It's really hard to write about some things without sounding really up-tight and better-than-thou, or conversely too flippant or insincere. How can I convey to people my values and the things that are really important without giving them impressions that will turn them off to it? It's certainly a relevent challenge, something I would love to overcome someday. I think Donald Miller does this very well in his books. He talks about God, but is still very real about his own raw human-ness. I want to write like that someday.
But as I've been talking myself through my frustration with people who think they know too much about what they beleive, I think I'm figuring something out. I guess I always thought the problem was with people who make big leaps of faith to beleive in God and the Bible (good thing), and then just start deducting things from there in a if-this-is-true-that-must-also-be-true kind of way (bad thing). Like, well, I beleive in God, I beleive in the Bible- the Bible says to keep the Sabbath day holy- THEREFORE: I will not play cards on Sunday. When really that seems like the biggest leap of faith of all of them, except this time the faith is in your own ability to translate the scriptures correctly rather than in outside revelation.
Does this make sense? What I'm realizing is that our faith shouldn't be in our own ability to translate the scriptures correctly, it should be in God's ability to establish the truth through the scriptures. If I say that we can't know something for sure so we should stop trying to enforce our standards on other people, then what I'm really saying is, "I don't think God made that clear enough for us to actually beleive it." Sometimes that might be the case, but most often it's not. The Bible is completely sufficient to guide us through our daily lives, with no exceptions. I can know what I beleive and stand for it unwaveringly. I like that.
