On two occasions in the last week, I've found myself feeling as if I overran the base while teaching. Sunday night in men's group we somehow wandered into predestination and election, and the result was I got a phone call at home later from a deacon who was completely turned around and staggering to comprehend what seemed so clear to me.
Those of you who are SBC are probably laughing right now, because our beliefs (the traditional ones anyway) are sort of a hash. The Calvinist has the advantage of having a cool acronym and we don't. But I tried to help the guys get through it and felt like I had, until the call.
Then last night as I was finishing last Sunday's teaching on the myth that you can't trust the Bible, I went after some of the normal attacks on its veracity. I pulled up the Joshua 10 passage where the writer describes the sun standing still to help Israel win the battle and went from there into examples of figurative language.
"I watched a beautiful sunrise." A misstatement but it sounds better than "did you see the way the earth rotated this morning?"
"I have a friend down under." Down under what? The earth is round.
"They searched the four corners of the earth but couldn't find him." Uh, the earth, she have no four corners.
So I suggested that it was possible here that the writer was using figurative language to describe the event.
*crickets*
My goal is to help people in their ability to read the Bible and understand the ways of God. Sometimes in going to those places that might be more obscure, I wonder if I overrun. Thing is, that's exactly where the critics of the Bible live, so I'm trying to preemptively attack their arguments before they lead someone I love astray.
Anyone else hear crickets on occasion?
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