Ok, I have to fess up. I went and read a book Pastor doesn't approve of. The reason I know he doesn't approve of it is that he mentioned it specifically from the pulpit. He said we had to beware of it because it was teaching dangerous lies.
So what was this horrible book that he named by name? Was it Richard Dawkin's "The God Delusion?" Nope. Was it "The Atheist's Guide to Reality" by Alex Rosenberg? Nope. Wrong again. Was it--gasp--"Godless" by former evangelist Dan Barker? Darwin's "Origin of Species"?
No--it was "Love Wins" by Rob Bell. Now Mr. Bell is pastor of a church near Grand Rapids, Michigan, and he has been upsetting the evangelical world because he quite frankly does not believe in eternal damnation. Hell, to him, is more like the Catholic purgatory (though he doesn't use that term). Pastor Bell also does not believe that only those who have asked Jesus to become their personal savior (a term nowhere to be found in the Bible) will be saved. Heresy!
So I read Pastor Bell's heretical book, and I found myself agreeing with much of what he said. Pastor's right, the man's dangerous. His version of Christianity is much more to my liking than the version Pastor preaches, sorry, Pastor, but that's the way it is. He asks much the same questions as I do.
But Pastor says he is wrong. And I want to know, how do you know that? Both men are quoting from the Bible. Each says the other is wrong. They don't stop to think that both could be wrong. It reminds me of the old sandbox argument I had with my brother about what Fairyland was like. We were both convinced that our description of Fairyland was the only true one and the other was simply, horrendously mistaken. I still remember that argument. And in the middle of that argument a horrible thought--it had to be from Satan--popped into my head: "Is this what grownups do when they argue about religion?" Because in essence you are arguing about Fairyland when you argue about Heaven or Hell. There's no yardstick, no way of measuring, no way of verifying. Just words in an ancient book. And we don't even know if those words are reliable. I remember being told by a Muslim friend who was trying to prove the superiority of the Qu'ranic revelation, that the Gospels had been changed. I did not believe her--until I started digging into the history of the New Testament and found that things weren't quite what the nuns had said they were. Take for example, John Chapter 8, the woman taken in adultery. Most Bibles nowadays will have a footnote that that particular story "is not found in the earliest and most reliable manuscripts." Say what? What is going on here? My friend was right--the Gospels have been tampered with!
Which is why I think that basing your belief on the Bible alone is basing your belief on a house of cards. Ironically Jesus himself said that the smart builder builds on rock and the foolish one builds on sand. The more I dig into New Testament history the more sand I uncover. Maybe eventually I will get to bedrock. But I don't know.
So what was this horrible book that he named by name? Was it Richard Dawkin's "The God Delusion?" Nope. Was it "The Atheist's Guide to Reality" by Alex Rosenberg? Nope. Wrong again. Was it--gasp--"Godless" by former evangelist Dan Barker? Darwin's "Origin of Species"?
No--it was "Love Wins" by Rob Bell. Now Mr. Bell is pastor of a church near Grand Rapids, Michigan, and he has been upsetting the evangelical world because he quite frankly does not believe in eternal damnation. Hell, to him, is more like the Catholic purgatory (though he doesn't use that term). Pastor Bell also does not believe that only those who have asked Jesus to become their personal savior (a term nowhere to be found in the Bible) will be saved. Heresy!
So I read Pastor Bell's heretical book, and I found myself agreeing with much of what he said. Pastor's right, the man's dangerous. His version of Christianity is much more to my liking than the version Pastor preaches, sorry, Pastor, but that's the way it is. He asks much the same questions as I do.
But Pastor says he is wrong. And I want to know, how do you know that? Both men are quoting from the Bible. Each says the other is wrong. They don't stop to think that both could be wrong. It reminds me of the old sandbox argument I had with my brother about what Fairyland was like. We were both convinced that our description of Fairyland was the only true one and the other was simply, horrendously mistaken. I still remember that argument. And in the middle of that argument a horrible thought--it had to be from Satan--popped into my head: "Is this what grownups do when they argue about religion?" Because in essence you are arguing about Fairyland when you argue about Heaven or Hell. There's no yardstick, no way of measuring, no way of verifying. Just words in an ancient book. And we don't even know if those words are reliable. I remember being told by a Muslim friend who was trying to prove the superiority of the Qu'ranic revelation, that the Gospels had been changed. I did not believe her--until I started digging into the history of the New Testament and found that things weren't quite what the nuns had said they were. Take for example, John Chapter 8, the woman taken in adultery. Most Bibles nowadays will have a footnote that that particular story "is not found in the earliest and most reliable manuscripts." Say what? What is going on here? My friend was right--the Gospels have been tampered with!
Which is why I think that basing your belief on the Bible alone is basing your belief on a house of cards. Ironically Jesus himself said that the smart builder builds on rock and the foolish one builds on sand. The more I dig into New Testament history the more sand I uncover. Maybe eventually I will get to bedrock. But I don't know.
