Thoughts on The Eden Story in Genesis

It has been the Church's misconception of this story that has led to faulty assumptions. Most theologians and pastors speak of the "Fall" as being caused by a particular act of disobedience on the part of Adam and Eve. But if we let the rest of theBible interpret it for us we see another explaination. I am of the opinion that the Eden storyis not about disobedience as much as it is about self-centeredness. Adam and Eve are not banished because they disobeyed God (They did disobey by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but that is not the main issue in the story). The real issue is that their disobedience led to them looking at themselves and blaming others.

This is the opposite of Jesus' Commands to Love God and Love others. We were no longer in line with God's will and so it was impossible for us to remain in God's presence. It's a spiritual problem and not a legal issue.In God's good time and out of His abundant grace Jesus came to us and offered us a way back to God's presence. He saved us from our life of death and offeres us eternal life with our Father. Hence the name Jesus: "God Saves."

See "Cain Loved God".

Christopher

Link of The Day

Christianity Today

This is the website for this popular and informative Christian Magazine. It has excellent links, too.

"Repent, ..."

Matthew 4:17 "From that time Jesus began to preach this message:26 “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.”


In Matt. 4 we see that Jesus preached "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near." I suggest that this is a command with a cause. That is, we are to turn to God and we can because of His presence.

In Christ,

Christopher

Link of the Day

This is my favorite online Bible. It's a pretty literal translation with excellent notes.

NET Bible

"JESUS!"

His name is a prayer; an affirmation of faith.

Everytime you say His name, "Jesus", you are affirming your trust that "God Saves!"

So, speak His name. And when you do, say it Loudly. Say it clearly. And say it often.

In Christ,

Christopher


(Just think. Everytime Mary called her son into dinner she was proclaiming the Gospel. I think that is very cool.)

Life

Life is an issue of faith.

As the sage says, "...the righteous will live by his faith".
(Habakkuk 2:4; New International Version)

Life comes through faith and living implies action.
God makes it possible.

In Christ,

Christopher

The Crucifixion As Appeasment?

I don't buy into appeasement and substitution only makes sense as a form of appeasement. I don't buy into substitution, either except as a form of allegory. If one is discussing God as being just, for example, then legally, I am convicted of crimes that I am incapable of atoning for, so Jesus did it for me in order that I may be free to live for God. This, however, discusses the nature of God vis a vis the nature of humanity (one aspect there of, anyway). This does not address the very nature of the crucifixion.

The question is,"Why did Jesus die for me?"If the crucifixion is crucial for salvation, then why is this so? I think we need to go back to Genesis and see why we are "fallen" and therefore need to be "saved". What we need to be saved from and why need to be saved corresponds directly to how we need to be saved. If it's a legal matter, then we need a legal response. If it's a moral issue, we need an ethical response. If the problem is metaphysical, we need a metaphysical solution. Whatever the issue is, we need a solution that adresses it.Therefore, we need to figure out what the problem is first, then we might be able to decipher what Jesus really did.

I think that we raised the barriers between ourselves and God but only God could create the gate through those walls. That gate is Jesus Christ. The issue is not sin and righteousness (though hose are related to it). The issue is life and death. When we place ourselve above God, we die. When God becomes the focus of our being once agin, we live. This is now possible as we follow Christ. We accept His LORDship over our lives and are baptized into His death we may then live a life akin to His. It's a metaphysical solution to a metaphysical problem. Choose the allegory that suits you best: Sheep and Shepherd, Temple and curtain, Camel and eye of needle, etc...

I don't think Jesus saved us from God so much as He saved us from ourselves. It's a relational concern more than a legal matter. We were ousted from God's side because we worship ourselves rather than Him. Now we may refocus our beings from orselves and back onto God where they belong. We may look to the cross and be saved. We can follow Christ's example of servitude even unto death and become more like Him. We may give our lives over to Jesus and be "reborn" like Him. We must remember His life death and resurrection. It's the entire package that saves, not just the cross.

In Christ,

Christopher

The Cross

Read Your Bible

Okay. This is, admittedly, not a really deep thought but sometimes the obvoius needs to be said.

And...Action!

I was praying last night and I was shown that God always directs us to act upon what He has done. He offers us His hand of salvation: we must grab hold of it. Once we are are saved, we are directed to be baptized. Being believers, we are to devleop our relationships with God and raise up other belivers as well encourage others to accept Jesus. This is not salvation by works, this is works because of salvation. But, it is important to remember, God doesn't expect success, He expects faithfulness.

Christopher

Theologically Light

An issue that I find in many Pentecostal circles (though I am sure that they don't have a monopoly in this area) is that they tend to be "Theologically Light". They've taken the whole "inerrancy of Scripture" ideal and ran with it. One problem with this is that they don't adress the Bible as a whole but pick it apart to suit their own ideas. No we are faced with "dispensationalism", "prosperity gospel", and who knows what fad will come along tomorrow. The believers in the "pews" largely go along with what their pastors tell them (and rightly so) but their pastors are not trained in decent scholarship. I normally refer to it as "verse snatching".

On the opposite end is the problem of trying to justify the idea of an inerrant Bible when the entire idea has been usurped by these verse snatching quacks. How can one defend a literally true Bible that is chock full of figurative language if one has to affirm that every single word is literally true? The entire premise is stupid. That is not my understanding at all. It is my understanding that the Bible is inerrant in that it is totally correct in all that it says.

This doesn't mean that I am totally correct in my understanding of what the Bible says, however. I am still learning and it is a way too multifaceted of a book for anyone to totally grasp. I'll also affirm that what it says is literally true. When I have "what it says" totally figured out, then I will know the literal Truth. I'll be trying to unpack all of the allusions and figurative languge within its covers to discern this literal Truth.

So, how do I know that the Bible is the Word of God? It's way too subtle, way too simple, way to complex, and way too deep and obvious all at the sme time for any human being to have designed. There is no other piece of literature that even comes close to its magnitude of wholistic completion in all the world. It's a one of a kind just like God is.

Christopher

The Word of God

I was thinking about how the Bible is the Word of God this morning. It seems to me that much trouble could be avoided if people could realize that the Bible is, in fact, a book. This seemingly obvious fact is apparently lost on many Bible scholars and clergy.
If one misses the essential message of the Bible, and the big ideas within its pages, then all of one's indepth scholarship is going to be scuballa (this is a technical/scholarly term from Koine Greek which means "crap").

Hebrew, for instance is a very poetic langauge by nature. The books of the Old Testament grew out of an ancient oral tradition. Thus one needs to let the word pictures guide one's understanding of the Old Testament more so than one's studies of particular words or passages. Basing one's theology on any one word or passage found in one place in the Old Testament without it being directed by the context of the whole is poor scholarship at the very least and down right shameful (especially in a case such as the dispensatinalists who use an obscure variant of a single word in the first%2