On the Subject of Doctrinal and Instructional Books:

Alright, I finally made time to sit down and type this out.

I find no problem with doctrinal books and the sermons of men in their nature. I, in fact, find them to be rather helpful and insightful in many ways. I come in conflict with my conscience when men take and study these human works to the extent that it takes away from God's word. I even have seen some study exclusively the writings of others concerning God's Scriptures.
How can we in good faith do this and ignore the command to study for ourselves. The Bereans whom Paul minstered to were not just content to hear one of the greates evangelists of all time, one of the apostles of Christ; they took his teachings and then studied God's Words to really see what God's will for them was. All men will make errors and mistakes in their own interpretations. If we then take this flawed writing or sermon as our guide, we will, like all humans, make errors and misinterpret that teaching, so that now the flaw is multiplied to twice its original magnitude.

Think of a carpenter building a house. If he cut's trusses or supports for a roof. If he uses his pattern to cut piece1, then uses piece1 as the pattern for piece2, the flaws and misshapeness of the first piece will be multiplied in the second. But if he goes on to cut piece3 using piece2 as a pattern then that flaw will be even greater. After all the pieces for the roof ar cut in this manner, the caprenter may be short of supplies, and the pieces will not fit together proprely, and so with the body of Christ.

The Church cannot function when all the members are beleiveing and basing their beliefs on another person's flawed thinking. God's word has only one meaning, and the closer we are to that meaning, the better we will be able to live togteher without disagreements and the discord that comes from a disunified Church.

"All scripture is God breathed...." God spoke thesewords in our Bible, indirectly though they often are. This scripture is our only insight into the midn of the All Powerful, All Knowing God. We need to make sure that we are not deceived in any of it. We must study on our own, and tak lessons from the great theologians, who have studied more thant we, but we must always compare these teachings to the original scripture for accuracy.

Refutation of Doctrine: NOOMA 8

Sorry it has been 2 weeks since my last post, but I thought of this last Sunday and it has been a week in the processing.

Has anyone heard of NOOMA? It is a series of online videos done by Rob Bell ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Bell ), the pastor of a 25,000+ member shurch in Michigan. My youth pastor recently shoewed video number 8 in my sunday school class.

In the video number 8, Rob teaches on the appearance of Jesus, walking on water, on the Sea of Galilee. The focus of the message is on the sinking of Peter and why. Rob explains the process by which a young jewish boy grows up and becomes the disciple of the Rabbi. A young jewish boy must memorize, in his first years of training, the Torah, the first five books of our modern Bible. At the end of this first several years a normal boy would move on to a trade, but the best of the best would go on and study longer and memorize the rest of the scriptres and prophecies of the Jews. At the end of this next period of study, most of the young men would go out into trades and other areas, but the best of the best of the best would go after even more study to the Rabbi and request to become his disciple. The Rabbi would then decide if the man was worthy and learned enough to become his disciple and follow in his footsteps. If the Rabbi said no, the man would go out and study and train harder or find a trade, but the very best of all would be accepted as disciples of the Rabbi. This is an amazing process in itself, and I believe that it has its application in the realm of Christ selected unlearned fishermen as His Disciples. Rob takes this a step further however. He states in this video that Peter sank in the water on the sea, not because he neglected to trust in Christ's power, but that he failed to trust in himself. That is where I find the enormous mistake in his theology. Rob ends the video with a very clear statement. "God believes in you, so you chould too" (very roughly paraphrased but I put quotes in case I got it right)

My response: This is all nonsense and Christain "self help". Understand, please, that this is not a rant, I have thought about this for one week and organized my thoughts as clearly as I can and any lack of clarity is my inability to express thoughts and emotion that are very clear in my own mind.

To say that we need to trust in ourselves, and that God believes in us is not only false but it is extremely demeaning of God's character and power. God's greatest power is displayed thorugh His ablility to use worthless and unskilled people in His service and for His glory. If God used only the skilled, the rich, and the successful then we are saying only that God "knows how to pick 'em good". We are nothing without God's power in our lives.

James 1:17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

This verse clearly states that no skill or ability that any human has comes from anywhere except God. We cannot claim to be sufficient. Any belief that we are insufficient to attain or own salvation or maintain our state of existence is totally correct. If Peter doubted himself and his own worthiness and ability to accomplish the impossible and follow in Jesus' steps on the water, how can he have been at fault? He doubted Christ's ability to work through his human, physical body and accomplish a miracle. Peter saw hi own unworthieness and lack of education, yes; but he failed to see that God can accomplish salvation and miracles anyway, despite our own failings. Peter did not have the education necessary to become the follower and disciple of a Rabbi, but Jese was able to work around that and was further Glorified because of the ineptitude of His servant.

Despite our failings and short comings God's ability and power will always shine through and will be made greater because of the crude tools he had to work with. God doesn't just know how to pick good servants, he can make good ones out of poor ones.