A friend of mine posed the question: Do you when studying the Bible look at the Chapter or the specific Book as a whole to understand the message behind it or, do you traverse it word by word?

My answer turned into a blog post… heheheh Here we go:

The short quick answer is I look at them in context and even go back to the Greek or Hebrew while studying so I guess I am a word by word surfer guy for the most part.

To study the bible this way, however, we must believe that there is value in the actual words. This belief encompasses 5 core principles the absence of which I believe will inevitably lead to a crisis of faith.

First that God inspired the original text, word for word. 2 Timothy 3:16-17

Two that God protected his words from delusion, distortion, and omission through the ancient copying processes. Matthew 5:18

Three that God himself guided the canonization process of picking which books belonged in the bible. Revelation 1:2

Four that He also Holy inspired the translation of his word in to different languages. Galatians 1:9

Five that He can also through the Holy Spirit convey intended meaning to us as readers. 1 Corinthians 2:14

Without these fundamentals the bible can not truly be trusted and all doctrinal arguments fall apart quickly. In addition nothing ontological can truly be known or agreed upon. Everything becomes temporal and phenomenal in as it pertains to or is limited to our own experience. Now, as a side note, I believe we can know God this way… through our experience or through the phenomenal world. Kant argued that this was not possible but I firmly believe he was wrong for this simple reason: He argued that we could not break through or escape the phenomenal world to know God in a metaphysical sense. He said that we are limited in what we can know to that which we perceive through our senses. He was wrong because he did not consider the fact that God can and does permeate all of creation as Paul testified: Romans 1:20 “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” God does what we cannot. He infuses the element of design in all of creation as well as in the law of causality and the 3 laws of logic. In short those very things that allow us to know anything testify to very existence and character of God!

That argument aside if all we can only know God through our experience this limits us to worshiping and fellowship only with those with the same experience as us. Anyone with a different experience would in a sense be worshiping a different God. Infinite self defined gods is an agnostic solution and is no better than no god at all. So I admit my argument for the bible being persistently inspired throughout history is basically practical.

I also, however have a second argument that pertains to Sovereignty. If God is sovereign and he lays out an instruction book and a love letter for all humanity or if God is capable of sending a message at all then that message must also be sovereign or perhaps a better way to put it is that it must be “ultimately infallible”. What I mean by this is that the Bible may be misunderstood and misquoted and misused by individuals but as a source of truth it is protected by God himself. I think this is represented most firmly in the KJV, the preservation of the greek and hebrew manuscripts and the testament of the consistency evidenced in the dead sea scrolls. So that even though one person may destroy a single bible by burning it, no one could ever destroy all the bibles in the world. One group may pervert the message to their own end (Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, etc) but they cannot change the message to the world.

With these core beliefs we can say that a study of the Word of God today is relevant to knowing God and receiving instruction and edification.

2 Timothy 3:16-17

All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.

Personally if you own a color television and pay for a programing service and are not using TIVO then I just dont understand you. I dont get you and I dont think we can ever see eye to eye on any issue. hehhehe But seriously I would not go back. -Oh maybe to the days of the antenna on the top of the house. My dad out even in a storm twisting the metal poll in the wind until he got the “thats it!” from the watcher at the door. My Dad who’s favor adage of the day was “If I ever get to lazy to tell my kids to get up and change the channel then I’ll buy a TV with a remote!” Back to the days of fuzzy sketchy images from 3 channels (maybe 4 on a clear night) that were paid for by advertisers and completely free to us -as long as we sat through the commercials every 10 minutes.

But did we? Did we watch commercials? or did we hit mute and talk or run the restroom and/or kitchen and busied ourselves with other errands until we heard the world altering call “its back on”.

So now the advertisers are saying that TIVO and other DVRs (are there others? -really there arent yet) are killing network television! Why? - because no one watches the commercials anymore. I still stop down for my favorites like the Gecko and the PC vs. Mac ads. As well as Movie previews and upcoming show information. But other than those exceptions the images of baby diapers and cleaning solutions go whizzing by like ZOOM ZOOM. -on a side note for the longest time I was only a middle weight FFer. Fast Forwarding at mere medium speed of the second gear of the TIVO accelerator, but no more! I have graduated to dangerous but high satisfying 3rd tier! Super Speed! Thats right I have developed the art of fast forwarding through commercials and processing the flashing images, making split second decisions to validity of the content and BOOM pressing the play button just in time to reveal the soft black fade-in screen of my preselected prerecorded program. Thank you my parents are proud… especially my Dad.
The future has already happened but they still want to complain. They want it both ways I guess. Advertisers have already moved into the shows with product placement and badges on the corners of the screen. I speak for my fellow brothers when I say you can have our TIVO remotes when you pry them from our Cheetoe stained hands! We will not go quietly into the night, we’ll just get netflix accounts and only turn the TV on for Sports Center and to see what Krammer is pushing.

and thats my 2 cents.

Here is some one elses: TIVO is Killing TV

-thanks to TIVO, CHEETOES and NETFLIX for their generous support of this blog.