Category: General

On Christian Scholarship

    Doc Bob

I’ve been reading Shane Claiborne’s book “The Irresistible Revolution” lately. In it, he quotes Soren Kierkegaard:

“The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christian are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is ever dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.”

If you haven’t read “The Irresistible Revolution”, I highly recommend it – well, with one reservervation. If you are comfortable in your Christian walk and want to remain that way, if you don’t want to be challenged – you may want to avoid it. It is a book that has, and will continue to, challenge and change my view of what it means to be a Christian.

Our Only Option

    Doc Bob

Here’s another quote that really hit me:

As long as Jesus is one of many options, he is no option. As long as you can carry your burdens alone, you don’t need a burden bearer. As long as your situations brings you no grief, you will receive no comfort. And as long as you can take him or leave him, you might as well leave him, because he won’t be taken half-heartedly.

But when you mourn, when you get to the point of sorrow for your sins, when you admit that you have no other option but to cast all your cares on him, and when there is truly no other name that you can call, then cast all your cares on him, for he is waiting in the midst of the storm” – The Applause of Heaven by Max Lucado, p. 58

Pyramid Scheme

    Doc Bob

I’ve been reading and listening to some interesting views on what it means to be a Christian lately. Here’s one example

“A friend of mine says much of the evangelism and witnessing done by Christians today is a pyramid scheme. The purpose is to acquire the product, i.e. salvation, sell it to others and then train others to sell it too, so those others, will in turn acquire it and train others to sell it. The problem, my friend says, is that nobody ever uses the product. … It can be true with the Bible too. We can spend so much time selling and defending the Bible to others that we don’t use the product very much. And we can spend so much time articulating and defending our doctrinal position from the Bible that we forget why it was even important in the first place.” – Steve Brown, Key Life – Radio broadcast, 11/08/2006

I love Steve’s teaching and views. Check out KeyLife at www.keylife.org

You Can Trust Him

    Doc Bob

Trust is a big issue for many former Jehovah’s Witnesses. After investing a lot of trust in the organization and having that trust violated, most of us are more careful about trusting anyone or anything. The poem below shows in whom we can trust and why.