Pondering Pastor

I learned something today … it was about my own beliefs. Funny how I didn’t know that I believed this until I was asked a question. Actually, it is more accurate to say that I put a couple of pieces together that previously had not placed side by side. I was asked about comments a pastor had made about what God desires for us. (The details are not important for our purposes here.) Replying, I found myself affirming that what this pastor had said was true, but there was more.

One of the significant features of scripture (and by this I mean the Bible) is that it has the hand of many authors. (I know, some of you will say that God is the only author of scripture. Bear with me here.) Scripture is often understood as the revelation of God through these authors and editors. They experience God in a particular way because of who they are. Their writings give witness to this. I suspect this is rather unique in religious holy writings. Mohammad was the sole human involved in the writing of the Q’uran and Joseph Smith was the sole human hand involved in the Book of Mormon. It would be interesting to explore this further.

I believe that the Bible has a variety of authors because the experience of the revelation of God is for the community and is never captured in its entirety by one individual. (Yes, Jesus is different.) By extension, one interpretation of scripture can only be part of the fullness of God’s revelation. We need to listen to the voices of others because God is revealed in this way. That scares some people. It has never scared me.

I appreciate my liberal and conservative brothers and sisters in the faith, and I listen to them carefully. In my response to the question, I even stated that although I disagree vehemently with Westboro Baptist Church’s position on God’s judgment against this nation, their theological position might be more biblically defensible than that of some popular pastors.

The short version of this?

It is our faith that no one speaks for the fullness of God’s revelation except Jesus Christ.

Pondering Pastor

TOKYO (AFP) - A letter that a young girl in Japan sent into the sky in a balloon some 15 years ago has been found on a fish hauled from 1,000 metres (3,300 feet) below the Pacific.

A fisherman found the still legible piece of paper sitting on a sticky flatfish in his catch on Thursday, along with a torn-off string and the fragment of a red balloon. He opened the folded paper, discovering it was a handwritten letter from a six-year-old girl at an elementary school in Kawasaki, 150 kilometres (93 miles) away from where the fish was caught off Choshi port.

…

Shirahige, now a 21-year-old university student, said: “I can’t get over the wonder of how the letter survived 15 years. I never expected I’d get a reply this way.”

Our actions have consequences.  Fifteen years after an “innocent act”, this child’s garbage was pulled from the bottom of the ocean.  We would have expected it to decompose.  What about our “trash”?  How long will it survive us?

Pondering Pastor