How We Know // Better than the Bible
Are you ever afraid someone will ask you why you believe what you believe? Do you fear someone might question what you believe? Responding to people's questions and challenges can get complicated. But what if you were confident you had the answer to the most important question about your faith? What if you could actually share a convincing faith in a cynical world? Our faith is solidly based on so much more than you might think! Let’s figure it out together!
Message Notes
“This is not a post I ever thought that I would write, but now I feel like I really need to. I’ve agonized over whether to say this publicly, and if so, how to do it. So here goes. After growing up in a Christian home, being a pastor’s kid, playing and singing in a Christian band, and having the word ''Christian’ in front of most of the things in my life, I am now finding that I no longer believe in God. The process of getting to that sentence has been several years in the making. It didn’t happen overnight or all of a sudden. It’s been more like pulling on the threads of a sweater, and one day discovering that there was no more sweater left. I have had private conversations with trusted friends about my doubts and discovered to my absolute shock that they are shared by nearly every close friend my age who also grew up in the church. I am stunned by the number of people in visible positions within Christian circles that feel the same way as I do. There were still many things about Christian culture that made me uncomfortable. In fact, the list was growing. There were things that just didn’t make sense to me. If God is all loving and all powerful, why is there evil in the world? Can he not do anything about it? Does he choose not to? Is the evil in the world a result of his desire to give us free will? Ok then, but what about famine and disease and floods and all the suffering? If God is loving, why does he send people to Hell? My whole life people always said, 'You have to go back to what the Bible says.’ I found, however, that consulting and discussing the Bible didn’t answer my questions. It amplified them. I was raised to believe that the Bible was the perfect word of God. Sure, it was written by human beings, but those people were divinely inspired. We can consider the words they wrote to be the Word of God. I began to have questions and doubts about that. It seemed like there were a lot of contradictions in the Bible that didn’t make sense. Suffice it to say that when I began to believe that the Bible was simply a book written by people as flawed and imperfect as I am, that was when my belief in God truly began to unravel.During a vacation to Mexico, I had a revealing conversation with my father-in-law who is also a pastor. I was asking about a verse in I Timothy that seems really oppressive of women. It says that women shouldn’t’t be in leadership, shouldn’t teach men, and shouldn’t wear their hair in braids. To me, that seems less like the message of the loving God that most Christians believe in now, and more like ideas that would’ve been present in the culture at the time. My father-in-law asked me if I’d been reading the King James Version. He felt that the King James had put its own spin on a lot of things and that it couldn’t be fully trusted. 'You have to go back to the original Greek,’ he said. This is something I’ve heard a lot over the years. ‘I am simply taking that far to its next natural conclusion. That the original Greek is also human, flawed, and imperfect, and also can’t be fully trusted.’ He replied, 'Well, if you believe that, what do you have left?’ I said, 'Exactly.’ Once I found that I didn’t believe the Bible is the perfect word of God, it didn’t take long to realize that I was no longer sure he was there at all.”
Jon Steingard, Former Lead Singer of “Hawk Nelson”
Where We’ve Been: Better Than the Bible, Pt. 1
Most of us come to Jesus out of an emotional pull, not a logical one.
Where We’ve Been: Better Than the Bible, Pt. 1
But what happens when our foundation of personal experience and “Jesus works” hits a rough patch? What happens when tough questions about the Bible pop up?
Where We’ve Been: Better Than the Bible, Pt. 2
Our faith is not dependent upon the Bible. It’s better than that!
Where We’ve Been: Better Than the Bible, Pt. 2
We have something better than a book. We have an event.
The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the basis for our belief.
Today
“How do I know my ‘better than’—the Resurrection—is reliable? And isn’t this just semantics? Isn’t the Resurrection in the Bible? So how is it better than the Bible if it’s part of the Bible? And it still sounds to me like you’re saying it’s OK to disbelieve in the Bible!”
The Bible: Infallible, but Unbelievable.
Good news! You don’t have to believe or understand all of it. In fact, you’re in good company if you don’t.
Six-literal-days of creation. A worldwide flood. Jonah and the Whale.
The historicity of these stories doesn’t establish or diminish our faith as Christians.
The Old Testament: Jesus took it serious, so I take it serious.
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.
Matthew 5:17 NIV
“How do I know my ‘better than’—the Resurrection—is reliable? And isn’t this just semantics? Isn’t the Resurrection in the Bible? So how is it better than the Bible if it’s part of the Bible? And it still sounds to me like you’re saying it’s OK to disbelieve in the Bible!”
Hermeneutics 101: The Bible is not a book.
It is a collection of books.
Focusing on four—the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
👎🏼 “The Gospels: Reliable because they’re in the Bible.”
👍🏼 “The Gospels: In the Bible because they’re reliable.”
The Gospels are reliable for the same reason any historical document is reliable.
Who wrote it and when they were written.
The Destruction of the Jewish Temple
August 3, 70 A.D.
Emperor Titus invades Jerusalem
Some of his disciples were remarking about how the temple was adorned with beautiful stones and with gifts dedicated to God. But Jesus said, “As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down.”
Luke 21:5-6 NIV
Let’s Sum It Up
We take the stories in the Old Testament serious because Jesus did.
We take Jesus serious because of what the Gospels said.
We take the Gospels serious because of who wrote them and when they were written.
“You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve. Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.”
John 6:67-69 NIV
We have something better than the Bible.
We have Someone.
