Jonathan I agree with you on your first point, and that from that you can draw broad themes about the nature of God, what I found a sense of discord with was the use of tolerance as a constant nature of God.
Having read the bible from front cover to back on more occasions than I can remember, having lost track after about 7, I find that I see God and his kingdom in broader terms, as in what is God's intent for having a relationship with us, and I find that in the light of the old testiment (OT) Paul's letters are not 'books of law' to be learnt by rote, as in they are not 'do this this and this and you will enter into a relationship with God' but are guidelines 'because of your relationship with God you will live out your lives in this way'. The God that I have begun to get to know is not a God which I would describe as tolerant, the OT show's time and time again how God doesn't tolerate the actions of the Isrealites when they turn away from being in relationship with him. Jesus himself while loving many sinners, is shown in the Gospel's to be very intolerant of sin and the actions of sinners, for instance the number of times he berated the religious establishment for their hipocrasy, the clearing out of the Outer Courtyard of the temple, even in part his call upon the disciples was to leave your former life and follow me, he didn't even tolerate people who wanted to follow him but only after they had sorted out their lives first. You could argue that because of Grace God is tolerant, but I think that even Grace is an indicator of how much God does not tolerate any actions that separate us from a relationship with him. I'm thinking that the Grace of God, that is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ as a means of being able to re-enter into relationship with God, show's that while God loves us, wants to be in relationship with us and provide us with blessings beyond our understanding, he can not or will not tolerate any actions that are not in character with such a relationship. If God was a tolerant God, why would Jesus need to have been sacrificed? Surely God would have been able to tolerate our sin and enter into relationship with us anyway. This train of thought then got me thinking that maybe there is an even bigger question behind your question about how we use the bible, a question of how do we see God? Because certainly how I use the bible comes out of how I see God, and certainly to fall back into a reductionist framework, how I see God is influenced by my experience not only of God but of life, and also how I think, how my brain works. A good example of how we think affects how we see God & the Bible, is a very lengthy discussion I once had with a very good friend of mine. To help I need to set up some stereotypes, you see, I am an architect, and I have grown up in the UCA, my friend is an engineer, ex Army officer and a committed baptist. Therefore the stereotypes are that my friend see's things in black and white, there is either a right or wrong answer to everything. Whereas I see a world of grey, there is may be a right or wrong answer but have I looked far enough outside the box to be able answer the question definatively? Anyway we had this dicussion about the Creation story, I believe that it could of happened in 7 literal days, but maybe it didn't what's to say that it wasn't 7 periods of time over the life of the planet as science describes? To me the important central theme of the Creation story is not how God created the earth but the fact that he did, that God was creator of everything on this planet. My friend believes the Creation story was 7 literal days, that science is wrong, and felt that to believe anything else was to call into question and endanger the infallability of the Bible. So the way we think, or peceive things can colour the way we use the Bible and potentially how we percieve God. I've just brainstormed this so please accept this as just some ramblings of a guy trying to the best he can to be a follower of God. Andrew Swenson -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jonathan Arthur Sent: Tuesday, 3 August 2004 11:28 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Using the bible was RE: theage.com.au ~ GAY ministers still up for debate Hello Greg and others, Darren has suggested we stop the debate on sexuality. My point is about the use of the bible (and Lindsay has raised another good point about how we regard the church). If we are to continue, I'd like to divorce the topics of the bible and the church from the issue of sexuality. As I have said many times already, I think we need to address these issues first and then come back to the sexuality issue. So, with a change of subject line, onto Greg's query addressing the issue generally... "Greg Crawford" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >If you could give an example of how you use the Bible to arrive at your >views it might help to advance the discussion. Then it might be >possible to compare approaches to see if the approaches are indeed >different. At the moment I suspect that subjectivity plays a big role; >a bigger role than the actual approach to the Bible. First, I think the bible is a tool for use in gaining understanding about how to live in response to God, not an end in itself. The value the bible is that it gives us insight into how Christian and Jewish people before us understood God. Like any other statement concerning the nature of God it is at best limited, sometimes faulty, and occasionally completely wrong. So I use the bible alongside many other tools for understanding God: my own experience, the experiences of others, prayer, meditation, worship, caring for people, etc. Second, leading on from the first, while I think we have come to understand that some specific teachings of the bible represent an understanding of God we have now developed and moved on from, I find the broad themes about the nature of God in the bible tend to be constant throughout the bible, the history of the church, and the current experiences of myself and other Christians. Things like love, justice, tolerance, compassion, grace are all constant. So in using the bible to understand a particular issue, I am primarily concerned to see which point of view fits best with these broad themes. Hope that helps. Jonathan __________________________________________________________________ Switch to Netscape Internet Service. As low as $9.95 a month -- Sign up today at http://isp.netscape.com/register Netscape. Just the Net You Need. New! Netscape Toolbar for Internet Explorer Search from anywhere on the Web and block those annoying pop-ups. 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