Like Button

Thursday, November 16, 2017

A Flickering Candle

The longest chapter in the Bible is the 119th Psalm. This is an entire psalm dedicated to the praise of God's Word. It includes such memorable lines as "How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to Your word" (Psa 119:9) and the quite famous, "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path." (Psa 119:105) That idea is repeated in Peter's first epistle. "So we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts." (2 Peter 1:19) God's Word is a light in a dark place. It provides clarity, guidance, and truth. Got it.

Or ... at least it did. Does it still?

If the loud voices these days have their say, not so much. The Bible, they tell us, is a good book and all that, but you can't really be sure what it means. It is dangerous to be too confident. It isn't to be taken as written; it should be held loosely. It has a lot of myth and legend, a lot of metaphor where it looks like history and allegory where it looks like plain language. And, let's be honest, it's not easy at all to understand, so we shouldn't really say "It means this" with any serious conviction.

Let's feed that back into the psalms, then. What we have here is a dim light -- not well lit, not too bright, not clear at all. How can a young man keep his way pure? Not that way, that's for sure. I mean, if God's Word says that those who indulge in homosexual behavior (among other things) won't inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor 6:9-10) and we can't say for sure that this means what it says, what good is it for keeping a young man pure? If we can't take the plain statements of God's Word as plain statements, to what possible degree is it "a lamp to my feet and a light to my path"?

It's simple. "Did God really say ...?" can be a question asked to seek for the genuine understanding, or it can be a question intended to deny what God really said. When we relegate His Word to myth and unfathomable possibilities, it is not a question for understanding. And we cannot say, with the psalmist, that God's Word provides any real light at all. Just a flickering candle that is being replaced by electric light of science these days. God's Word may be true (2 Sam 22:31; Psa 18:30; Prov 30:5; 2 Tim 3:16-17), but if it is as uncertain as they say it is, it is not reliable, useful, or even remotely sufficient. Which, I think, is their point. Is it yours, too?

4 comments:

Danny Wright said...

Serious Christians understand in these times that they have no sway when it comes to the morality of the culture. With that understanding as a base point, we could assume that the Church is irrelevant. My question is, if Church is irrelevant, then why isn't it irrelevant? The culture has cut itself loose from God's Word. There are only a few who still hold to it, and see it as a lamp unto their feet. Yet, still, most of the world, and probably half of Christendom can't sit back, relax, and enjoy their unrestrained life simply because they know that there are a few people out there, irrelevant people, people who have no say in anything, who still insist that God has something to say about how they themselves live, and who offer themselves as a salt and light to the culture. At the same time the culture defends another world religion that takes a much more harsh and violent stance against an unrestrained culture. My question is why? The answer to that question affirms my faith in Jesus for salvation and His Word more than, perhaps, anything else. Islam hates gays. Islamic bakers won't bake the gay cake. But that's ok. Islam sees women as chattel. That's ok. Islam wants a theocracy. That's ok. I'm convinced that any other religion with the possible exception of the Jewish religion, could get away with murder and all would be just fine with it. But there are a few irrelevant Christians over there and it's like, we can't sleep at night knowing that they're using some of our oxygen.

Stan said...

Christians have never had sway on morality. That would be God. We get to participate by letting our light shine so He gets glorified. But the irrelevance of Church is an illusion. Christ said that narrow was the way and few would find it. I would expect, then, in the proliferation of buildings calling themselves "church" you would find the same kinds of numbers. The truth is that Christ builds His church and it cannot, as such, become irrelevant. What can become irrelevant is the tares -- the weeds -- that grow up and look like "church" and are, indeed, irrelevant but make everyone think that Christ's Church is that. It's not. The trick, then, is to find a real church and it will not be irrelevant.k

There is an alternative. The church IS irrelevant, God has failed, Christ lost it, and we're at the end. Nope!

"Relevant" is a relative statement, depending on what you intend to convey. Relevant how? To shaping morality? Not the function of the Church. To making the world a better place? Not the function of the Church. But if Christ has built it and the Spirit is still alive and working, there will always be those (called "church") that are living lives that glorify God and are ministering to others. Some are in non-church churches. Some are in small, genuine churches. The trick is to find the real ones.

Danny Wright said...

As I read my comment I realized that I didn't really convey what I meant well, which is that the Church is irrelevant from a worldly perspective. I guess I hoped that that would come though in the rest of the comment. It's relevance is obvious to me in the hatred it bears just because it exists.

Stan said...

I didn't actually think you were expressing that the church is irrelevant. I just wanted readers to know that it's not, even when it can feel like it is.