should cease the confusion, OH, I forgot OPEN you eyes and your heart.

The first resort of the religious who find themselves challenged or withstood is to heap recrimination upon those who dare to challenge or withstand because of the challengers sparse spirituality.

Gosh, Oletimer thats Old Tyme COGOP 101 you dont think I know that?

[dolfan]

We have no choice but to interpret the Bible through our own biases. A bias is defined in one place as a particular tendency or inclination, among other definitions. The Bible was sculpted by the Creator ---- with a bias. His relationship to us is biased. (If God be for us, who can be against us?) Jesus "tends to" advocate for us against the true accusation against us that we are sinners. 2 Chronicles 7:14 is an example of God's bias. He is who He is, and what He does is inseparable from that. Same with us. What we view as important, how we weigh out one thing versus another in exercising judgment, what information goes into our "this is useful and good" box and what goes into our internal junk mailbox --- all that is bias, and all that we experience, especially in relationship to our God and Savior, is impacted by it. In the end, what God says is true is true; until the end, we're going to be some measure off of it. Hopefully, and rightfully, our lives increasingly demonstrate a bias that more closely matches God's own bias.

There's no virtue in recognizing that God's expression of His desire, of Himself, of His will, etc., is "the" truth unless we also humbly accept the fact that we cannot fully comprehend it in this mortal coil. Until we know all, what we do know is only partial. We're left, with His presence and help, to navigate the unknown with the aid of the Known. Because we're persons and not rocks, we're responsive to His creation and to His work. We absolutely without a doubt respond differently as we're all made uniquely and by Him. And, because of that wondrous power of God's ability to make so many people with so many differences, we have no choice but to accept that He knows what we do not know. If we're in a life where we are less than fully knowledgeable and informed of all of God's activities, purposes and ways, then we have to put our arms around what we do know and wrestle with what we don't know. We are all going to vary in how we do that. We all have our biases.

[paul]

We have no choice but to interpret the Bible through our own biases. A bias is defined in one place as a particular tendency or inclination, among other definitions. The Bible was sculpted by the Creator ---- with a bias. His relationship to us is biased. (If God be for us, who can be against us?) Jesus "tends to" advocate for us against the true accusation against us that we are sinners. 2 Chronicles 7:14 is an example of God's bias. He is who He is, and what He does is inseparable from that. Same with us. What we view as important, how we weigh out one thing versus another in exercising judgment, what information goes into our "this is useful and good" box and what goes into our internal junk mailbox --- all that is bias, and all that we experience, especially in relationship to our God and Savior, is impacted by it. In the end, what God says is true is true; until the end, we're going to be some measure off of it. Hopefully, and rightfully, our lives increasingly demonstrate a bias that more closely matches God's own bias.

There's no virtue in recognizing that God's expression of His desire, of Himself, of His will, etc., is "the" truth unless we also humbly accept the fact that we cannot fully comprehend it in this mortal coil. Until we know all, what we do know is only partial. We're left, with His presence and help, to navigate the unknown with the aid of the Known. Because we're persons and not rocks, we're responsive to His creation and to His work. We absolutely without a doubt respond differently as we're all made uniquely and by Him. And, because of that wondrous power of God's ability to make so many people with so many differences, we have no choice but to accept that He knows what we do not know. If we're in a life where we are less than fully knowledgeable and informed of all of God's activities, purposes and ways, then we have to put our arms around what we do know and wrestle with what we don't know. We are all going to vary in how we do that. We all have our biases.

Absolutely agree with you..Good post

[RamboPreacher]

Everyone — everyone — interprets the Scriptures through their interpretive framework or tradition. Human bias of experience and personal prejudice is virtually impossible to avoid.

The people who fervently believe they don’t do this probably do so more than most people.

Excellent quote. was it a composite of reading and your implied wisdom, or a direct quote?

I agree and have mentioned as much on many occasions here and elsewhere, though not as eloquently.

cultural interpretation itself if a point of contention for some, and not just culture in relation to West Vs. East, or America Vs. so-called "Third world". we have cultures within cultures within our own organization that we have been raised in or chose to become a part of (COGOP, specifically in thought here).

We all say things and have personal definitions of words and meanings within our own various cultures and sphere's of influence - and is even more vertical in context when posting text on a public forum. and for the most part, we don't give those words a second thought.

if there is a discussion (IRL, or text), a real discussion, and not an argument (negative context of the defined meanings), or ad hominem that has become so popular online, the context of thought can come to word definitions that can come to agreements in those discussions, at least bringing us to the same page when working out beliefs based in Biblical interpretation (beliefs and dogma do not equate; however beliefs may equate to doctrine).

Eisegetical understandings of Scripture need to be evaluated in that understanding of what is biblical interpretation as well. What I am getting at is that it's not just the bias we have of interpretation of the scripture itself (even at an exegetical level), but our personal "weight" of evidences in that interpretation in reading between the lines, so to speak. (I realize this is probably what many equate to "the bias" as mentioned, but the point needed to be made that there is a difference of interpreting the scripture, in and of itself, and interpreting the scripture including all of the perceived contexts within that culture)

And to agree with what the dolfan said, no matter what we do to describe God, and His Word to and for us, it is all anthropomorphic and anthropocentric in nature; analogy. God presents Himself to us in ways that we can understand in this physics, even though He, Himself is not bound withing this physics.

[Pastor Gary]

Excellent quote. was it a composite of reading and your implied wisdom, or a direct quote?

It is a somewhat synthesized quote from...

Walter Brueggemann, William Placher, and Brian Blount. Struggling with Scripture. John Knox Press, 2002. (primarily thoughts from Brueggeman).

Charles Kraft and Marguerite Kraft. Christianity in Culture: A Study in Dynamic Biblical Theologizing in Cross-Cultural Perspective, rev. ed.. Orbis Books. 2005.

Paul Hiebert. Anthropological Insights for Missionaries. Baker, 1985.

As well as insights from
Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart. How to Read the Bible for All It's Worth. Zondervan, 1993.

It is the overarching thesis of all missiological education at Fuller, Gordon-Conwell, the U.S. Center for World Missions, and other missionally-focused institutions.