Very few people want to discard the Bible altogether. It’s a holy book after all, and there are passages in the Bible that even the most cynical atheist would admit are beautiful and inspiring. But, sooner or later, everyone finds parts of the Bible that make them feel uncomfortable. There are teachings that disagree with what we believe. There are commands to do things we don’t want to do. And there are warnings against doing things that we want to keep on doing. When we come to one of those uncomfortable places, we’re tempted to conclude, ‘That part must be wrong.’ If the Bible contains errors, then we get to pick and choose the parts we like. So, how true is the Bible? Does it contain mistakes? How can we know? These are important questions to settle in your mind.
I didn’t use to think that I needed to take the Bible too seriously. I assumed that its message had gotten passed down through the centuries a little bit like the telephone game. That’s where everyone lines up and whispers a message from one person to the next down the line and when the last person says what they’ve heard, we all laugh at how garbled the message got along the way. Once I had done some investigation, I realized how wrong my assumptions had been. Over the years, I’ve talked to so many people with the same assumptions that I wanted to address how the transmission of the Bible differs from the telephone game.
I believe that God is in control of all things and that includes the pandemic that we’re in right now. That makes me hopeful of His good purposes for all that we’re experiencing. But there is genuine cause for concern as well. When COVID-19 first caused churches to close their doors, there was a lot of optimism and even celebration. Early on in the pandemic, Carey Nieuwhof, announced that church growth had spiked 300% in the month following the shutdown and cited research that showed that 49% of all churches were growing. Church growth soon showed itself to be little more than online church curiosity. Christians were popping around to various churches to see what everyone else was doing.
Dealing with the closure of our church ministries has been a difficult process for everyone. For some of you, it’s probably been the longest period that you’ve gone without attending a church service since you were born. For others without such established patterns of church attendance, the separation is different. As we try to navigate through the unchartered pandemic waters that we’re facing, it’s important that we continue to listen to each other and seek God’s will for our next steps. To help in that, I wanted to share the results of our latest survey about returning to in-person worship services along with some of my own thoughts.
When Christians struggle with doubts about whether they’re truly saved, they often turn to 1 John 5:13 for assurance. It points to the confidence we can have about our eternity if we’ve put our trust in Jesus. But if we want to understand that promise correctly, we need to read it alongside the tests that precede it.
Christianity makes the remarkable claim that God completely pardons sinners solely on the basis of their faith, not as a result of anything they have done to deserve it. But doesn’t God care how a person lives? Two equations help explain Christianity’s most misunderstood truth.
Many people assume that because they believe in God, attend church, or try to live a decent life, their faith must be genuine. But throughout the Gospels, Jesus regularly challenged people who looked spiritually healthy on the outside while holding fatal blind spots under the surface. Considering them helps us evaluate the condition of our own faith.
Plenty of people say they believe in Jesus, but there’s something missing. Jesus pictures them in Matthew 7:21-23 as those pleading to get into heaven but being denied entrance. It seems that they come close to salvation, but not close enough. They lack what so many “almost Christians” lack today: repentance and relationship.
When someone begins to understand what the Bible calls “good news,” the first reaction is often hesitation. The message that Jesus bore the consequences of our sins at the cross sounds like good news, but almost too good to be true. Part of the reason is that they don’t hear or fully understand what it means to confess, “Jesus is Lord.”
Like most people, I have spent the last week trying to process my anger and frustration at the murder of George Floyd. Feelings often point to questions but seldom give the answers. And the lack of answers has only compounded the frustration. Why does this keep happening? When will we change? Why can’t we do better? It would be a lot easier if this was just a police problem or an American problem, but viewing another senseless death through those lenses won’t likely get us any closer to an answer. I have to come to terms with the fact that this is my problem.
Numb from the news coverage that fuels more despair than it resolves, last night we watched, The Eye of the Storm, as a family. It’s a 1970s documentary about a third-grade teacher named Jane Elliott who, in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, tried to help her class of white students feel the impact of racism. Then we listened to accounts of people of African descent tell their stories of discrimination. And we prayed. I’m not qualified to speak to all of the changes that need to take place in our society if we are to deal with racism and take Jesus’ command seriously to love our neighbour. But I offer up the following as a sample prayer that I hope will guide our family’s response in the days to come.
