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The Skeptical Passionate Christian
One of my summer reads was Michael Duffy's The Skeptical Passionate Christian. I appreciated his emphasis on passion; we need it. Yet passion, in our time, has unfortunately led us to 'certainty'.
Closing our minds to others. Thus, the need for a healthy dose of skepticism, not taking ourselves too seriously, being always open to the Holy Spirit.
One of the areas of healthy skepticism is Scripture. Too many people KNOW what Scripture says and their opinion is inerrant and infallible. He quotes Duke University theologian Stanley Hauer, (Unleashing the Scriptures) who writes that the Bible should be taken "out of the hands of individuals in North America." While drastic, too many Christians use the Bible as a club to bludgeon their victims. Writes Duffy, "We should be reluctant to pick up the Bible, read a sentence or passage, and simply assume that we understand its meaning.... The Bible contains multiple voices, not just one. God did not write each word of it; it is not straightforwardly the words of God, though it may be taken, appropriately and metaphorically, as the Word of God."
I'll leave it to you to unpack that one!
In faith, 
Pastor Tim |
