“Give me a text from the Bible,” she said.
“Okay, how about this one,” he replied.
“That doesn’t mean what you think it means. See I told you that you don’t have any scriptures that back up your beliefs.”
“How about this one over here.”
“You are completely misguided. You don’t know how to read the Bible correctly. You don’t really believe in the bible.”
And so the arguments go around and around and around. Yes, most of us believe the Bible even when we disagree. It is not that we do not believe in the Holy Scriptures, but we all have different ways of interpreting the same texts to support our belief system.
The most important thing in the Bible is the gospel found in John 3:16.
1. God loves the world.
2. He gave Jesus to the world to die for our sins.
3. Eternal life is granted to those who believe in Jesus.
How simple it is to understand those profound statements. How hard it is to really believe that faith is all that is required for salvation.
The secondary doctrines of the Bible are important, but there is room for interpretation and debate in many of these issues. Important as they might be for many Christians, they are not what make us part of the kingdom.
~Stephen Beagles