EXPERIENCE V THE WORD

Modern interpretation of scripture is so often subject to cultural influence. There are two ways that we can interpret scripture and let me hasten to add that no one believes the bible is the word of God. What they believe to be the word of God is their interpretation of it. If they didn’t there would be only one interpretation.

The first way is that we look at our experience and then try and find something in the scriptures that will justify what we are doing or we reinterpret the scriptures to make it say what we want it to say.

The other way is to look at the scripture and try to find out what it is saying to us and then make our experience line up with it.

The second method is harder because most denominations are entrenched in their traditions and there is so much at stake they would rather make the scriptures fit their experience.

An example is a denomination that says christening babies is in scripture. They quote what Jesus said “suffer the little children and forbid them not, for theirs is the kingdom of God.” That apparently means that children should be christened.

The true believer would say “what does the scripture teach about baptism.” They would them look up ALL the references to baptism, look at the context and then decide what is the overall revelation about baptism.

Their response would be to say “if that is what the scripture teaches that is what I will do.” They would then make their cultural values fit in with what the scripture teaches and they would shun any tradition that is contrary to the word of God.

That is what should happen but it rarely does, as in most denominations, tradition overrides clear scriptural teaching. This does not surprise me as the very basis of denominations is unscriptural.

You won’t find in the New Testament any reference to the Baptist church, The Lutheran church, the Pentecostal church, the Apostolic church, the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, the Brethren church, the Uniting church and so on.

What you will find is the church in Corinth, the church in Ephesus, The church at Philippi, the church at Laodicea. In other word one united church in each town. None of them were required to be subservient to HQ at Jerusalem and none of them were required to be subject to the HQ in Crete or Arabia.

Every church in the New Testament was an autonomous body that connected with other churches via the apostles mainly.

Making the scriptures fit our experience is fraught with many problems as one thing usually leads to another and one compromise has to be covered by another compromise, until you start to believe your actions as right and the word of God as wrong.

The end result is what we have today and that is 35,000 denominations. Far from being one as Jesus prayed in John’s gospel, we have never been so fragmented as one after another has taken off on some disagreement and started their own church which is supposed to be a true expression of it and better than all the others.

That is fine as it stands, but history shows that most just become another denomination doing not much more than the next one except maintain the status quo and trying not to lose members (and money) to the other denomination down the road. This is particularly relevant as we have moved into a shopping mentality where we look for the products (church) that suit us.

The focus then becomes the maintenance and development of ‘my’ church as opposed to building the kingdom of God. That is why Satan is having such a field day out there taking over one institution after another and imposing his bondage on them. We don’t have time to do anything about that because we have to spend all our time shoring up our own base.

The bottom line is that we have become Satan’s best friend as we keep squabbling amongst ourselves and try to outdo each other. Things are so bad that we would rather justify our tradition than honestly look at scripture and realise that what we are doing is not pleasing to God, is contrary to scripture and it is playing right into the hands of the devil.