Fundamentalists

I have tried to allow God's Word to shape my knowledge, understanding, and worldview. If God's Word says "X" and I have believed "Y" (or even "B"), I conclude, "Well, B must be wrong and I need to embrace X." In this way, the Bible is fundamental to my faith, my doctrines, my belief structures, my life principles, and my worldview. It is the foundation.

Others don't think like this. There is, in fact, quite a gamut, obviously. On the other end, the Bible is fairly worthless. It's a man-made, wholly fallible, fairly useless gathering of ideas, myths, and lies that provides no real value at all. That's the other end. In between, of course, there is a wide range of possibilities. There are those who highly value the Bible in word, but when you look at their position they "highly value" it only as far as they will allow. If it says that God commanded Israel to eradicate a particular group of people at a particular time, that obviously didn't happen. If it says that God can override human free will, that clearly doesn't happen. It can't mean that. They do genuinely highly regard the Bible, but, in essence, only as far as they can throw it. Then there are those who have great respect for the Bible, but only in so far as it "contains" the Word of God, not the whole thing. That would be silly. To them, some of the Bible is God's Word and valuable, but just what that part is varies. Well, you get the idea.

I'm amazed at the number of self-professed Christians who regard God's Word as sort of supplemental. They have their beliefs and they have their faith and they have, almost as an addendum -- an appendix -- the Bible. It's a sort of questionable reference book. "I believe X and Y and Z," they will tell you and when the Bible agrees they'll say, "See? Says so right here." When it doesn't, they'll explain why it's wrong. Generally it's wrong because it doesn't agree with their views. To this crowd, "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so" is a wrong approach. That's because their premise starts somewhere else. Maybe it's popular opinion. Maybe it's their basic philosophy. Maybe it's their own minds. "Look," they tell me, "I know the Bible says that this is sin, but, clearly, it isn't because we know better." These will tell you they highly regard Scripture and then tell you, "Consensual sex between adults is never evil." Really? What Bible are you reading? But it's easy to understand because they are not basing their views and values on God and His Word; they're basing it somewhere else. Primarily on themselves.

Everything has a basis. Your views and my views have fundamentals. I am accused of being a "fundamentalist" (one of those words whose meaning has migrated from the original definition to a new, emotionally-charged insult) because I believe in the basics of the Bible. The truth is all of us are fundamentalists in the original intent of the word. We all have fundamentals. We all adhere to them. We all make our thoughts, conclusions, views, values, and actions from them. There are some who use God's Word as the core values from which to think and act. Most don't, including many who claim to highly regard God's Word.

I found out something interesting recently. In the Bible there are New Testament references to "heresies." At least, that's the King James version. More modern versions translate them as the "factions," or "division." The Greek word is indeed the origin of our word, "heresy." In his epistle to the Galatians Paul warns that the flesh produces lots of bad things including "heresies" (Gal 5:20). Translated elsewhere as "divisions," "sects," or "factions", the word is αἵρεσις -- hairesis. Thus, "heresies." Paul used the word when he told the Corinthians "There must be no heresies (or factions or divisions) among you" (1 Cor 11:19). Peter used it when he referred to the "damnable heresies" brought by false prophets (2 Peter 2:1). Same word. Paul told Timothy to reject a "factious man" ("heretick" -- KJV) after admonishing him a first and second time (Titus 3:10). That word is αἱρετικός -- aihretikos. That's the same basic word. The root word for these is αἱρέομαι -- aihreomai. This word means "to take for oneself." And that makes a lot of sense. When "take for ourselves" becomes the fundamental that we serve, it produces all kinds of heresy, division, factions, and lies. So when we take the Bible as supplementary to our fundamentals "as far as that goes," we operate primarily from ... aihreomai -- taking for ourselves. And that is a wholly different kind of fundamentalism -- the heretical kind.