No, I'm not going to be giving off a list of answers. This post
is more of a study of what Christianity does and does not answer. For
the first thing, Christianity does not answer all the questions, and
there are very intentional and obvious examples of this. For example,
Jesus taught in parables, which were meant not to be understood (until
He explained them later). The reason for this is another thing that we
will probably never know for sure (except that it tells us that God is
mysterious, not just in capacity but also in presentation). And there's
an important reason why I'm not going to try to explain why here (though
trying to explain is a perfectly healthy and logical thing to do, so
long as it remains at a level of possible explanation rather than
absolute truth) and that is that we aren't given all the answers in the
Bible. Anyone trying to tell you what the Bible says about computers, or
the internet, or modern life is using interpretation, and at best
probably only gets it mostly right.
However, there even
issues covered in the Bible have ambiguous or inexistent answers. One of
these areas is Christ's declaration that he came, not to abolish the
law (referring to the Jewish laws from the Torah) but rather to fulfill
it, implying that the laws still have some degree of purpose, to the
famous vision of Peter that dictates that kosher is no longer a matter
of concern to the Christian church. While the Church unanimously concurs
that Kosher is of little to no importance to modern Christians, the
Jerusalem Council (a group of Messianic Jews who respect Christian
literature but maintain a Jewish tradition that the gentile church never
adopted) holds that God *can* but does not necessarily make all things
clean. These two groups both have legitimate perspectives on the matter,
and neither side conclusively "wins" the argument. Now this doesn't
mean that both sides are right or wrong, but it's crucial to remember
that dogmatic positions tend to be overly critical of language or
specific verses, while the meaning of the text is written with much less
criticism. Being a plenary inspiration interpreter and relatively less
legalistic than many theologians, I believe that the exact words of the
text are less important than the intended meaning of the text as a
whole. However, there are perspectives that claim that the words are
absolutely true as they are in the text, and that we must take them very
literally ranging to perspectives that totally ignore individual words
and go with themes or hidden messages in the text. Both of these risk
over-thinking the scriptural significance of the passage. I believe that
scripture makes sense when read without excessive analysis or
simplification- the text should be read like any other book. The reason
for this isn't that there aren't values to the other two types of
interpretation, but rather that it's best to not read in your own
perspectives. While you wouldn't create symbolism in a novel like Lord
of the Rings or The Hunger Games unless you were writing a paper,
studies of scripture frequently focus on symbolism, or specific themes
or words to an extent that over complicates the study- and allows for
the interpreter to "write in" their own meaning to the text. Is it good
to interpret the Bible? Yes, and it is good to read the Bible, but
implying meaning corrupts the purpose and principles of the text.
This is a complicated subject to approach because it risks falling on
either side of the spectrum- either running away from all interpretation
and childishly screaming LALALALALA to ignore anyone's interpretations
to saying that interpretation is the only way to really understand the
Bible. What is the most important thing to remember is that
interpretation is *interpretation* not facts, and should be assessed as
such. For example, look to the creationism debates. There are the
creation vs. evolutionary creation camps, with both sides stating that
the other is obviously wrong (one using the text of the Bible to state
that there are clear statements of creation, and the other using
scientific data to state that there is clear evidence of evolution and
attribute it to God, both of which probably presume way too much).
Notably, as an aside of interest, there's no mention of God creating the
universe, (indeed, the text of Genesis first mentions God floating over
the waters, not God creating the waters) as if to make the issue a
symbol of unknowing; at the very least, we would have to assume to state
that God created the earth, since all the stuff He explicitly does in
Genesis is shape the sky, and land, and that sort of thing- He creates
life, but everything else was apparently there before the text
begins. Both old earth (life arose through evolution over millions of
years) creationists and new earth (life was created some thousands of
years ago) presume God created. I'm not saying He didn't, I'm just
saying that we fundamentally presume so much in our modern theologies
that we don't even look to the texts to verify all our positions- only
the bits that support our arguments. Both sides have a chance of being
right, but in the end it really doesn't matter- the questions we should
be concerned with in the study of the Bible are questions like is God
big enough to do this? To be honest, I believe that God is big enough to
make the world in seven days- but I don't know whether or not He did.
For all we know, He could have made the world in fourteen days and is
laughing at us now. We know we are saved through the blood of Christ-
whether works or faith substantiate our salvation is unimportant (as
I've stated earlier, true belief results in both- if you are truly
faithful, your life shows it, and if you are diligent to the words and
teachings of Christ, provided you are doing so for Christ's sake, you
have faith).
TL;DR version:
We over think religion. The answers are rarely written out in scripture
like interpreters pretend they are. Most that we hold to be true from
scripture is really interpretation- and these specific interpretations
don't matter. What is important is the core meaning of scripture- God is
powerful or we are saved by Christ's blood rather than God created the
earth in seven days or we must do works to be saved instead of being
saved by faith alone. While these later statements might be true, the
certainty of the first is what matters, the latter are human
interpretations trying to grasp the concepts and make them into
something tangible.
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