For several months now I have been wrestling with my understanding of the Bible as God's word. What does it mean to say that the Bible is the word of God? Is it the case that it is 100% accurate in all aspects? What about the 6 day creation in Genesis? What about Adam and Eve? What about Noah and the flood?
The reading had been doing had been taking my thought processes down what could be called a more and more Liberal Christian line. I'd read Karen Armstrong's "The Bible: A Biography", John Shelby Spongs' "Rescuing the Bible from Fudementalism: A Bishop Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture" and, most recently, Peter Enns "The Bible a Tells Me So". I'd also read books on Biblical archaeology. Reading all these books led me to the conclusion that the Bible, whilst still unique and Holy Spirit inspired, was really a collection of human responses to their experiences of God.
The trouble with this view of the Bible, as I thankfully very quickly realised, is that it really does mean we can pick and choose which bits we want to accept and which bits we don't like very much and can safely leave to one side. It gives us a pick n mix Bible that we can interpret as we like, because it is all about human experiences of God and who is to say that our personal understanding isn't as valid as somebody else's?
I was troubled and wondered if I was on a slippery slope that could eventually compromise or even destroy my Christian Faith! This came to a head after a FaceBook posting where I expressed concern at the criticism levelled at me by a congregation member after I referred to the "myth of Noah's Ark" and suggested that whilst there may have been a flood it certainly wasn't world wide. Most of my Christian friends said there was nothing wrong with what I'd said, but one friend, a Methodist Local Preacher who I greatly respect gently challenged me.
My friend suggested that I was indeed wrong! He wrote that when he'd gone through his conversion experience God had convinced him that the early chapters of Genesis are not myth, but actually a true account of the origins of the earth and that there really was a worldwide flood. This is a man whose intelligence and integrity I respect, whose preaching ministry is used by God and whose understanding of science is probably better than mine.
Was I wrong? Was I being deceived? Was I more interested in pleasing people and conforming to the beliefs of secular society than in pleasing God and faithfully teaching his word? I remembered reading in Billy Graham's autobiography that he had faced a similar dilemma; to believe absolutely in the truth of the Bible or to compromise with the latest scientific theories. Billy chose to believe in the Bible as the word if God!
Which way should I go? More than anything I wanted to be faithful to God, not worrying about what others thought or says to me, focussed only on serving my Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer! I prayed to God and asked that he would make things clear to me.
That night I had a dream. Frustratingly I can't remember the exact details of the dream, but through it God made it abundantly clear to me that the liberal and progressive Christian understandings of the Bible are indeed a slippery slope and that I should hold onto the truth that the Bible is indeed God's Holy Spirit inspired words to humankind.
Subsequent to that dream, which was only a few nights ago, I have done some more research into scientific theories like the Big Bang and naturalistic evolution and discovered that they are not based on firm facts and objective observation, but are, in fact, quite speculative and not particularly good science. A very helpful book in this endeavour has been "After Eden: a Understanding Creation, the Curse and the Cross" by Henry Morris III.
I have not, I emphasise, abandoned the rules of Bibilical interpretation I was taught during my Local Preacher training and my time as a Student Minister, but I have returned to the classic evangelical understanding of scripture as the word of God. Like Billy Graham I have decided that if there is conflict between scientists opinion and God's word then I will choose God's word!
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