All posts tagged God’s word

Lesson 45: God’s Word is Spoken

by Scott Noon on October 29, 2011 in Doctrine with No comments

Last week I suggested the Bible presents Christianity as an ongoing two- way conversation between God and his people.

Lupe responded with an email that covered very well what I intended to say this week. I suggest you read her observations in the comment I added to last week’s post. She acknowledged the power of words and Word, showing how basic they are in expressing and sharing ourselves. I think they also have a creative power in shaping the minds of the listener and speaker.

She also provided a transition to what I wanted to say next. “Today’s challenge…is how to have “real” conversations, meaningful exchanges, in the global internetized Babel. Not in spite of it -as you and I would probably never have conversed in a different time- but in and with it.”

Scholars speak of three stages in language’s development: oral, textual, and electronic. Christianity has always given priority to the oral or spoken word. We believe face-to-face conversation is more dynamics in not only transmitting information but also changing people. When we proclaim, “In name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit I forgive your sins” or “The Lord God bless you and keep you” or “The Body of Christ, given for you” or “God loves you” or for that matter “I love you” or “I forgive you” my words change our lives forever. In a sense, every Word of God leads to repentance. Remember it originally meant “changing our minds”.

The second stage, epitomized by the printing press, led many to equate God’s Word with the Bible. In fact, a recent paraphrase was entitled The Living Word, a rather strange title for a fixed text. Christians thought their role was to find the one and only true meaning of a biblical passage. God’s Word was unchanging. This led some to a fundamentalism that regards the words in the Bible as literally spoken by God. Gone is the idea of the Bible as a record of how God spoke in the past that serves as a standard for judging how he speaks in the present.

Now the electronic third stage, as Lupe observed, presents a new challenge: how do we speak God’s Word on the Internet. Like face-to-face conversation the electronic is always changing. We write, update, erase, and improve. All is fluid and open to creativity.

However, cognitive scientists report the proliferation of information bombarding us has overcrowded and even physically changed some parts of our brain, making it difficult to think deeply. We have an excess of information but a scarcity of wisdom. “Facebook talk” is very self-centered, filled with what the writer is doing, thinking, and feeling. As Norma reminds us, it seems to have led to the dilemma of people interpreting the same biblical passage radically different. “Celebrity speak” can go on and on but leave us asking, “What was that really all about?” But perhaps the worse limitation is the loss of vulnerability. I can say “I love you” to someone on the other side of the world, but it does not have the commitment of the words spoken to someone standing physically before me.

Let’s see if we can help one another appreciate how this new electronic media, that is rapidly taking over our lives, can be used to speak God’s Word.

Lesson 39: How Do We Determine God’s Word – Community 1

by Scott Noon on October 29, 2011 in Doctrine with No comments

Finding myself on vacation, I plan to be more anecdotal in the next couple weeks. Well, perhaps it has to do with more than my vacation. I think we have come to where we truly live our lives. That means speaking of experience more than theology.

When I want to check whether an inspiration is really God’s Word, I begin by asking my wife. It is not that she is infallible, but she shares my faith and knows our situation. If I am still not sure, I check with the rest of the family and my trusted friends. I might do that in casual conversation or more organized groups, such as Sunday School classes or theological seminars.

This is one way the community that Paul described as the Body of Christ helps me hear God’s Word. We so often use the term to describe one of the elements in the Communion meal that we forget it primarily refers to the people who gather to share that meal. Jesus speaks of this role played by the community when he promised to be present when two or three gather in his name.

The Church has usually agreed that the ultimate way we test an individual charisma is how it plays out in the Body of Christ. That does not mean the majority rules or that we need to form a consensus. God can certainly speak a special message to an individual.
It also does not mean the community operates without taking into consideration the other parts of the tradition, such as canon, creed, custom, ceremony, and clergy. However, in most cases if the community rejects the inspiration, it is suspect. Even Pope Benedict in a former life wrote that the individual conscience remains the ultimate standard.

Some warn this concept is dangerous, because it leads to “relativism” and “situational ethics”. They argue it enables secular society to determine God’s Word. In fact, some sophisticated theologians say Christianity should never claim to be relative. My response has always been what good is it if it does not relate to the people, time, and place of my real life.

One of those theologians recently published an article about how he has changed his mind. He wrote when looking back over many decades he finds his theological developments followed his life experiences. He then traced them by referring to national and world events. My wife, realist and sometimes cynic, laughed with a “told you so” She had always observed his work reflected his life experiences, no matter how much he claimed to be objective and even absolute. With another laugh she observed he still was not being totally honest with himself, because the experiences that marked his development had more to do with the events in the life of his daughter that of the nation.

That rings true for me. I find the Holy Spirit has often led me through my relationships to new insights that I identify with God’s Word. I am sure one reason I feel as I do about homosexuality is because so many of my dear friends have homosexual children. Come to think of it, this is exactly the way the Holy Spirit operated throughout the Acts of the Apostles in opening baptism to Gentiles and Europeans. It led in new directions by providing new experiences.

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