Middle Ground - Reading Wider

The first area we consider is that with respect to Bible study and interpretation:

"We will seek to widen our reading (looking at a range of theological writers rather than only those who support our current viewpoint) and we will seek to deepen our understanding, prayerfully seeking God’s revelation through our study."

Dialogue and reading widely are the only way to embrace and understand the issues that challenge and, at times, frustrate the Church (and presumably, us!). To do this we do this we need to understand the intended outcome, baggage and preconceptions on the part of the author, for few write without such, and of the reader who is likewise rarely unfettered or free from opinion.

Problems come when that which is held to be traditional is eschewed on the grounds of God wanting us ‘to be happy’, a warrant that supports many a liberal thinking person it seem! The same is true of those whom I would consider to be fundamentalist ‘book burners’ in that their rigid, joyless and often equally ‘proof-texted’ offerings, being often contextually in the shallows, are more about their reaction than the action to which they respond.

As Christians we are called to be ellenctic – that is to embrace a Socratic form of dialogue whereby one puts their point of view, beliefs and understanding and then the other person puts theirs and offers corrections and issues questions. This done the process is reversed and so the ball passes backwards and forwards across the net until both sides agree or come to a position of respectful disagreement!

Sadly, those who usually seek to ‘read wider’ or do ‘deeper theology’ are often found to be looking for that Philosopher’s stone that will turn that which was previously prohibited into something that bears the warrant of God. There is also to issue that whilst the liberal will seek what might be considered to be ‘liberal’ liberties or extra-biblical revelations (i.e. I was recently in dialogue with someone who revealed that most of the Gospels were the result of editing and by use of form, redaction and other critical methods we could discount about half of the Bible and find that universalism, homosexuality and polygamous marriage were all permitted before the editor’s pen was employed!)

The bottom line is that we should all read widely – I have as many, if not more, books from authors whose theology and views oppose mine and often gain more from those books that find me shouting at them than those that find me nodding.
The passages I find myself coming back to time and time again are (in book order):

Micah 6: 6 – 8
“With what shall I come before the LORD and bow down before the exalted God?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?
Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

Matthew 7: 1 – 5; 12
“Do not judge, or you too will be judged.
For in the same way others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”

1 John 4: 19 – 21
“We love because he first loved us.
If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.”

Pax