It's Clear We Don't Know Who We're Dealin With Here...
I am so far quite enjoying my semester... maybe that's because classes just started yesterday? No, it's been great so far.
In Old Testament Survey today, Ken Esau was talking about the average Christian's view of scripture and frankly how pathetic it is. Here we have the God-Breathed Bible in every one of our houses and we can't be bothered to pick it up, never mind love it and devote ourselves to its study and reading! I was really struck by that.
He told a story of a mormon Doctor that he had known in Alberta and, despite being a very busy doctor, how he used to teach the old testament to grade 11 kids before their school started every weekday morning! When he investigated a little more he discovered that in grade 9 they study "The Pearl of Great Price" and in Grade 10 they studied the New Testament, in grade 11 the Old Testament and in Grade 12 The book of Mormon... every day before school! How popular a program do you think that would be in your home church? Then Ken told us about the Muslim treatment of the Koran and how they refuse to even place another book or item on top of the Koran so as to prevent its disrespect. And how in order to become a "pastor" in the Muslim tradition you must have the ENTIRE Koran memorized! How do we demonstrated our love and respect and devotion to the Holy Scriptures?... I seem to remember that in highschool our bibles didn't warrant all that much respect judging by the amount of doodling and/or duct-tape that covered the majority of them... Maybe we just need to make more durable bibles? Looking back on Bible class all I can think was what a wasted opportunity that was. I mean here we were presented with the opportunity to learn and study God's word and because it was cool to care-less, that's what most (if not all) of us did.
So then Ken was talking about his kid's sunday school class and how little emphasis there was on the bible. It is all about how much fun we can let kids/teens have in a church so that they want to come back... but the thing is they are not coming back for more teaching of the Scripture, they are coming back for more entertainment! Our entire culture is built around entertainment now, it is really all we have time for, and slowly and very sadly that has been incorperated into the church as well. God taking second place to entertainment. In our Christian lives it seems that we need to have a good time with our friends or relax in front of the TV in order to complete a "good" day. But how is that Christian at all? Why are we not memorizing the bible in our spare time so that we can grow in our understanding of who God is and how he is working out his wonderful plan in our lives and to deepen the beautiful relationship that he wants with each of us if only we would give him the TIME of day!
Well, those are some of the thoughts rolling around in my head today. I hope they change my life for the better. I hope I look more like Jesus today.
In Old Testament Survey today, Ken Esau was talking about the average Christian's view of scripture and frankly how pathetic it is. Here we have the God-Breathed Bible in every one of our houses and we can't be bothered to pick it up, never mind love it and devote ourselves to its study and reading! I was really struck by that.
He told a story of a mormon Doctor that he had known in Alberta and, despite being a very busy doctor, how he used to teach the old testament to grade 11 kids before their school started every weekday morning! When he investigated a little more he discovered that in grade 9 they study "The Pearl of Great Price" and in Grade 10 they studied the New Testament, in grade 11 the Old Testament and in Grade 12 The book of Mormon... every day before school! How popular a program do you think that would be in your home church? Then Ken told us about the Muslim treatment of the Koran and how they refuse to even place another book or item on top of the Koran so as to prevent its disrespect. And how in order to become a "pastor" in the Muslim tradition you must have the ENTIRE Koran memorized! How do we demonstrated our love and respect and devotion to the Holy Scriptures?... I seem to remember that in highschool our bibles didn't warrant all that much respect judging by the amount of doodling and/or duct-tape that covered the majority of them... Maybe we just need to make more durable bibles? Looking back on Bible class all I can think was what a wasted opportunity that was. I mean here we were presented with the opportunity to learn and study God's word and because it was cool to care-less, that's what most (if not all) of us did.
So then Ken was talking about his kid's sunday school class and how little emphasis there was on the bible. It is all about how much fun we can let kids/teens have in a church so that they want to come back... but the thing is they are not coming back for more teaching of the Scripture, they are coming back for more entertainment! Our entire culture is built around entertainment now, it is really all we have time for, and slowly and very sadly that has been incorperated into the church as well. God taking second place to entertainment. In our Christian lives it seems that we need to have a good time with our friends or relax in front of the TV in order to complete a "good" day. But how is that Christian at all? Why are we not memorizing the bible in our spare time so that we can grow in our understanding of who God is and how he is working out his wonderful plan in our lives and to deepen the beautiful relationship that he wants with each of us if only we would give him the TIME of day!
Well, those are some of the thoughts rolling around in my head today. I hope they change my life for the better. I hope I look more like Jesus today.
posted by Stewart at
2:08 PM
1 Comments:
Thanks for this post. I know I learned a lot from Muslims about how to respect Holy Scriptures (they put us to shame).
I share so many of these sentiments.
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