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One of the biggest problems I have with the Bible’s purpose in Christianity is that it seems that there’s always a slippery slope on which it’s interpretted. For example, a couple hundred years ago Sunday/Sabbath observance had a completely different meaning than it does today. In some societies, you just didn’t work on Sunday. Period. But even within my lifetime, Christians I’ve known have changed their own views on Sunday observance. It’s as if the Ten Commandments are being slowly phased out because of contemporary culture. Now I’ve heard the arguments that it’s more of a lifestyle of Sabbath observance and all that, but the bottom line is, the Bible says don’t work on Sunday and we’re coming up with more and more reasons to override that. I’d even say that many of the reasons seem valid to me. But why? Why did we wait until now to decide to override something chiselled in stone?

Women’s role in the church used to be more clearly defined. Now, in comes the tide of feminism, and we’re looking at the places that say “No women speaking in church” and saying that hey, that’s not for us, that’s a cultural norm rather than a moral one. And quite possibly that’s true. We’re a different society, where women don’t have the same roles as men anymore, and so it’s not so necesary to maintain such a male-dominated order to things. BUT my question is this: when you look down the road, at the pace we’re going, what other Biblical things are we going to be throwing out? Think of your grandparents and how stick-in-the-mud you thought they were about ditching hymns during worship. Well, imagine if some of the things you hold as ABSOLUTES were re-interpretted by your kids to fit the norm of society. How can the Bible really be relevant if we’re always reinterpretting it? Are we moving towards a Bible that only has meaning as an allegorical narrative?

Christianity is a religion that says there are absolutes. But with the path we are taking on interpreting the Bible, will that be true in a thousand years (should there be another thousand to come)? Will we be down to “love God and the rest of the Bible is outdated”? Maybe I’m making a mountain out of a molehill . . .

I think that in the not-too-distant future, most of the organized church will condone gay marriages. And I think that most of the honest, thinking, heart-commitment Christians will be right there with it. Whether that’s a good thing, a bad thing, or otherwise, I honestly can’t say. But what I can say is that the church of yesterday told us it was WRONG. And they didn’t say, “It’s wrong, but it may become right if society changes.” And both that church and the church of the future looked or will look at the Bible before coming to their conclusions on the matter. SOMETHING’S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE. What is it? What am I not seeing here?

Are there really absolutes?

The Ten Commandments are not being “slowly phased out” now. They were quickly discarded when Jesus came to town. This does not mean the Ten Commandments have no significance any more, but that the laws no longer condemn us to death. So I’d be careful not to wish for the old days when the Ten Commandments had more power.

The wonderful news of the Gospel is that we’re not condemned by stingy laws like the Ten Commandments now that Christ has given us the Spirit. In the Spirit, we live within the order that God has intended for His creation. In the Spirit, we as a Church can sort of make it up as we go along.

This is a very hopeful message. Since we live in a world that constantly changes, the Church, as a living breathing body of Believers, can adapt to the changes and live obediently no matter what day and age we live in. The situation we’re faced with now is different from the one in which Paul or Moses found himself. I don’t think repeating laws from the Old Testament is going to get us very far today. Rather than living according to the law, we must now live according to the spirit of the law.

And where are you getting this “absolute truth” idea? From the Bible?

It’s easy to see traditions and old beliefs being “phased out” as a slippery slope. I know what you mean. I think that if you step back and take a look at the history of the Christian church, there’s a lot more going on than just phasing out rules we once held dear (like not working on Sunday). Other things are changing, too. For example, my grandparents found the idea of going to a restaurant on Sunday evening very offensive. But I know I found their desire to isolate themselves from culture and their quiet contempt for other races and religions just as offensive. Many, many years ago, lots of people in the church thought it might be a good idea to force people into being Christians which led to horrendous violence and bloodshed. Through the grace of God, the church made it through that and has re-formed the way it reads scripture.

I’m saying that I think it’s inaccurate to view change and different/new interpretations of scripture as ALWAYS destructive. I don’t think we’re heading down any sort of path toward total irrelevance of scripture or are on the road to throwing out the Bible entirely. Sometimes the path may veer that way, but it often bends toward the will of the Lord as well. Since Jesus ascended we have been re-evaluating and re-forming the way we look at God’s word in the light of the Spirit. And that’s what we should be doing.

Here’s an interesting thing I just linked to from Gideon Strauss’s blog:
http://www.ccojubilee.org/resourcefolder/Discipleship/BibleStudy/HowtoStudytheBible/readingthebible.html

Some of you have probably read it (there’s a lot of Seerveld fans around here!). It doesn’t address this topic directly, but it gets at some important points.

Good point, J.

Grant: okay, so, if there’s sin, there are absolutes, right?. There’s right and wrong. I don’t know anything about “absolute truth” as you call it, but Christianity professes to the existence of right and wrong.

After thinking about it for awhile, I don’t think it’s worth pursuing my former question. I’ve heard all the No Condemnation stuff. Let me ask it this way: Is the Bible a sort of fable? Is it a sketchy blueprint by which we have examples of the right way to live, which we then take and apply to our culture?

I’d have to say I’ve never really gotten what Paul was trying to say when he explained that we’re not under the law yet we still obey the law. What I don’t get is how if we’re truly not under the law, what REALLY (and I mean really really) is the point of bothering to live a holy life at all? Jesus says that if we love him we’ll obey his commandments. So is that statement a fact rather than a command? Because if it’s a command, then it doesn’t sound to me like we’re really free after all. There seems to be an intricate relationship between your actions and your “salvation.” I think at heart that’s the relationship that I find problematic. Without deeds, our faith is dead. Yet if we’re not under the law, we don’t NEED “deeds” . . . apparently. So how can one be in Christ with a dead faith? (I realize I’m using a lot of New Internation Version translation words to express my point, but to me the paradox remains.) Are the places in the New Testament that spur us on to holy living merely a warning against being a “less productive Christian?” In other words, how can we NEED to bear good fruit in order not to be thrown into the fire and yet not be under the law (which to me, pertains to bearing good fruit) I think I’m grasping for a linear relationship between “saved” and “not saved” where there really isn’t one. But that, to me, is one of the great dilemmas of where I’m at in my faith life.

Somewhere at the heart of all of this mumbo jumbo is one of those little doubts that I rarely take the time to take off the shelf and examine.

To put my two cents in quickly:

Works are absolutely, 100% not necessary for salvation. Salvation is covered, no matter what. It’s done; it’s ours for the having. Nothing else that we or anyone does can change that.

A life lived in obedience to God (which will automatically produce good deeds) is an unaviodable living out of our gratitude. I really think this can mean different things for different people. Each of us is at a different stage in our lives, and each of us has certain gifts that may produce “bigger” or “more spectacular” results. Those who have been broken and scarred by life might not produce any visible works, but the simple fact that they are still alive and working through the pain might be faithful enough. I don’t think God has any sort of set idea about how many or what sorts of deeds he wants to see from us. God asks us only to receive his gift of salvation—to receive it truly and humbly, and to honor him through our lives. God wants us, simply, to be his children.

It’s pointless to worry that you’re not doing enough—God has already done it. The ONLY thing you have to do is to receive it.

I would just like to add to this that the whole “slave vs. free” language Paul uses is not meant to say we are no longer under any obligation to a Master. When we belong to God, when He is our master, we become family members, not just slaves. So salvation is a shift in position. I think you’re thinking of freedom in terms of no restrictions and not being under any authority. God does not offer that kind of freedom because it really isn’t possible. You are either a slave to Christ (which really means a family member that is free in Christ) or a slave to society/yourself, other gods essentially. The freedom you seem to be looking for, the kind that makes us free from all authority, would be the worst chaotic hell, if it were possible. It would mean we don’t belong to anybody or anything, not even to ourselves.

I would also like to add that I am also very confused about how we are to know right from wrong. Only God really knows and He tells us through His law and now through the Spirit. But how does that really happen? It’s a great mystery that must involve trusting God.

I know I am entering the discussion late and this is my first posting ever in such a dialogue so bear with me. I just thought it should be clarified that the Bible does not say don’t work on Sunday. If we are going to quote it accuracy is important.
The Bible says to keep the Sabbath day holy. The Sabbath is Saturday not Sunday.
I don’t mean to be nitpicky (sp?) I think it helps us understand the point that others are making about the law. It is important to understand that our motivation for keeping the law is gratitude for our salvation not to earn our salvation. Even in the OT the seed of this was there Exodus 20:1 “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt.”
If our motivation is gratitude then we are not under obligation to the law we are free to keep the law to show our gratitude to God.
All that said, I heartily agree with Adam that we are in danger of losing sight of what true Sabbath is in our lives. The easiest and best remedy for that is how we apply it in our own lives and not what the church out there may or may not believe about it. The power of the law is that it is written on our hearts not written on some rule book somewhere that is slipping away. With that in mind, how do you keep the Sabbath day holy?

An interesting study on the Sabbath and how it applies to Christians today:

http://www.khouse.org/articles/biblestudy/20000501-223.html

Kristinmarie: What you’re saying is basically the reformed viewpoint on the matter. That’s how I used to feel about it too. But how do you explain the places in the New Testament where we are instructed on how to live? How do you explain that faith without works is dead, if all we need is this mysterious acceptance? I realize that the N.T. also says that we’re saved by faith alone. But what’s faith? I think it’s got to be more than this acceptance. I think it’s something more complex than that. When it says that we’re saved by faith, not works, does that necessarily mean that works are out of the equation? I don’t think so. If it were true, I think the rest of the N.T. would hold to it. But it just doesn’t. There’s always an element in what you DO being intricately tied up in where your heart is. Obviously, we can’t keep all the laws perfectly, and that’s where grace comes in. But identifying salvation only in the heart seems to me to be a result of the false dichotomy between body and spirit that man has seemingly invented.

Now, only God can really look at our hearts. But aren’t we doing ourselves harm by identifying how we think he looks at them? Believing in God against all logic is mysterious. To me it makes sense that his salvation would be likewise mysterious. We want peace in knowing that we’re saved. But something about that kind of peace rubs me the wrong way. It’s not peace that passes all understanding. It’s the peace based on understanding. To me, it’s always seemed like the more knowledge we have, the less of the latter kind of peace we have. I think that we should begin to accept that fact and not claim to have so many of the answers.

Faith is like a fruit tree. If the tree is alive and healthy, it will produce lots of fruit. If it sick or dead, it won’t produce fruit. Good works, for us as christians are the fruits produced by our faith tree, so they are a sign for us that our faith is either alive and well, or dead. Works are not necessary for salvation at all, but if you have faith, then you will produce fruit.

i hope that makes sense.