The Difference Between Reading the Bible and Meditating on God’s Word

There always has to be a good reason to read the Bible. Even

“simply wanting to know what all the hoopla was about and why people were so hyped up on it”

could already be a good reason to start reading the Bible. From that point of view, it could give some good idea of what others are saying, what would or would not be in Scripture.

Best is to read the Bible to study it and to gain more knowledge of what is written inside it. Then it will give also a good idea of what others, like clergy, are insinuating what would be standing there in those 66 books of the Book of books, the Bible, and coming to see what is really written in it.

When

“in no way shape or form, did reading the Bible had anything to do with God.”

then it would be a very difficult start, already closing some gates to receiving knowledge or to coming into conversation with God. Reading the Bible is namely like being present by someone, listening to what He has to say. Reading the Bible also gives an opportunity to come into conversation with the Divine Creator of heaven and earth, the God of gods. When starting to read what He has to say, there has to be a willingness to listen to Him.

For sure, several people coming to read the Bible,

“some of their reasons aren’t particularly holy.”

Several people want to find reasons and words to attack those lovers of God, who find those words in the Bible sacred.

Sometimes, as the article writer mentions, coming to read the Bible is

“done out of curiosity”

as her friends in school did for religious studies

“and other times it’s for understanding the religion better.”

And that is a very good reason, more people should consider why reading that book is as important as reading other basic scriptures of certain religious groups.

All people should learn about the different religions and have to go through their basic scriptures. When the reason to read the Bible is to debunk the Bible, like some atheists and other (religious) people do they would often be surprised where they end up. More than once, an atheist or even a Christian or other religious person came to see the truth and came to look for a church that is living according to those Words of God.
That

“they use part of the bible to show why other Christian religions are wrong”

is not such a bad idea, when they do it with the right intention and lovingly, to bring people closer to the One and Only Real God, the God of Israel, the Elohim Hashem Jehovah, Who is One and not two or three.

Too often, people who call themselves Christian, do not dare to open their ears fully to those words of God, but prefer to be chained to the doctrinal teachings of their church, be it a Catholic or Trinitarian Protestant Church, instead of trying to read and understand the words like they are written black on white.

When there is a willingness to listen carefully to God’s Word as presented in the Bible, the reader shall be surprised how a whole new world might open up before him or her. But then it becomes most important also to accept those Words from God and to act to the received new insight. And that last bit is one of the very difficult parts when one has lived for several years in a certain Christian denomination. Often it is easier for an atheist to become a true Christian than for a Christian to become a real follower and believer in the son of God, Jeshua or Jesus Christ. Most people coming from a certain denomination have difficulties changing their lives and changing church, after they discovered that there are differences in the teachings of their familiar church and the contents of the Bible.

The difficulty for reading the Bible is that it has to be done with an open mind geared toward spiritual growth and with a willingness to change.
The writer of this article still has to go a long way, because she writes

“After all, the time He walked the earth stone was the paper of choice”

giving an indication that she still considers Jesus to be God instead of him being the son of God. God never walked this earth. God is an eternal Spirit Being (meaning having no beginning or birth and no end = no death) no man can see. Clearly, the writer of this article is still confusing and mixing two different Biblical characters. This comes perhaps because she is so clinched or stuck by her Catholic upbringing, where they worship a Trinity and other gods and saints.

We can only hope that those who read the Bible also one moment come to listen more carefully to the Words of God and start meditating on them as well, giving a two-way communication platform to the Author of the Book of books, so that more insight and wisdom will come to them.

The writer of this article (Marita) ends very nicely but also hits the nail when she writes

“Basically, meditating on God’s word is supposed to bring about change. Change in you and the world around you.”

And changing direction and adapting their belief unto what is really written in the Scriptures is one of the most difficult tasks for people who grew up in a Christian church tradition and who have come to read the Bible more thoroughly.
And the Bible deserves a thorough reading and study to be moulded by God and filled with biblical clarity rather than church indoctrination.

 

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Preceding

People Seeking for God 1 Looking for answers

People Seeking for God 2 Human interpretations

God of gods

The Almighty Lord God of gods King above all gods

Is reading the Bible necessary?

Being in tune with God

How Social Media is Shrinking the Bible

Ways to Approach Difficult Bible Passages

Followers, protestors and reformers

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Additional reading

1. Bible
2. Unread bestseller
3. What Is: The Bible as Originally Written
4. Bible Word from God
5. Word of God
6. Bible Inspired Word of God
7. Today’s thought “Word of the Only One God – To be read and listened at” (November 21)
8. Bible Word of God inspired and infallible
9. Moshe Rabbenu and Torat Moshe
10. Bible in the first place #2/3
11. Appointed to be read (Our World) = Appointed to be read (Some View on the World)
12. Best to read and study the Bible
13. Not studying an abstract and arcane text of the ancient world
14. Best intimate relation to look for
15. No other god besides Jehovah who gives all explanation
16. Main verses in the Bible telling us Who God is #8 Some more attributes of God
17. Today’s thought “Jehovah God makes us dwell in safety and confident trust” (January 02)
18. Fill your hands with the Lord’s work
19. A living Word giving confidence
20. Praying and acts of meditation without ceasing
21. Trusting, Faith, calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #3 Voice of God #6 Words to feed and communicate
22. Pray that we will make the time to listen: listen to God and listen to each other
23. Today’s thought “On the eternity of God” (December 17)
24. Today’s thought “Ability to circumcise your heart” (May 13)
25. Conversations that Matter
26. Necessity of a revelation of creation 10 Instructions for insight and wisdom
27. Necessity of a revelation of creation 12 Words assembled for wisdom and instruction
28. Fear of God reason to return to Holy Scriptures
29. From nothingness to a growing group of followers of Jeshua 3 Korban for God or gods
30. Making time for God is crucial
31. 500 years of a provision of the Word in the language of the peoples
32. A special anniversary for the Church where Catholics and Protestants find common ground
33. Accuracy, Word-for-Word Translation Preferred by most Bible Readers
34. A Bible Falling Apart Belongs to Someone who isn’t

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Related

1. Are you making time or making excuses?
2. Practical Christianity: Give Your Time
3. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom
4. Seeking God’s manna
5. The Book
6. Our Amazing Bible
7. The Original Biblical Writings
8. Scriptures
9. Purpose of Scripture
10. God breathed
11. Bible Reading Discovery
12. Conversation between God and Me
13. How to Begin Conversations with God
14. Conversations with God part 2
15. Talkative God
16. Confirms the Word
17. The Word, Faith, and Testing
18. The Word – Good News and Bad News
19. Believing God
20. A way to look for Christ, the Bible, Word of God
21. Light Unto My Feet
22. Practical Christianity: Don’t Be A Jerk
23. When My Mental Health is Suffering
24. Bad News and Good News
25. How Do I Read the Bible?
26. How to Interpret Scripture
27. Book: How (Not) to Read the Bible
28. Read the Bible in a Year
29. The Bible Tells Me SoFall in Love With Reading the Bible: 10 Tips to Keep You Motivated & Passionate
30. The Not-So-Quiet Time

Seeking Redemption

To those now deep into biblical scripture you are probably aware of the difference between reading the bible and meditating on the world. Naturally, like many young Christians, I had assumed that once you read the bible, and you knew God’s words and it was enough. But I kept hearing about ‘meditating on the word’ and never understood what it meant. Until over a decade later when I began meditating on God’s word.

“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and, training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work,” 2 Timothy 3:16-17

2 Timothy 3:16-17

Reading the Bible

I’ve read the bible twice, decades ago and still could quote a single lick of scripture. I read it just like I did with any storybook. Enough to know all the main characters and get a clear…

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A Word on Bible Versions

EttingerWriting.com

By David Ettinger

A Fruitful Discussion
I recently had a nice discussion with a blogging friend regarding the Bible version I use.

This fruitful dialogue led to this post, which won’t analyze the many English versions of the Bible, but serve merely as my commentary on the issue. This is one of those topics many Christians can wrap their brains around, so, by all means, let your voice be heard in the comments section!

Bible Fascination
After I gave my life to Christ in 1986, I went shopping for a Bible. Not having much money, I was limited. I knew nothing about the many Bible versions, so I purchased the least expensive. It turned out to be an original New International Version (NIV), and am I ever glad it was!

I tore through my new Bible in just 4 months, and then started all over again. At the time, I…

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A puzzling text from a prescientific age

 

“The Bible is indeed the greatest book ever written.
It has shaped the cultures of the world in countless ways, and it contains the words of everlasting life.
But for so many today, it is largely opaque, indecipherable – at best
a puzzling text from a prescientific age.”

Bishop Robert Barron, The Word on Fire Bible

Ways to Approach Difficult Bible Passages

A book for Christianity

To come to know God or come to know how to live best and how to find a good church, one is best to consult the Bestseller of all time, the Bible. When looking for a church it is not so important to search for Christianity or Christendom. Best is that one starts by reading the books which are the foundation or the cement of what has become the Church.

In Christianity it is all about having a relationship with God by the intermediary Jesus Christ. One first has to get to know the Divine Creator before one can go looking for His houses.

Bible texts, languages and translations

Bible texts are not always easy to follow or understand. Though it is one of the best guides for life, it requires attention from the reader and persistence and will to follow and understand.

When we want to read the Bible we have first of all to choose a translation and should remember that it is only one of the many translations that there exist. Do not worry too much about what translation you would like to buy. Go to a bookshop and read some paragraphs in different bible translations. When you find one which is in a language that suits you best, try that first. Later on, you always can come to read the literal translated and more accurate Bible translations, in case you had not chosen directly for a literal translation. Youngsters and beginners are often better off with a paraphrased Bible, though we would not recommend that. There are Bible Students all over the world who offer very good contemporary literal Bible translations in many easy to read languages. Do not go for those big Bible translations where there is more space given to the notes than to the Bible Words of God. A Bible with just cross-references is the best solution.

One Author is telling as it is

Taking up the Book of books, we should remember that though it is a compilation of several books written by different people, the author or principal to write down everything is only One Person, namely the Divine Creator of Heaven and Earth, the Elohim Hashem Jehovah.

Keeping that in mind, we should also remember that That Task Giver is a man of truth Who is not telling lies, and as such all what He says should be taken as one opinion which does not contradict.

“God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should repent. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfil it?” (Nu 23:19 RSV)

“Once for all I have sworn by my holiness; I will not lie to David.” (Ps 89:35 RSV)

“in hope of eternal life which God, who never lies, promised ages ago” (Tit 1:2 RSV)

Intended message

When reading the Bible we should always remember the basics of interpretation: looking for the Author’s intended message, reading it in context and with the whole of Scripture in view, even considering how believers throughout history have interpreted it. Hereby not forgetting that many human beings gave their idea about the text, but that those interpretations should be taken as such being ideas of fallible men and not always telling the truth or giving the right interpretation to a certain part of a text.

Construction for all to see and understand

We also should not believe those priests and pastors or other clergies that say it is not up to non-clergy to read and understand the Bible. The Bible is a God-given present for all people, not for a few exceptions or studied people. We always should give the Bible time to give us the necessary spiritual food, when we are ripe for it. We should consider the Bible as the tool of a Masterworker, the Architect, giving Him time to mould us and prepare us for building His righteous creature.  Look at the Bible like a huge building, where you can not see all the rooms at once. You need your time to investigate all the places. The instruction the word of God gives is like a building construction Engineer telling the other people involved in raising a building what should be done at every stage of the building, so the building can be done exactly as it was planned as the Architect wanted it.

When looking at construction plans, they are not always easy to read at first glance. The same with the Plan of God or with the bible. We should give it enough attention to see all the details and to understand why certain things are like they are designed.

We should also not avoid difficult ‘drawings’ or texts when we encounter such in our reading sessions.

When we come across a problematic passage, we might prefer to focus on the verses that are more accessible or understandable. But avoiding these texts doesn’t make them disappear. Eventually you or someone you love will want an explanation.

writes Elliot Clark in his article 6 Wrong Ways to Approach Difficult Bible Passages.

Requesting the Planner for more  information

We should remember also that when a passage is not clear to us, the best Person to ask about it is God Himself. Therefore, do not forget to pray about it and ask God for more insight.

Some Christians assume that Scripture’s perspicuity implies that its interpretation should be straightforward. But that is not always so. God has given us a brain, a mind, and we should use our brain to come to understand.

the Bible isn’t a pocket dictionary for faith and practice.

In his Word, God has spoken through complex narrative and poetic philosophy. He’s recorded commands complete with rationale, motivation, and explanation. He’s provided principles, then called us to thoughtful application and situational wisdom. That’s why he’s given us minds for thinking, pastors for teaching, a community for learning, and his Spirit for illuminating. These good gifts would be gratuitous if God’s words to us were always clear—which, by its own admission, simply isn’t the case (2 Pet. 3:16). { 6 Wrong Ways to Approach Difficult Bible Passages.}

When encountering a difficult passage, we, next to our prayer, could also speak about it with others around us and ask some church leaders for more information on that part of scripture.

Comparing

It is up to us to compare the explanation of those people with the sayings in other parts of the Bible. All texts in the Holy Scriptures must be in agreement and do not contradict each other. If there is any contradiction, it is due to a wrong assumption. In that case, one will have to become better informed and read the text according to its correct interpretation.

We should be wary of scientific diagnosis or endless speculation, especially if it’s absent of a warmed heart and any bedside manner that demonstrates genuine love for others — and ultimately for God.

“The aim of our charge,” Paul says, “is love” (1 Tim. 1:5). { 6 Wrong Ways to Approach Difficult Bible Passages.}

Judging

Some people want to look at the Bible for being able to judge God or to ‘attack’ believers. they want to undermine the faith of lovers of God, by twisting the words of the Bible, or to show others how the clergy is just doing the opposite of what is written in the Bible. They do forget that perhaps those clergy or not the right people for God and do not belong to a church that really is in line with God. We may not forget that the majority of churches in this world do have another God than the God of Jesus Christ and lots of them even use graven images of their god and other gods or saints.

E. Clark warns

We can easily study the Bible in such a way that we preside in judgment over it — as if we’re the ultimate arbiter of what is true and right and good.

Instead, we must allow God to sit in judgment over us through sacred Scripture. His Word is what discerns the thoughts and attitudes of our hearts (Heb. 4:12), exposing our sin alongside his provision of salvation. When we confront difficult texts, therefore, we must be careful not to cross-examine the witness of God. We are ultimately the ones in need of scrutiny, not the other way around. { 6 Wrong Ways to Approach Difficult Bible Passages.}

It is not for us or anyone else to judge the ways of God. Instead of looking at Him with judgment, we should try to understand why God works in any way.

Reaching for quality

It does not matter how fast you go through reading the whole Bible. The best is to give it some time each day. Each day reading a chapter for example. Either by going from the first until the last book, chapter after chapter, or by choosing some book of interest and going from there, not reading the whole Bible in the order of the books.

When reading a book, do not forget to take time to think about what you have read. Ask yourself what it was about, what the message is, and what you can learn from it.

In case you come up against difficult verses, do not worry to read them over and over again. Chew on them. do not mind reading them again the next day. Try it again the next day, reading the whole paragraph now, and wonder about the verse in context. In case there are cross-references, go and have a look at those verses, and see what is written there.

Tuning in

When taking the time for yourself and the Bible, make sure there is nothing to distract you. ‘Tune in’ to that one channel of God, listening in yourself to what you are reading in that Book of books. Do not let social media messages interrupt your reading. Put your phone aside for some time … the reading time … for listening to the Speaker God. It is with Him that you are in conversation when you are reading the Bible. It is Him that you should then give your time … Listening to Him.

When there is enough willingness to listen to the Words of God, they shall come over properly and not like a badly tuned radio, with crackling and distorted sounds.

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Preceding

Is reading the Bible necessary?

How Social Media is Shrinking the Bible

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Additional reading

1. Unread bestseller
2. Bible
3. Bible Word from God
4. Word of God
5. Bible Inspired Word of God
6. Today’s thought “Word of the Only One God – To be read and listened at” (November 21)
7. Bible Word of God inspired and infallible
8. Appointed to be read (Our World) = Appointed to be read (Some View on the World)
9. Best to read and study the Bible
10. The Metaphorical language of the Bible (Our World) = The Metaphorical language of the Bible (Some View on the World)
11. The truth is very plain to see and God can be clearly seen (Our World) = The truth is very plain to see and God can be clearly seen (Some View on the World)
12. No other god besides Jehovah who gives all explanation
13. God’s Blog recorded in a Book
14. Creator and Blogger God 1 Emptiness and mouvement
15. Creator and Blogger God 10 A Blog of a Book 4 Listening to the Blogger
16. Creator and Blogger God 11 Old and New Blog 1 Aimed at one man
17. the Bible – God’s guide for life #7 Case example – King Josiah #2 Lessons from Josiah’s experience
18. Written for our instruction, that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope
19. Scripture alone Sola Scriptora
20. Absolute Basics to Reading the Bible
21. Do Christians need to read the Old Testament
22. The importance of Reading the Scriptures
23. Challenging claim 4 Inspired by God 3 Self-consistent Word of God
24. Finding and Understanding Words and Meanings
25. A question to be posed
26. Bible Reading: is it worthwhile?
27. Bible in the first place #1/3
28. Bible in the first place #2/3
29. Bible in the first place #3/3
30. The Word itself should be enough reason to believe
31. A vital question for believers
32. Making time for God is crucial
33. When found the necessary books to read and how to read them
34. Necessity of a revelation of creation 9 Searching the Scriptures
35. Necessity of a revelation of creation 10 Instructions for insight and wisdom
36. How to Read the Bible
37. How to Read the Bible (sequel 1)
38. How to Read the Bible (sequel 2)
39. How to Read the Bible (sequel 3)
40. How to Read the Bible (sequel 4)
41. How to Read the Bible (sequel 5)
42. How to Read the Bible (sequel 6) an after thought
43. Thinking about the happiness by the Torah reading
44. When reading your Bible be aware of changing language
45. Reading to grow and to become wise concerning the most important thing in life 1 Times of reading
46. Reading to grow and to become wise concerning the most important thing in life 3 Light and wisdom in words
47. Reading to grow and to become wise concerning the most important thing in life 4 Words giving us wisdom and encouragement
48. Literalist and non-literalist views
49. Missional hermeneutics 1/5
50. Missional hermeneutics 2/5
51. Missional hermeneutics 3/5
52. Missional hermeneutics 4/5
53. Missional hermeneutics 5/5
54. We should use the Bible every day
55. Feed Your Faith Daily
56. 2 Easy Ways You Can Fit Daily Bible Time into Your Busy Life
57. 3 Keys to Reading the Bible with a Fresh Perspective
58. Bric-a-brac of the Bible
59. The manager and Word of God (Our World) = The manager and Word of God (Some View on the World)
60. If the Bible tells us not to lean upon our own understanding, are preachers, and Bible professors, leaning upon the theirs’?
61. A special anniversary for the Church where Catholics and Protestants find common ground
62. 500 years of a provision of the Word in the language of the peoples
63. Accuracy, Word-for-Word Translation Preferred by most Bible Readers (Our World) = Accuracy, Word-for-Word Translation Preferred by most Bible Readers (Some View on the World)
64. A living Word giving confidence (Our World) = A living Word giving confidence (Some View on the World)
65. Youth has difficulty Bible Reading
66. Lenten Season and our minds and hearts the spiritual temple in which God seeks to live
67. Not able to make contact with God because to busy
68. Coming to the end of the year
69. Summer holiday time to knock and ask, and time to share
70. Christian in Christendom or in Christianity
71. Today’s thought “… his word abiding in you” (April 13)
72. Be an Encourager

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Related

1. Tips for new Christians
2. Seeking God’s manna
3. God’s Shaping Tools
4. The Book
5. Our Amazing Bible
6. A Word on Bible Versions
7. Our LifelineRead the whole of the Bible.How to Read the Bible
8. Reading God’s Word (A basic guide to Bible reading)
9. Video: How To Read the Bible
10. Making the Bible More Approachable
11. The Easiest Book in the Bible to Read
12. Passive vs. Active Reading of Scripture: How to ignite a passion for the Bible
13. 3 Transformational Ways to Read Scripture
14. The Difference Between Reading the Bible and Meditating on God’s Word
15. Reading the Bible in a Year
16. A Sermon: Reading the Bible Together
17. Book: Reading While Black
18. Book: How (Not) to Read the Bible
19. How Do I Read the Bible?
20. How to Interpret Scripture
21. Purpose of Scripture
22. Reading Scripture as non-Scripture
23. Reading Scripture as non-Scripture: Sola Scriptura and the Hermeneutics of Historical Artifact
24. Reading the Bible Properly: John Behr, Stanley Hauerwas, and the Historical-Critical Method
25. How to Read the Bible from a Universalist Perspective
26. Simple Bible Study Tips – Old Testament & New
27. The Importance Of Reading The Bible Daily
28. Listening to God; March 14, 2022
29. Digging in Deeper: Psalms 119:27
30. Don’t Read the Bible Through in One Year
31. How I Read the Bible Cover to Cover
32. Hang Onto Every Word
33. Reading the Bible aloud
34. Some Things I Learned Reading The Whole Bible in 2020
35. 3 Reasons to Spend Time With God
36. Forgetting the Divine Word
37. Misinterpreting Scripture
38. The Danger of Error in the Church
39. We are what we read.
40. The Book That We Love: Uprooting & Planting
41. How can we help people to let Christ’s word dwell in them richly?

How to look at thoughts of philosophers and philosophical systems

In certain religious groups there are people who say one may not read philosophers their work.

Many philosophers their thought have influenced lots of people. We always should remember that their thoughts are best read in context. In the context of the lives that they lived, the times that they lived in, and the history of what came before and what happened after.

Many of the ideas of great thinkers of the past, so many centuries later might look dated to us. And our post-modern sensibilities make it easy for us to find fault, to criticize and to deconstruct these earlier works. Some even think that there is not much real value to be found in their works, whilst others think today some people give not enough interest to those ancient thinkers.

The real value for us is to hunt down the true genius that was driving the ideas. What was the inspiration, the spark that fuelled truly original thinking? We should wonder how they came to think about certain matters and how their thinking was   original or could bring something extra to that period of thinking or for later generations.

If they had not much to tell, I do not think we would still speak of them or would not be interested to read those ancient writings.

What did for example Ralph Waldo Emerson or William James bring that was new, that was passed on from them to the next generations? What made it that people were willing to listen to them or to give them so much attention? Or what did James offer that had not been thought of before and how has that affected the course of things since?

Jeff Carreira thinks

This is where the value is to be found. You won’t find answers to these questions through only reading the ideas, you have to know about culture and history and personality. {How Do You Read Philosophy?}

What we do have to question is

• what has this person to tell us
• in what kind of light is that person looking at things
• how are their thought fed by the trends in their time or what was the general thinking of their time
• in which way where such thinkers willing to listen to people of their time
• how were they willing to place their ideas in context with other ways of thinking
• what is are were the angles to look at things
• how could they cope with agreement or disagreement and what were their reactions on critique

Today we have to try to approach the ancient and the present philosophers from different sides.

According Jeff Carreira

Philosophy is generally seen to be comprised of three main components; Metaphysics, which tells you what is real; Epistemology which tells you how you know what is real; and Ethics which tells you what you should value.

To his understanding

a philosophical system is complete in the sense that it fulfills all of these functions. {Why do worldviews clash?}

His generalised idea of Christians is limited to Trinitarian Christians who believe in hell to be a place of torture, and the belief that man

will abide in one or the other after death based on the way you live and the state of some invisible part of you called a soul. {Why do worldviews clash?}

He writes

Epistemologically the way Christians know what is real is that God has told human beings what is real through the Bible, so what is true is what is written in the Bible. Christian Ethics revolve around things like charity, loving thy neighbor, duty to family, etc. In a closed system like this you can always ask questions from within the system. Question: Should I steal? Answer: No. Justification: Because the Bible dictates that you don’t. But when you start to ask questions from outside of the system such as: Does God exist? Things get more challenging. {Why do worldviews clash?}

He seems to forget many Christians wonder in their life if God exists. So to call it a non-christian question is in our eyes not exactly right or forgetting that all people question matters of life, what is behind it and what is in it.

He probably agrees that

a complete philosophical system – a worldview – dictates what is real, how you know what is real and what to value about what is real. Without those agreements there is only flimsy basis for discussion. {Why do worldviews clash?}

As such we not need as such the Bible to explain that there is a god or The God. Though the problem can be when one says or thinks:

If the question is inserted into the system from the outside, a Christian could answer by saying, ‘yes, God exists because the Bible says so.’ But that argument only works if someone shares the epistemological presupposition that the Bible is the source of truth. {Why do worldviews clash?}

A Christian shall consider the credibility of the Bible being it the infallible Word of God, but a real Christian shall also be able to point to the Divine Creator God and His possessions without having to need the Bible.

Carreira also seems to know only creationist or to classify Christians as creationists or people who would not believe in any form of evolution. He also calls his view modernist whilst the Hebrews already had his modernist view then. Perhaps he should come to know some present and ancient views of Bereshith or Genesis.

He writes:

So a complete philosophical system – a worldview – dictates what is real, how you know what is real and what to value about what is real. Without those agreements there is only flimsy basis for discussion.

If we think about the modernist worldview we have a different system. Metaphysically we have a universe that is composed of matter that has evolved to a complexity that gave rise to human beings and a mysterious property we call consciousness. Epistemologically we know what is true based on ‘logical positivism’ which means adhering to certain laws of logic applied to the evidence we gather through our senses. And the ethics of modernism revolves around the inherent goodness of progress. This is also a complete philosophical system.

It looks like he does think we Christians have no sense or “laws of logic” and that because we live by old “ethics of …..” wich would not be the same as his ethics of modernism even when he considers himself a post-modernists. Seemingly believing we as Christians can not have different views about matters, or would not have similar worldviews as certain philosophers.

He argues:

As postmodernists we recognize that there are different worldviews and we value that diversity. We also recognize that we can’t impose one worldview on another because they rest on different fundamental beliefs and each person has a right to believe as they wish as long as they don’t hurt one another.

We wonder where he gets it that Christians would not say that behaviourism is something that can be true.

The pragmatists were trying to find a way that takes us beyond the deadends of clashing worldviews when debating what is true. That is why they said that it was more useful to argue the truth of something by examining its effect. It isn’t that useful to debate, for instance, whether Behaviorism is true or not.

A Christian might say no because that is not the view that the Bible tells us. (This lets us wonder if he has ever read the Bible); A modernist might say yes because that is what the evidence proves. The question that is more useful to ask is what results from a belief in Behaviorism. Does it work? When does it work? Does it work in this instance and not in that? What results from materialism, what results from a belief in the soul, a belief in freewill, a belief in God? Everything can be examined based on Pragmatic grounds. {Why do worldviews clash?}

All the time man is bombarded in his mind with the question of what should he believe, or what is true or what is real. In his postings Carreira also argued that

if a philosophy dictates “what is real,” “how you determine what is real,” and “how you value what is real,” then it is a closed system. Internally it will be completely consistent, and as long as you “believe” in these three pillars everything (to lift a phrase from Carl) on the inside will look like non-fiction (ie. true) and everything on the outside will look like fiction (ie. not true.) {Test Drive a Worldview}

Carreira continues:

A worldview is not only a set of ideas or beliefs about the world; it is a complete psycho-emotional mental filter of the world. It is a 360 panoramic view of the real. Your worldview dictates how you think about the world, how you feel about the world and how you respond to the world. It envelops us so that the world from inside what worldview looks and feels completely different than the world seen from inside another. {Test Drive a Worldview}

We totally agree with his view that it is each individual his or her worldview which shall dictate how that person thinks and how he or she is going to react to certain matters.  How a person feels about the world and how he or she shall respond to the world depends firstly on the way that person looks at the world and secondly how that person his ethics and moral ideas are formed.

We do not need the the romantic poets, philosophers and scientists to see

a world of open and unlimited possibility in which strangely marvelous and unseen natural forces were guiding the movement of life. {Test Drive a Worldview}

Christians are aware of the many sometimes incomprehensible ways of nature. For him

These natural invisible movements were continuously revealing themselves and there was a sense of awe and wonder at the marvel of life and reality. {Test Drive a Worldview}

And that is just where we say is the Power of God. There, by the wonders of nature, man is able to come to see the invisible Hand of the Divine Creator.

Carreira has been thinking about how challenging philosophical discussion can be and he thinks that part of that difficulty comes about when we are not discussing ideas within a single worldview, but are actually clashing one worldview against another.

As I see it a worldview is a belief in a complete philosophical system. Discussing within a given philosophical system is easy, discussing across one system into another gets challenging. {The Trouble with Worldviews}

Is not that the nice challenging idea of our world where everyone may think freely?

William James believed that humanity had evolved beyond the point of absolute truth. We don’t know the absolute truth; we only know part of the truth and what that truth is, is always changing. For that reason truth had to be seen as evolving; utilized for as long as it worked in those circumstances in which it worked. He, along with his Pragmatist colleagues imagined a complete revisioning of all of philosophy based on Pragmatic grounds. {The Trouble with Worldviews}

How Social Media is Shrinking the Bible

The following short article from a “Christian” source recognizes and addresses a modern day problem associated with Bible engagement and technology.

Though technology has played a major role in the availability of the Word of God in ways unimaginable just a generation back, today an estimated 50% of Americans read their Bible digitally on computers, phones, and Bible apps. In addition, computer programs quickly and efficiently present the Bible in multiple translations, readily available for reading, copying, and saving with the click of a mouse; while essential tools which Bible students depend upon such as concordances, lexicons, commentaries, etc. are equally available on line.
Yet… what impact has technology had on Bible engagement in this digital age?

Studies conducted by the Barna Group and The American Bible Society show that there is a growing Bible literacy problem despite the technological advantages, concluding,

“today’s technology is doing as much, if not more, harm than good to overall Bible literacy.”

Scriptural sound bites and snippets necessarily reduce not only content, but also meaning and impact. There is simply no replacement for Bible study. When one repeatedly reads the Bible with the sincere desire to understand and embrace it, one becomes familiar with its themes, its teachings, and its contexts.
We are admonished to

“study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15).

– Editor of the Christadelphian Advocate

°°°

Harper-Collins-Bible-best-Bible-apps-for-Android – the Word of Promise telling: The NKJV Study Bible, Second Edition, is the most comprehensive study Bible available!

It turns out that electronic Bible providers are employing “a data-centric model” which regularly regurgitates those verses which are already the most tweeted or shared by their user communities. The result is basically a repeating loop of “verse of the day” Bible balm. This means those who get their Bible online will receive plenty of I can do all things through Christ… (Philippians 4:13), and, For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace…(Jeremiah 29:11), but not so much of the rest of the Bible. Apparently no one is intentionally choosing a wide selection of verses to more adequately convey the wider range of biblical teaching… The prognosis is not good… the less-than-hopeful question:

“Does this mean that we lose out on doctrinal or propositional input into our Bible reading online”?

And if we do put more than therapeutic Bible verses out there, will they all merely land on “deaf ears, blind eyes, and dead screens”?
The concern is appropriate.

Constantly engaging Bible verses that make me feel good is perilously close to turning the Bible into a prophet that tells me only what I want to hear. This is the kind of prophet the real prophets warned us about. But is simply adding more verses – propositional ones – to the playlist really the solution? Isn’t there a deeper problem here?

Exposure to a wider variety of Bible verses might offer me more than therapy, but the entire approach is still based on providing would-be Bible readers little more than a morsel. The bigger issue is that we can’t rely on tweets, Facebook posts or “verse of the day” deliveries to our inbox to fulfill the promise of Bible engagement.
The social media channel as a communication medium has built-in limitations. The Bible itself is so much more than a collection of verses, so much richer than a sourcebook of one-liners… The Holy Scriptures are a gathering of complete literary works, meant to be read as a whole. These books come together to tell a story that can only be taken in, understood, and lived if it is fully encompassed, apprehended at length, and deeply embraced. Sound bites can’t do this. A constant diet of atomized fragments is a disservice to the Scriptures that God gave us.

Let us rather respect and read the Bible holistically.
Let us honor the Word of God by giving it our time and full attention.
We don’t need a shrinking Bible delivered to us with a diminished set of expectations. May we rather welcome back a full-sized Bible – the stories, wisdom, instruction, and visions overflowing with all that God has for us and all He expects of us.
Words to encourage and inspire us, yes: but also to instruct, correct, and welcome us wholly into this long and winding narrative that in the end leads us where we need to go. Only the complete Bible can do this. So read big.

This article originally appeared on Institute For Bible Reading organisation under the title “Verse of the Day‘Therapy’ is Shrinking the Bible,” October 10, 2018.

God isn’t dead though for many He is not relevant

In the 1960ies we often heard it said that God was dead.

Friedrich Nietzsche and his mother. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Carl Ludwig Nietzsche, was appointed pastor at Röcken by order of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia, after whom Friedrich Nietzsche was named. Before Friedrich Nietzsche’s fifth birthday his father died in 1849. He was left to live in a household consisting of five women: his mother, Franziska, his younger sister, Elisabeth, his maternal grandmother, and two aunts.

Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl (1806–1876) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

After attending a private preparatory school, the Domgymnasium, he was admitted to Schulpforta, Germany’s leading Protestant boarding school. Having graduated in 1864, he went to the University of Bonn to study theology and classical philology.  Influenced by the textual criticism of the English and German classicists Richard Bentley and Gottfried Hermann, F.W. Ritschl, in full Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl became a classical scholar remembered for his work on Plautus and as the founder of the Bonn school of classical scholarship. It was under the tutelage of Ritschl in Leipzig that he further developed and became the only student ever to publish in Ritschl’s journal, Rheinisches Museum (“Rhenish Museum”). Ritschl assured the University of Basel that he had never seen anyone like Nietzsche in 40 years of teaching and that his talents were limitless and as such would be the best candidate to receive a professorship in classical philology that fell vacant in 1869 in Basel, Switzerland.

English: Portrait of Friedrich Nietzsche, 1882; One of five photographies by photographer Gustav Schultze, Naumburg, taken early September 1882. Public domain due to age of photography. Scan processed by Anton (2005)  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In his mature writings Nietzsche was preoccupied by the origin and function of values in human life.With his protestant background one can wonder if his expression “God is dead” was not misinterpreted.

Many people seem to assume that this implies God was once a living creature, and he has since passed away. But this is a misconception. Nietzsche was an atheist, and thus never believed that a God existed in any form except as a figment of the human imagination. {Nietzsche: God is Dead (Part 1)}

Though we do find this man writing a lot about God and looking at the Judeo-Christian tradition, which according to him made suffering tolerable by interpreting it as God’s intention and as an occasion for atonement. For him this clinging to a flattering doctrine of personal immortality, could also seen as man having created its god to feel safe and sure, but those who did not believe in a god or God also tried to cling to an other “true” world, also offering symptoms of a declining life, or life in distress.

But for Nietzsche when there  is no god man also has not need of a god and man did not have to create a “slave” and “master” world, but should be himself the master. Facing the gut (“good”), schlecht (“bad”), and böse (“evil”) was something we made up ourselves as a nonmoral reference to those who were privileged, the masters, as opposed to those who were base, the slaves. For him his generation had come in a timespan where religious and philosophical absolutes had dissolved in the emergence of 19th-century positivism.

With the collapse of metaphysical and theological foundations and sanctions for traditional morality only a pervasive sense of purposelessness and meaninglessness would remain. And the triumph of meaninglessness is the triumph of nihilism: “God is dead.” Nietzsche thought, however, that most people could not accept the eclipse of the ascetic ideal and the intrinsic meaninglessness of existence but would seek supplanting absolutes to invest life with meaning.{Bernd Magnus on Friedrich Nietzsche in the Encyclopaedia Britannica}

Many do forget that as a thinker it might well be that Nietzsche also had come into conflict with the trinitarian thought and the sayings in the Scripture that there is only One true God Who is One and an eternal Spirit, not having bones, flesh or blood, whilst so many people around him worshipped a god with flesh, bones and blood who was born and who died. All such contradictions with what is written in the Old and the New Testament could have muddled his mind.

haukipesukone writes about the thought around that god man had created himself

Eventually the faithful get so worried about the well-being of God, that they build an armour to protect him. {What did Nietzsche mean by God is dead?}

When Nietzsche like others would have thought of that in such saying, he also could see the first sign that people were losing faith in God, also noticing around him how many people had lost faith in Him and did not trust God to take care of himself and able to endanger their safety.

The wannabe-philosopher of Finnish origin continues

Still at first, God is safe inside the armour and people continue to worship him. Over time though, God gets pissed off at the whole situation and leaves, or simply suffocates, leaving the armour for people to worship. People keep worshipping the hollow armour, and religion becomes a meaningless ritual with no substance to it. This is what “God is dead, and we have killed him” means. {What did Nietzsche mean by God is dead?}

An “Autobiographical” philosopher also looks at the German philosopher, extremely critical of Christianity, but sees, like us, that we may not just take it as a sort of atheist statement which would be the “ultimate truth”. For Gabriel J. Mitchell

“God is Dead” simply means “The Christian god is becoming increasingly irrelevant to philosophy and culture”.  {What Nietzsche Meant by “God is Dead”}

Mitchell writes:

In popular culture the phrase is often mistaken as an anti-Christian statement. Some sort of declaration of Atheism. This is most obviously manifested in Christian content like the film God’s Not Dead. In the movie, a disgruntled atheist professor demands his students declare the death of God and embrace atheism. {What Nietzsche Meant by “God is Dead”}

With his background and his protestant family it would be strange that with his pretty bold statement that would be going against his own family’s belief and bring a serious anti-Christian message.
The saying „Gott ist tot“ or “God is dead” also known as “the death of God” first appeared in Nietzsche’s 1882 collection “Die fröhliche Wissenschaft” or “The Joyful Wisdom” also known as The Gay Science,  also translated as “The Joyful Pursuit of Knowledge and Understanding”. The German Wissenschaft never indicates “Weisheit” or “wisdom”, but concerns any rigorous practice of a poised, controlled, and disciplined quest for knowledge, typically translated as “science”. Nietzsche speaks about “what if” which does not mean “it is”.

As such Nietzsche writes

What if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more’ […] Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: ‘You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.’ — [The Joyful Wisdom §341]

A statue of the Buddha from Sarnath, 4th century CE

A demon or sick person often is seen as a mad person or some one not by his senses. That mad man also can look at different deities and ascetics and sages like Gautama Buddha, probably a very attractive figure for Nietzsche because of all the philosophic thoughts of that teacher who lived in northern India sometime between the 6th and 4th centuries before the Common Era.

We find the first occurrence of the famous formulation “God is dead,” first in section 108.

After Buddha was dead, people
showed his shadow for centuries afterwards in a
cave,—an immense frightful shadow. God is dead:
but as the human race is constituted, there will
perhaps be caves for millenniums yet, in which
people will show his shadow.—And we—we have
still to overcome his shadow! {— §108}

The Joyful Wisdom or The Gay Science, first published in 1882 and followed by a second edition, which was published after the completion of Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil, in 1887.

Section 125 depicts the parable of the madman who is searching for God. He accuses us all of being the murderers of God.

“‘Where is God?’ he cried; ‘I will tell you. We have killed him—you and I. All of us are his murderers…”

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? {Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Section 125, tr. Walter Kaufmann}

Mitchell explains

The line is part of The Parable of the Madman a section from Nietzsche’s The Gay Science. It depicts a maddened individual running around a village asking where he can find God only to declare that God must be dead. In his ever creative style Nietzsche is using this madman as an outlet to explore an idea. Particularly he’s interested in the shifting values of European culture during his lifetime. {What Nietzsche Meant by “God is Dead”}

More and more people took distance from religion, most people confusing God with Church. Having found so many lies in church they considered “God” also being a “fat lie”. Though many wondered what their life was to be and if there was nothing behind it or something hidden for them.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel also had pondered the death of God, first in his Phenomenology of Spirit where he considers the death of God to

‘not [be] seen as anything but an easily recognized part of the usual Christian cycle of redemption’

But there some thought Jesus Christ to be the God, and when Jesus is God and Jesus died than really God would have died. Naturally Jesus is not God, because God is a Spirit Who has no beginning and not end and to Whom man can do nothing. In case Jesus is God and has died God would be dead and this did hurt Hegel, who writes about the great pain of knowing that God is dead

‘The pure concept, however, or infinity, as the abyss of nothingness in which all being sinks, must characterize the infinite pain, which previously was only in culture historically and as the feeling on which rests modern religion, the feeling that God Himself is dead, (the feeling which was uttered by Pascal, though only empirically, in his saying: Nature is such that it marks everywhere, both in and outside of man, a lost God), purely as a phase, but also as no more than just a phase, of the highest idea.’.

Nietzsche recognizes the crisis that the death of God represents for existing moral assumptions:

“When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one’s feet. This morality is by no means self-evident… By breaking one main concept out of Christianity, the faith in God, one breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in one’s hands.”

Nietzsche saw how man went away from the faith in God and by doing so was looking for new answers or better answers than the churches could give. When not any more believing in the beautiful masterly concept of creation by the Divine Maker belief of cosmic or physical order also fell to the ground.

Nietzsche saw Europe was slowly transitioning into a sort of cultural Nihilism. As advancements in science and technology lead to more and more questioning of the status quo, Philosophical values were beginning to shift. What Nietzsche is getting at here isn’t a declaration of the truth value of Christianity. In fact truth is a topic Nietzsche is extremely critical of. Instead he’s pointing out the weakening of Christian influences on society. {What Nietzsche Meant by “God is Dead”}

Clearly the church was loosing its grip on the citizens. The ability to have the Bible in print and available to lots of people, made them also aware that for years those churches had lied about many things. Those who really went to study the Scriptures where confronted with many things the church said which were not written at all in the Bible.
An other problem arose by the growing knowledge and advancement in the sciences. Several people wanted to play for god themselves.

Later on people can take a look inside the armour and see there is no God there, and say God never existed in the first place. Whether or not God actually exists or existed at any point as an entity in the universe is not as relevant as the fact that there is an inherent need in most people to have faith in God. That in itself does change how people behave, hopefully for the better.

To put this hollow armour analogy in a more abstract way, is that at first people had a genuine faith in God whether or not this faith was reciprocated by an actual God. Over the course of time this genuine God was replaced by a man-made image of God. Man got rid of the real thing in favour of a man-made facsimile. I suppose the underlying motivation is that if man made God, man can also control him. {What did Nietzsche mean by God is dead?}

Seeing how man went away from God Nietzsche probably was very well aware that this could bring man in trouble.

Given Nietzsche’s strong animosity towards religion, you would think people realizing that ‘God is Dead’ would make him happy. After all, Nietzsche was dedicated in his quest to try and rid the individual of dogmatic and supernatural beliefs. Surely, people disregarding religion would be a comforting sight to Nietzsche. But this was not the case. Nietzsche was deeply troubled by the lack of a God, he feared that this may lead to the destruction of our society. {Nietzsche: God is Dead (Part 1)}

The end of Christianity for Europe might bring desolation and chaos. Churches had fostered on human dogma‘s and now people had come to see how different they are to Biblical dogma’s. But when one finds that a church has lied so much would one go for an other church and not face the same problem? Mankind always have nuzzled dogmatic beliefs that are widely held and accepted by society and do not want to do away with so many traditions.

Many of these beliefs go unquestioned, and thus we live in a sort of ‘herd’ similar to sheep (the term sheeple is probably the best representation of this). By overcoming the herd perspective, a man can free himself and achieve new heights. {Nietzsche: The Ubermensch (Part 2)}

When there is no God or when man himself is god, then man may be the master of everything (does he think). When there is no God,like so many think, then man loves to be as a god being the super being or Ubermensch, to which nothing is to small or to big and everything can be made possible. When it is not possible to do something today than it will be possible tomorrow or in the future, so why worry?

The Ubermensch is supposed to act as the answer to the problem of nihilism. Since God is dead, that means there is no objective truth or morality. Thus, an Ubermensch acts as his own ‘God’, abandoning the herd instinct and determining his own morality. He is neither slave nor master, as he does not impose his will on others. He is a master of self-discipline. He must be willing to embrace suffering and learn from it. In a way, the Ubermensch is the next step in human evolution. It’s a new intuition, perspective, and greatness for mankind. {Nietzsche: The Ubermensch (Part 2)}

For sure, man has to take a long way before he shall reach such a state. He also seems to forget that is what the Word of God demands from man, that man work at themselves transforming their character to an ideal being without faults. Only problem that than poses, is to know what would be faults, and what would be the right things to strive for. For a Bible Student no such problems arise because he can find all answers in the Bible. But those who do not want to take a serious look at that Library of ancient works, still many questions shall stay unanswered.

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Additional reading

1. Today’s thought “Ability to see that God is not dead” (May 12)
2. Inner feeling, morality and Inter-connection with creation
3. Christian values and voting not just a game
4. 3rd question: Does there exist a Divine Creator
5. Is there no ‘proof’ for God? (And why that statement is not as smart as you might think.)

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Further reading

1. Moral Collapse Didn’t Begin Yesterday. Occult Paris
2. Everything and Nothing
3. No Lives Matter
4. The Nil God
5. Wake up; There is no God
6. The death of God (and politics?)
7. Because God is not efficient in revealing himself to us, He must not exist.
8. With God vs Without
9. God
10. O God…
11. Lunch n’ Bats
12. Collecting our thoughts: opening prayer
13. A walk on the sea
14. The End of the World
15. A Defense of Religion (From an Atheist)
16. Seraphim Rose: “large numbers of Catholics and Protestants are hardly to be distinguished from unbelievers “
17. On Nihilism
18. Dostoyevsky’s Übermensch in Crime & Punishment
19. God’s Heartbreak
20. Can You Be A Happy Nihilist?
21. Ep. 48 – Calvin Warren and Frank Wilderson III on Antiblackness, Nihilism, and Politics
22. The New Nihilism
23. A Journey Toward A Theory Of Stupidity 3 | The Grandfather Of Stupidology Part 1
24. The Weaponisation Of Popular Culture
25. Chapter 6
26. What We Can Gain From Detachment
27. Nietzsche and Buddhism
28. Buddhism, Nietzsche, Jung, Christianity, and Plato: Religious and Philosophical Themes in Westworld
29. Identification
30. Who I am and why I’m here
31. Übermensch
32. Nietzsche #7 – Der Übermensch
33. Nietzsche: Eternal Recurrence (Part 3)
34. Nietzsche, a philosophical biography (Rüdiger Safranski, 2000)
35. Übermensch by Mathew Babaoye
36. Editorial 23: Frank Castle, Ubermensch
37. How to become Superman: Nietzsche’s overwhelming concept and questions to ask yourself
38. The Ubermensch as an Archetype

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Related articles

• God Has Died: A Brief Good Friday Reflection
• A Concoction to be Creative without the Crazy.
• Moral values and moral standing of religious institutions
• Iranian preacher creating more hatred between religious groups
• Today’s thought “Ability to see that God is not dead” (May 12)
• Looking for answers on the question Is there a God #4
• Being aligned with above

Did the internet fueled a heightened sense of unrest among people?

Tricia McCary Rhodes (@soulrest) who wrote the book, The Wired Soul: Finding Spiritual Balance in a Hyperconnected Age (NavPress, 2016) finds that

Most people would say they live with an internal angst that they can’t always put their finger on.

She thinks

This is because the Internet has changed our very way of being in this world, compelling us to be perpetually “on” — from our cars to our computers, our tablets to our smartphones, our desks to our living rooms or dining tables, our churches to our libraries to our schools. This 24/7 connection means we’re never really free and we always feel behind. The Internet also continually entices us to explore its options through hyperlinks and ads so we can spend a lot of time on things for which we have little to show, adding to our unrest.

We also see that lots of youngsters are continually on social media, though when we hear them many feel very lonely. But every time busy on the net makes that most of us are rarely, if ever, alone with our own minds and souls.

Even when we do find a few minutes of quiet, we’re driven to check our devices for emails, texts, etc.; to surf the Web or to post on social media.

I might add that even if you’ve managed to remain a Luddite — one who resists technology — you’re surrounded by people who don’t, so you’re affected more than you may realize.

says Tricia McCary Rhodes.

It looks like many today want to stay connected with the world 24/7 and do find it their duty to be up to date with the headlines, though nobody still find the time to go deeper into the material. It all has become very superflucious. Superficiality abounds.

The author remarks

Distraction, which David Wells calls “the affliction of this age,” troubles them like a pesky fly buzzing around their head that won’t go away. Most people just give up after a few minutes of this and feel guilty or embarrassed at their lack. It’s always been hard to focus in prayer; the technology has upped the ante exponentially.

As Christ-followers, we can find guidance for life in the Bible. From it and from our worldly research material we know we can only avoid being shaped by our culture through the renewal of our minds; a word that means complete renovation (Romans 12:2).

From a brain science perspective, this happens as we engage in godly habits or focus and apply God’s truth often enough and long enough to ensure those cells fire together until they’re wired together and a deep pathway between them is formed. This means that the renewal of our minds—a work requiring God’s grace and guidance—is more about what we do than what we know; or in other words, more about the spiritual habits we keep than the amount of biblical information we might attain.

Read more about it in:

The Wired Soul: An Interview with Tricia McCary Rhodes

Words to bring into a good relationship

Relating to God is a new website and blog, created at the beginning of this year (2016-03-09) to bring people in a good relationship with the Divine Creator. To come to such good relationship it is important to get to know God and to get to know His Word, the Bible. For that reason the site is looking at the gathered Words of God.

Frontispiece of the 1917 JPS translation of the Bible (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

According to the organisation’s words people do not have to start of with a believe in god nor in His Word to come to get to know Him. It is by discovering the Words of God, that people shall come to understand that the assembled set-apart or Holy Scriptures manifest themselves to be the word of God, by the scope of the whole, which is to give all glory to God.

There is an essence or a centre or a dominant peculiarity in the way God glorifies himself in Scripture and those collected Words do manage to bring people to see Who God is and What His desires are.
When people are willing to listen to those words in that library of 66 books they shall come to the understanding that the Bible has final authority over every area of our lives and that we should, therefore, try to bring all our thinking and feeling and acting into line with what the Bible teaches.

The world may have many religions and many churches, but those who are willing to listen to the Call of God shall come to hear that Sacred Calling. There are people who believe themself and want to have others to believe that certain churches have their own Bible with their own words, but this is not taking into account that God Himself all over the years has protected His Own Word. Certain churches and people may prefer to have a certain Bible translation and may not like an other Bible translation, but that does not mean that people using an other bible translation would not been able to come to the Biblical Truth.

A Bible translation is not the private charter of a faith community among other faith communities. It is a total claim on the whole world. God, the Originator Speaking Creator Owner, and Governor of the world, has sent His Word all over the world and has not limited His Words to one particular language or one particular church denomination.

His words, in whatever language they may be read, are valid and binding on all people everywhere. God can not be owned by any church, but God owns all people in the world and is Master of all.

First page of latest Dutch Bible translation (NBV) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

People might believe in only certain things their religion places before them, irrespective of whether the Author is divine. But even if they don’t believe in all of it, they still can be believers in God. They also might find other ideas than their original church is preaching. At a certain point they might even come to see that there are too many differences in the church teaching opposite in what they belief the Bible is teaching. And most important of all tit is the bible which should guide people. It is the Words of the bible which should be taken as the truthful words of God.

In the end it are people themselves who shall have to decide which way they go and what they want to believe, human doctrines or Biblical doctrines.

The rubber meets the road, however, when fundamentalist notions of “what one must believe” overtake open-mindedness in a non-secular community – when one’s personal beliefs, and more important his personal disbeliefs, ostracize him from “good standing” if he articulates  those disbeliefs aloud.  If that occurs – if the Bible’s factuality becomes essential to one’s faith for fear of being shunned – it will be man, and not God, who decides what one must believe in order to be viewed as having Faith.  And that principle cannot ever be what God intended.

writes rabbi Joel Cohen in Is the Bible’s factuality essential to faith?

God His way of speaking with unique, infallible authority counted in the 5the century b.C.E. as well as in the 1st century or 21st century C.E. is through signs or letters on a stone, papyrus, paper or even today on a screen of an electronic device. The Words He thinks necessary for mankind or brought together in “One book”. A Set-apart or Holy Book, which is for all people, educated or not.

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Please do find to read:

1. Are there certain books essential to come to faith
2. Life and an assembly of books
3. Words of God to stand and to be followed and to believe
4. the Bible – God’s guide for life #1 Introduction
5. the Bible – God’s guide for life #2 Needs in life
6. the Bible – God’s guide for life #3 Fast food or staple diet
7. the Bible – God’s guide for life #4 Not to get the best from our diet– or from ourselves
8. Challenging claim 3 Inspired by God 2 Inerrant Word of God
9. Challenging claim 4 Inspired by God 3 Self-consistent Word of God

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Luther on Being a Theologian: Oratio, Meditatio and Tentatio

Augustine of Hippo (354–430), Latin theologian. His writing on free will and original sin remains influential in Western Christendom.

The world has created so called scientists in the knowledge of God. Lots of people do put all their trust in such scholars who received a degree in theology at a university.
The majority of those theologians are as most of them would consider a theologian is,

“one who is dedicated to life in Christ and the contemplation of the Holy Trinity.” {What Does It Mean To Be a Theologian; by David Russell Mosley}

For many who studied the gods “The Philokalia“, a collection of texts written between the 4th and 15th centuries by spiritual masters”, was their primary guide for what it meant to be a theologian.

We always should know that to come to know God and to worship God we do not have to be people who have a university degree in theology, but we should be people who take time to study the bible. Lots of theologians have spend more time in studying writings of other human beings instead of looking more closely at the Word of God, the Bible. When you look at the theology courses, you will notice much more time is spend at those human writings, philosophy and human doctrines than at Biblical doctrines. No wonder that there have been much more books written by trinitarian scholars than by non-trinitarian Christians, because for the latter it is evident what is written in the Bible is the truth and as such in the non-trinitarian denominations of Christianity there are not so many divisions or matters of dispute as in the trinitarian denominations of Christendom.

We should remember that each of us has to be a theologian, a person who wants to know and worships the Only One True God of gods. A knowledge of the other gods may help in this, but the main focus should be on the real True Divine Creator, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jakob and of Jeshua, who is mostly known as Jesus Christ by English speaking countries.

Each person who claims to be a Christian should be a follower of Christ and should worship the same God Christ worshipped, namely his heavenly Father. Like Jesus prayed to his heavenly Father we also should pray to that God of Jesus, Jehovah the Most Almighty God. That Oratio (prayer) should be grounded in the Word of God.

God cannot tempted, but Jesus was and we also shall be tempted more than once. This Tentatio (affliction) is not something God uses to drive us a way from self, but is our own selfish will because we are so much busy with ourselves. In case we would be more busy with the Will of God we would not be so much and so often suffering from our wrongdoing. Then we would also be more forthcoming to God His Will and would be more able, like Christ did not his own will, not to do our own will but being happy to do God’s Will.

To avoid going astray we do need the Meditatio (meditation) which should be the continual study of the Holy Scriptures and not so much the study of the many theological works by human beings.

We should trust more the Call and the Voice of God instead the voices of so many people who call themselves theologian, whatever they may mean by that word.

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Preceding articles

Mental Enslavement and Sins Syndrome (MESS)

Some one or something to fear #7 Not afraid for Gods Name

Pascal’s Possibility

Sharing thoughts and philosophical writings

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Additional reading

1. The importance of Reading the Scriptures
2. No other god besides Jehovah who gives all explanation
3. God’s forgotten Word 3 Lost Lawbook 2 Modern scepticism
4. Theologians and a promised Spirit to enlighten us
5. Necessity of a revelation of creation 9 Searching the Scriptures
6. Necessity of a revelation of creation 11 Believing and obeying the gospel of the Kingdom of God
7. Necessity of a revelation of creation 14 Searching the scriptures
8. Missional hermeneutics 1/5
9. Missional hermeneutics 5/5
10. Approachers of ideas around gods, philosophers and theologians
11. To find ways of Godly understanding
12. Position of the Bible researcher
13. Theology without spirituality sterile academic exercise
14. Self-development, self-control, meditation, beliefs and spirituality
15. Being Missional
16. Christendom Astray The Devil Not A Personal Super-Natural Being
17. A god who gave his people commandments and laws he knew they never could keep to it
18. Our life depending on faith
19. Perishable non theologians daring to go out to preach
20. Reasons why you may not miss the opportunity to go to a Small Church
21. Follower of Jesus part of a cult or a Christian
22. The meek one riding on an ass
23. Does there have to be a Holy Trinity Mystery
24. Altered to fit a Trinity
25. the Trinity – the Truth

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Further related writings

1. What Hath the Church to do with the Library?
2. Theology of Experience
3. … 506 years ago
4. The Calvinist ‘God’ and God
5. Jealous God | Jealous for God
6. So, Here Goes…
7. The Angelic Doctor
8. Good Morning January 25
9. What Makes a Theologian
10. The Pastor Theologian
11. A Quote from St. Augustine on “The State”
12. Theology as Discipleship
13. 43rd of 2015.
14. What Does It Mean To Be a Theologian
15. What is Distinctive about Christian Analytic Theology?
16. Pulpit Supply: Sunday School: Four Key Concepts to be a better Theologian
17. Theologian Spotlight: Kathryn Tanner
18. Saint Augustine
19. Puritan John Owen – Doctrine of the Spirit and Mortification of Sin (Christian audio book)
20. C.S. Lewis Died on This Date
21. Albert Schweitzer
22. Jean Guitton
23. Biblical Christian Theology: Definition by DR. Donald E. Battle
24. DR. Donald E. Batle: Theologian And Christology Scholar
25. Who is qualified to write theology?
26. What is the Recipe to Survive in the Storms of Life?
27. Crossing Divides: Can an Atheist be a Chaplain?
28. So Now I’m a Christian. Now What? Part 4:The Loving, Triune God
29. Thought on the Trinity, Its Being Less than Mysterious, and the Biblical Support of an Analogy to It
30. The Incarnation a Contradiction?
31. 1 Corinthians 10:15 (Don’t Take My Word For It)
32. Christ Strengthens You

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• Muslim God, Christian God (theamericanconservative.com)
• Americans really thinking the Messiah Christ had an English name (christadelphianworld.blogspot.com)
• Does there have to be a Holy Trinity Mystery (christadelphianworld.blogspot.com)
• Science Is Still Trying To Figure Out If Was Really White (biospace.com)

Gospel & Gratitude

In John Doberstein’s The Minister’s Prayerbook, he discusses Martin Luther’s understanding of the development of a theologian. Luther believed that the “right way to study theology” is anchored in the three rules set forth in Psalm 119: Oratio, Meditatio, Tentatio. For Luther “Everything centers around the practice of meditation, for prayer prepares for it and its results are confirmed in the experience of conflict. For Luther, meditation is the key to the study of theology. No one can become a true theologian unless he learns theology through it” (Kleinig, “The Kindred Heart”, 142). The discussion that follows is taken directly from Doberstein and explores each of the three dimensions.

• Oratio (prayer) is grounded in the Word of the Lord. Prayer is the voice of faith. That is to say, that prayer grows out of the Word of the Lord. “The richness of the Word of God ought to determine our prayer, not…

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