A Fresh Perspective - 09/26/08
There are some Christians, on the far right of the pendulum, who believe that God authored the Bible. Human beings simply recorded what God wanted written. In this group one might hear something like: "If it's in the Bible, then God said it and that settles it." The Bible is as perfect as God is perfect. That kind of faith must ignore or simply deny what's really in the Bible, and it is selective in what it chooses to actually practice.
There are some Christians, on the far left of the pendulum, who believe that the Bible is a collection of human projections about the Divine. They do not believe that God is actively engaged in our world. They take a position much like the classical Deists: God set in motion the evolutionary process and then stepped out of the way. God is distant and not personally available. In fact, a number of these Christians would conceive of God more as a Divine Force in the universe than as a personal being.
My faith rests in between these two extremes. The Bible is a human product, but the diverse literature it contains was inspired by authentic experiences and redemptive encounters with the Divine. So while it is human literature, it is sacred literature. And though the Bible raises more questions than it answers, it reflects the faith of people who actually had a relationship with God.
The first Christians, who saw in Jesus the face of God, believed that God raised Jesus from the dead, and that the Spirit of Christ was with them when they gathered in his name. The Spirit, they believed, was dynamically present in their faith community (their church) revealing and expressing Christ's will for the church. Through the influence of the Spirit of Christ they felt free to adapt, shape, and change the oral Jesus traditions that had been passed down to them. This is why we have so many differences and some contradictions in parallel Gospel accounts.
Obviously the different Christian communities didn't all hear the same things. Hearing the voice of the living Christ is a subjective experience. They heard both similar and different messages. But they were all convinced that Christ was still speaking to them as they collected, interpreted, fashioned, and shaped the Gospel stories into theological narratives that expressed their faith.
I, too, am convinced that the Spirit of the living Christ is still speaking and expressing God's will in communities of faith that gather in his name. It's not an infallible process and it doesn't yield a perfect result. The human ego with its propensity to mute and distort the voice of the living Christ is the receptacle. So it's easy to mishear and get it wrong. But the Compassionate Christ never abandons us and is always inviting us to join his cause (the kingdom of God) in the world.
If you are interested in learning more about this kind of Christianity I will be glad to talk with you. My email is listed below or you can stop by our church office.