Alright, I confess. I listen to talk radio. I know, you'd think I'd have all my presets tuned in to Christian stations, both music and teaching, but alas, no. I tend to prefer listening to sincerely wrong lovable pagans who are struggling to reconcile worldviews with world events, rather than listen to Christians pontificating in ways that suggest they have it all figured out.Oh, ya, Jesus followers have a lot figured out, but no one knows it all and no one is an expert on everything from finance to child rearing to theology and the rest. So to think that I would listen to a Christian because they are a Christian, over another well-informed individual who speaks truth . . . . . nope.
And have you heard some of the garbled nonsense coming out of the mouths of those who say they follow Jesus? How many Jesuses are there cause it's really quite confusing!
We've got eejits who have numerical codes that figure everything out for you. Others live in compounds and are the ONLY guardians of the truth. Others know exactly when and where Jesus is coming back and what will definitely happen then and . . . oh, it's really quite exhausting.
Here is Simon Barrow on "these patchworks of de-historicized scriptural passages and half-baked, retrojective regarblings of current events which are lumped together by prophecy pundits."
Endism is nigh, texts are tricky
Christian faith is inescapably rooted in biblical tradition. But the Bible isn't a series of knock-down propositions. It is a set of living, dynamic, troubling, inspiring and disturbing accounts of the ways of a mysterious God among wayward people across the centuries. For Christians its interpretative core is the Gospels. They are, by their nature, diverse rather than singular. They speak of a God of unutterable grace who, in Jesus, turns upside-down every expectation of the conventionally religious.
In Christ nothing we thought we knew about God, the world or ourselves remains untransformed. But, as the New Testament records demonstrate, and as the communities that have been formed from it show, Christians have continued to disagree about the precise nature and impact of what God has declared in Christ. To be 'biblical people' involves recognising ourselves as part of this vital argument. And to recognise it as an argument rather than a war or a foregone conclusion.
In other words, to read the Bible is most definitely not about engaging in some sort of divination. It is, rather, to be invited into an unending process of exploration, guided by a conviction that in the fabric of the world (and in the flesh of a person) there is unquenchable life overcoming death-dealing, and enduring love overcoming fearful hatred. The fidelity of the process is therefore reflected in its fruits. Good textual interpretation issues in characterful lives and moral responsibility.
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