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Old 03-29-2010, 07:24 PM   #13
orthodoxymoron
Avalon Senior Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Lunar Base II
Posts: 3,093
Default Re: Red Letter Church

The words of Jesus are not isolated from the rest of scripture, but they are central to scripture. Each and every Bible study and sermon should be centered in the words of Jesus! It's not about excluding the rest of the Bible, but rather about understanding the whole Bible by placing the Teachings of Jesus front and center, where they belong!

I must confess that the God of the Old Testament and the book of Revelation, is often not the God that I believe in and love. I prefer the God revealed by Jesus. And doesn’t this representation imply a limited God? This gets God off the hook (if God needs to be gotten off the hook) on the suffering question, and also regarding a delayed (by our reckoning) second coming. Why does God have to be all-mighty? Isn’t most-mighty good enough? Aren’t we sometimes a bit demanding and unrealistic in our God-expectations? Isn’t this a major reason for agnosticism and atheism?

An ideal method of study is to take your favorite red letter, cross referenced version of the Bible, and read the red lettered portions, in context, and read all cross referenced texts in their contexts. The Teachings of Jesus are to the rest of the Bible what the Constitution of the United States is to the Federalist Papers. The first is normative standard, and the second is context and clarification. Don’t make things more complex than they need to be! Let the Bible be its own interpreter, with the Holy Spirit as your guide.

Try reading the four Gospels straight through two or three times. Then read just the red letter portions straight through two or three times. Then search out all of the cross referenced texts throughout the Bible, and highlight them. Then read all of these highlighted texts straight through, from Genesis to Revelation. Do this two or three times. At some point in this process, the Holy Spirit will come streaming through the windows of your soul, and you will see the light! You may very well see it a lot more clearly than I do! I’m just a goofy clown, waving a sign, and trying to point others in the right direction! I’m also a bit of a hypocrite! I haven’t arrived, and don’t expect to anytime soon!

It makes me tired just typing these marching orders! I must confess, I think I have the overall idea right, but I find it difficult to be a Bible scholar. It takes both perspiration and inspiration! To become disillusioned with the old way of relating to the Bible, and then to get inspired with the new way can give one a spiritual whiplash! Fasten your seatbelts and put your headrest up!

Lastly, integrate all of the above into everything! This isn't easy, and it's not for wimps! The texts are ancient and we live in a modern world which is becoming more complex, perplexing and dangerous by the millisecond! But if the principles and concepts of the Teachings of Jesus are not integrated into our modern world, we face negative consequences of truly biblical proportions...
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