Early Morning Thoughts on Belief and Scripture
We learn from the writings we call 'scripture', belief requires an object; the object for Christians is the Lord Jesus Christ, not the Bible. The bible is subject to interpretive efforts and so we have many contributions to the meaning of scripture.
Christianity is meant to be lived not 'just' learned about. Jesus is more interested in how we live than in what we 'think' we know. Nonetheless, this does not assign ignorance a place at the scholastic table, we bring ourselves to the text and face the challenge of giving meaning to a book written in various languages and assorted cultural settings.
The enculturation of meaning through the lens of American exceptionalism (greatness) has corrupted the ability of the everyday person to interpret the complex books that form Christian scripture. Unfortunately, this is also true for many scholastics whose ideology is bound by loyalty to their culture and group rather than the pursuit of truth.
If we can live out the simplicity of what we learned as children we can fare better than holding onto false ideologies: Jesus loves me this I know and Jesus loves the little children all the children of the world red, yellow, black, white .... there is no room for hate in the heart of a person following Christ. This is a good place to begin our collective journey towards maturation and we must not allow any ideology to separate us from these simple truths.
