Thursday and Ministerial Alliance

I slept well last night. I awoke at 1:30, went to the bathroom and took my med and went back to bed and back to sleep.

When I got up at 5:00, I dressed, fed Missy and myself, and watched the news by steaming it on the computer. The picture on the TV was tearing constantly. Odd, sometimes it is fine other times it tears constantly.

Missy went back in and crawled up on the bed and is sleeping again.

I have been asking myself and the Church School class at church this question. We have been studying some very controversial and challenging material the past few years. Some of those books were: "Living the Questions" and "Saving Jesus from the Church" by David Felten and Jeff Proctor Murphy, "The Secret Message of Jesus" by Brian McLaren and "Who Wrote the Bible" by Richard Friedman.  Perhaps we should ask ourselves this question. 

Has Your Faith Changed?

We know we don’t have the originals of any of the books of the New Testament but only error-ridden copies, and that there are places where we may never know what the originals were; Scholars know the NT was filled with discrepancies and contradictions and that most of the NT books were not written by their alleged authors ..some are mis-attributed, some are forged.  True, we never use the word “forgeries”. But it wasn’t for religious reasons; we simply don’t know then what we know now.   Our views of the historical Jesus were the same then as now: for years we have realized that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet who was predicting that the end of the age was soon to come in a cataclysmic act of judgment when God overthrew the forces of evil and brought in a good kingdom – sometime within his own generation.

Our views of Paul’s theology, the nature of the bizarre symbolism of the book of Revelation, the varying views of Jesus and of salvation and of many other things found in different parts of the New Testament – none of that changed.  The idea that early Christianity was remarkably diverse, with different groups in the second and third centuries all maintaining different beliefs and engaging in different practices, but all claiming to represent “original” Christianity better than all their competitors – we still have this view as well.  Also the fact that the Bible has numerous competing views of suffering, none of them entirely satisfying: 

In short, we can’t really think of anything that is different in terms of scholarship or essential views of Jesus, the New Testament, or early Christianity.

It’s true – very, very true – that our views are different.  But we changed those views as we studied.   Our religious views changed. 

It meant that we could not have a literalistic understanding of the Bible or a faith that accepted fundamentalist assumptions about the Bible.  But we realized that that was all to the good, since in fact those assumptions were not the views held throughout history by most Christians – especially educated Christians – over the centuries anyway.

But being a believer really has nothing to do with whether one recognizes the historical problems of the Bible and the development of early Christianity.  We simply have alternative visions of what it means to be Christian from what we find in our increasingly “narrow-minded”, conservative world.  And our visions in fact are more historically true to what Christianity has already been than the dominant view (at least the dominant view in the American South).

For one thing, it unites us against fundamentalists.  We may need to CHANGE our faith, but we do not need to become a non-believer.

We are instead interested in acquiring historical knowledge, learning how to THINK, and developing a more thoughtful approach to life, whatever our religious perspective or persuasion is.   Hopefully, more of us, simply will become more thoughtful and informed believers.  And that’s a very good thing!

"The Trinity is a Christian doctrine, stating that God exists as three persons, or in the Greek hypostases, but is one being. The persons are understood to exist as God the Father, God the Son (incarnate as Jesus Christ), and God the Holy Spirit. Since the beginning of the third century the doctrine of the Trinity has been stated as "that the one God exists in three Persons and one substance, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit"."

Let’s think about this question….

I will leave at 11:30 for the Ministerial Alliance meeting at Windsor Place.  This afternoon, Cyndi will be coming to vacuum my apartment. That will be good since I have organized some things this week and also  dusted and cleaned the bare floors. 

I have watched the news the past two days and am interested to reading Bob Woodward's new book coming out on Tuesday. I have ordered it from Amazon.  It's called "Fear: Trump in The White House". Bob Woodward was one of two reporters who helped bring down the Nixon administration. He is a very thorough and careful reporter who always has documentation for anything he writes.  

It should be an interesting read.  

More later... 

I attended the ministerial alliance meeting, did the minutes and treasurer  reports, got a bank deposit made and generally read the rest of the afternoon. I am still working on the Hemingway book, "A Farewell to Arms" for the book  discussion at the library. 

Cyndi came and did my vacuuming. She does such a good job!

Later in the evening I took my bath and put my PJs on and watched Amazon Prime TV with Missy.  At shortly after 9:00. we went on to bed.