Warning: Possible rant ahead.
Today in theology we talked about special and general revelation. During the part on general revelation, my professor (as well as some other students) stated that while God does reveal himself through nature, and while we do have internal knowledge of God since we are created in his image, neither of those are good enough to have a relationship with him, due to the fall.
To this point, I would agree. Yes, for one to know God and Jesus and have a relationship with them, one needs community, more knowledge, in addition to nature and the internal knowledge.
However, my class took it one step further: You need Scripture to go to heaven.
Oh. I see.
"So what then," I ask, "happens to the people in Africa who neither have access to a Bible nor can read?"
"Good question. What does the Bible say?"
Some people responded with verses such as Rom 10:17 which talks about not being able to have faith without the message from the Word of Christ.
One person mentioned how it may not seem fair that the tribal people in Africa don't go to heaven because they don't have the Bible, but then again, it isn't fair that we go to heaven because really we don't deserve it anymore than we do.
All I could think about was about how BLESSED we are to have access to the Bible and even the ability to READ. And why do we have those things? Because we're rich. And white. Mostly because we're rich.
And then I began to see how I view God compared to how the class was viewing God. Do we honestly believe that God would damn people to hell because they didn't read the Bible? Do we think that God is SO SMALL that he only saves those who have read the Bible? Is God SO SMALL that he is INCAPABLE of speaking living truth into the hearts of people even though they cannot put a name to it?
I do not serve a small god who is confined to a book. I do not serve a god who can be predicted or who has allowed us to figure out who is in and who is out or who sends the poor and desperate to hell because they haven't been reached by white people.
I serve a God who is mysterious, whose ways still confound people today. A God who is BIGGER than the Bible (he created it after all...creators are bigger than their creations). A God who isn't confined to what people say or think. I serve a God who is STILL speaking and STILL moving and STILL showing himself to his creation.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Oh Theology class...
Posted by Jennifer at 2:32 PM
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3 comments:
This is not quite a real comment to your post (I still don't have the emotional energy to confront the topic.), I did have an interesting conversation in small group last night that I wrote about on my blog and I thought you may be interested.
Shameless plug.
well said. you always have really good thoughts.
This is a question that will make many people in the room nervous.
Just a week ago I sat down with another local pastor who thought I was unitarian for thinking the absurd idea that God gets the final word on who is in and who is out. You know... that whole passage about Jesus separating the sheep and the goats and us being surprised who's actually in heaven?
Yeah... apparently some people don't like that passage.
I think for many people it boils down to our own insecurity when we try to theorize about others' eternal security. For many of us we question our own salvation on a daily basis, and so to counteract that we come up with a system of theories about how it all "works."
And then Jesus does something odd like tell a lady on the side of the road that her sins are forgiven... even though she didn't ask for it. Or he tells a guy whose friends bust through a roof that not only is he healed, but "the faith of his friends" have saved him from his sins... that he's "forgiven."
That messes with the plan in our heads, so we go, "Well, you can make some assumptions about those people and what was already going on in their hearts." Yeah, you can.
But the bigger question is what is behind our need to make those assumptions.
Ah, yes... having a 100% understanding of how salvation works.
Sorry... I think I took over your rant.
In any event, the aformentioned pastor and I reconciled so all is good. He regards me as a Christian now, which at the end of the day is most important to me. You know, what other people think and all.
;)
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