St. John Studies

I’m back!

I want to give a special person a big thank you.  I knew for about two weeks I would be traveling to a locale where internet service was spotty at best and it was.  It was nice to be away from the constant bombardment of media but I am not there now and it is time for me to get back to work.

The special person I want to thank is Audrey Scott, the administrative assistant at St. John United Methodist Church.  Audrey is the one who loaded the pre-written posts onto the blog while I was gone.  I did not want to leave readers completely and this was the only way I could maintain contact.

Thanks Audrey.

We have reached the point in our book where Pastor Hamilton has finished talking about the gray area between extreme black and white viewpoints.

Now, he is going to focus on specific issues that divide us, from science, evolution and other religions to abortion and homosexuality.

My prayer is that I will be able to deal with these issues myself and encourage you to see views that you have not considered.

My aim is not to shake your faith, or even change your values, but find a way to build bridges on these issues, issues that divide our friends, families and even our nation.

DC

As we conclude our discussion of “The Battle over the Bible” [Chapter 8} Pastor Hamilton finds a way to summarize this warfare between conservative interpreters and liberal interpreters.

I wish he could find a way to make these warring sides make peace but that is not going to happen.

Instead he expresses his own view of the Bible and I want to comment on it because it is near to my view of the Bible.

As I have gotten older, I read the Bible more than ever. I consult the Bible in the writing of this blog, I consult the Bible in the teaching of my Sunday school class and I just have this habit of reading it every day now.  That has been in place for the past year and it shows no sign on slacking off [thank you God].

I do see the writers of the Bible as human beings with all the foibles we all have. They are capable of misunderstanding things and being inconsistent.  They were sinners and very good people but they were given their messages from God.  I believe God gave them direction in their writing.  I believe God gave the copyists guidance in their copying the Bible, I believe church leaders felt God’s guidance in the selection of the canon and I believe God gives me guidance in my reading of His Word.

I agree with Pastor Hamilton that the Bible is “living and active” and I believe the very reading of the Bible can change your life. I was telling someone the other day that I think the goal of every Christian should be to get as much Bible inside themselves as possible.

Pastor Hamilton likens reading the Bible to taking communion and I like that image. I pray before I read the Bible.  I pray that the Holy Spirit will speak to me as I read the word.  I ask that my powers of observation be sharpened and my eyes be open to what the text is saying.  I ask for wisdom and insight as I seek to interpret what the text means.  I ask that the Bible touch my life in ways that need God’s touch.  I ask that God convict me of any issues in my life that I’m hiding.  I give God complete permission to search my heart to see if there is anything in me that is contrary to His will.  I ask to be challenged by His holiness and comforted by His promises.

As we approach communion, we should be in prayer just as we approach the Bible we should be in prayer. As communion imparts grace, wisdom, truth and hope, so does the Bible.

Maybe it is my education but I don’t turn my back on Biblical scholarship. As we have been discussing in Chapter 8, Bible scholars do have their biases.  Some focus on the writers of God’s word as humans; other believe that the writers are a part of a divine process.  I believe that by reading Biblical scholarship I am opposed to does not make me lose my faith.  I am able to separate the bias out and even an opinion I don’t appreciate can have a grain of truth.  At least it is important for me to understand the position of people I don’t agree with.

In essense, like John Wesley, I feel the need to incorporate four elements in my reading of the Bible: I hold the Scripture up as the first authority before considering anything else.  I value traditional knowledge about the Bible, for those who have come before us do know a lot and they can instruct me. I value my ability to reason or think especially if it is in tune with the Holy Spirit and I value experience that I have had with scriptures in the past and experiences I have had in life that relate to the Bible.

Psalm 119:105 is possibly the best way to summarize how we should all feel about the Bible. Its  words are “a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.”

Enough said…

“If the liberals tend to emphasize the Bible’s humanity at the expense of its divinity, the conservatives often emphasize the Bible’s divinity at the expense of its humanity.”

How can Pastor Hamilton say this? What is the meaning of this sentence in regard to our relationship with The Bible?

He is merely trying to provide more explanation about the polarizing approaches that Christians have about God’s Word.

What happens when the Bible writers are seen as human? Well, to put it bluntly, good things happen and also some “not good” things.

First of all, humans tend to have an agenda and the liberal interpretation of the Bible assumes that the Bible writers had their own point of view as writers. I have one; don’t you?  The writer’s perspective is not “the perspective”; it is only one perspective.  They were not perfect people.  They had their own characters, with good aspects and bad aspects.  They were biased.  They had their own situations in life and they of course lived in a particular time in history [which influenced their outlook on life].  Like I am doing now, I am aware of my readers.  I know my readers are living in this time with me [our history]; my readers have characters and biases.  Some would say this point-of-view discussion is not so helpful; it complicates things and maybe undermines faith for some.  Others see the human Bible authors as writers expressing a beautiful message that has a timeless quality about it; the humanity that is expressed is the source of the beauty and even though it is a difficult book to read, it has a wonderful, amazing and life-giving quality about it.

What happens when the Bible writers are seen as divine? Also, to put it bluntly, good things happen and also some “not good” things.  Some conservative Christians have elevated the Bible to the level of the fourth trinity.  That is not bad for them if they truly espouse that extreme view of Scripture but it is a problem for people who want to come to know God’s word.  Sadly, there are too many serious doubters out in the world today who make it their business to poke holes in the Bible.  For example, the internet is full of webpages written by atheists who point out the errors of inconsistencies of the Bible.  When the atheist and the conservative Christian lock horns, it appears that the conservative Christian has developed doctrine that according to Pastor Hamilton “backs them into a corner.”  The inconsistencies are there and saying that they are not does not make them go away.  For the serious Christian who just wants to cozy up to the Bible, this is a serious barrier.

Pastor Hamilton opens his chapter with a woman who was making a commitment to read the Bible for the first time. She took God’s Book to bed with her and as she read, she became more disgusted.  David collected 100 foreskins; Solomon was having a lot of sex with his “whorish wives,”  Abimelech killed all 70 of his brothers.  Her husband writes “She’s going to have a little chit-chat with God and what in the world He may have been thinking when He penned this or that little number.”

What is this woman’s problem? She is seeing inconsistency in the Bible.  She is having trouble reconciling the message of God’s word.

I like former pastor Rob Bell’s comments about how he views the Bible. He admits that The Book challenges his knowledge but also The Book uplifts him:  “I continue to find the Bible the most mysterious book—the more insight I gain, the more I realize how much I don’t know.  It inspires and encourages, and it also frustrates and provokes.  The Bible is a difficult book.”

Pastor Hamilton adds: [truly] “it is a difficult and complex book. It is also a wonderful, amazing and life giving book.

For me, I use a cliché and I have to apologize. I can’t put the Bible “in a box”, the way the liberal high critic does.  I can’t put it in the conservative low critic box either.

It’s the Bible and I am always trying to learn what God has in store for me…by reading its pages.

In a previous post, I discussed the schism between the higher critic and the lower critic.

You may wonder why Adam Hamilton wants to focus on such a topic in his book Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White.

Well here is the easy answer. His book is about things in this world that divide us and over the years people have argued quite a lot about the Bible.  This has evolved into the position of the Bible scholar who questions the Word of God  [the high critic] and the position of the Bible scholar who accepts every word as God’s Words [the low critic].

If I could imagine what was in Pastor Hamilton’s mind as he planned his book, he probably is greatly concerned about how the Christian community has not been very interested in an even-handed approach to these two positions, people lining up for one position and casting stones at the other side.

There it is; it is all about looking at extreme positions and how people tend to adopt an extreme position and then castigate those who don’t think like they do.

How does this play out in our world today?

The low critic, fundamentalist or conservative believer is most concerned with winning people to Christ. That is a noble goal and no one could say that this objective is not emphasized in God’s word.

Jesus said “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation” [Mark 16:15].

The high critic, modernist or liberal believer is most concerned with the social gospel, taking the ideas of the Bible as a foundation for making our world a better place.   Jesus came to improve the world, preaching “Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these” [Mark 12:31].

That is a noble goal and it would seem logical for a Christian to help others less fortunate; hence making the world a better place.

The conservative believer reads the Bible literally, affirming that the creation occurred in the last ten thousand years; the modernist does not hold to that literal interpretation, given the nature of science and evidence of the age of the earth.

The conservative believer rejects the idea that women can serve in the church in leadership positions; the modernist does not believe that this idea is practical for our world today. The conservative believes “A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet” [1 Timothy 2:11-12].  That is very clear; the modernist discounts that Scripture.

Which position is right? Which position is wrong?

That is the dilemma that a believer faces today.

Pastor Hamilton states “Most Christians find themselves between these two poles of the most conservative and the most liberal Christians….They would reject a literalistic reading of the Bible, embrace a willingness to ask questions and an openness of the possibility that not everything recorded in the Gospels is strictly historical.” That does not mean that there is not great reverence for God’s word and the hard rock fundamentals of the Gospels are accepted.  The Holy Spirit inspired the scriptures in some way.  Jesus was born of a virgin.  Christ died for the sins of the world, He rose from the dead and that He worked miracles while He was here on earth.

From my own personal point of view, I feel like it is my job to be aware that the liberal bias exists. The fact that some extreme liberal scholars push the idea that Jesus actually said only 18% of His words in the Gospels is important.  I need to be aware of their point of view, even though I don’t accept it.  I feel like it is my job to be aware of the conservative bias that all authors of the Old Testament are as stated.  I don’t have a problem with the idea that some books may be wrongly attributed.  That does not make them less the “Word of God.”

It is important to not blindly accept extreme positions.

Think about what is being said, weigh it according to your faith, apply some common sense and by all means, never stop learning.

In Pastor Adam Hamilton’s book Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White, he deals with differences in opinion.

One of the basic differences in our Christian faith is how we feel about the Bible. In an earlier post, I referred to Christians as “warring over the Bible.”

Indeed that is what has been happening.

In a previous post, I explained the position of the “higher critic,” the Biblical scholar who looks at the Bible as an ancient book that is the product of human writers and human manuscript copiers. Hamilton says these scholars see the Bible as a “human document that had undergone various revisions over time, as was true of many other ancient books.”  They have such little regard for the Divine nature of the Bible that they declare a significant amount of material “not historical” and even “mythological.”

And then you have the opposite view; hence the war over the Bible…the fundamentalists or conservatives.

Some think the fundamentalist position is an extreme reaction to the high critics but these lower critics don’t see it that way. Lower criticism of the Bible is a dedicated focus on the slight variation of existing text and that dedicated focus is proof that the Bible is God’s word.

The higher critics see variation as a major problem.  The lower critics see it as Divine Proof.  Fundamentalists work like detectives trying to piece together the Bible from as many original manuscripts as possible, carefully studying the variation that has occurred over the years.  I am reading a version of the Bible now and in the preface, the translators use the work of fundamentalists to state that their version is true to the best possible Hebrew and Greek texts available.

As you can see, it all boils down to point of view about variation of The Text.

The high critic attacks the divinity of the Bible due to variation; the low critic supports the divinity of the Bible due to variation.

What would settle this argument? Someone needs to discover the first Bible.

Until then, the fundamentalists, conservative or low critics argue that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. They completely reject the argument of the high critics.  They don’t feel the criticism of the text is valid because the Bible is not just some ordinary book.  Every word of the Bible was placed in the minds of the Biblical authors and God’s spirit guided them in the writing of their thoughts to paper.  They go even further;  Hamilton states their position: “since God authored the Bible, and God does not lie, nor is God ever in error, the Bible must be ‘inerrant,’ without error.

For many this is a leap of faith.

Why?

Because no one owns the first Bible.

Over the years, I have heard so many conservative Christians say things like “The Bible is all I need. I believe every word comes from God.”  “God’s Word is special and it is 100% correct.”  “My Bible; God wrote it.”

Those statements show great faith. They show that a person has great reverence for the Bible. My problem is that  these kinds of statements don’t even acknowledge how man touched the Bible, from God’s transmission of the message to man, man’s recording it, other men recording it and our reading it from the best existing, checked manuscripts.

How do we find some common ground between these two positions?

The higher critic “throwing out the baby with the bath water.”

The lower critic saying “the Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it.”

I will be in a place for about 12 days where I won’t have easy access to the internet.  Over the next days, I will post 4 times with the help of a very good friend.  The posts will be spaced out over the 12 day period.  Thank you for reading St. John Studies.  I will pick up regular discussion when I return from this trip.                         David Carter

It all started in my sophomore year in college. Here is a great reason for you never to send your kid away to school.  He or she could take an innocuous class like “The English Language” which has a unit about the evolution of printing and its effect on language, and your child will begin to question his or her faith!

However, I don’t remember my professor attacking the Bible.

She did not have to.

I do recall her talking about the use of language before the advent of the printing press.

What we are talking about here is the use of hand copying texts. For many years the only Bibles that existed were hand copied manuscripts.

I began to have images of little old monks in dark monasteries bending over desks in dim light. They were taking extant manuscripts and making new copies by hand.

Being a young man and not having wrestled with serious faith questions, I wondered about human error. My professor stated that it occurred.  I remember thinking, but surely not the Bible!

Maybe….maybe not.

Pastor Hamilton in Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White admits that this single point has ignited a firestorm in faith circles in the United States since the 1880’s.  Some Biblical scholars have been willing to admit the fallibility of manuscripts while other Biblical scholars absolutely refuse to admit that error has been made.

Let’s explore the differences in these two points of view and we can see where we fit into this discussion. The scholars who admit the “human factor” in the copying of manuscripts refer to themselves a “higher critics” or to use a more common word, “liberals.”  They see the Bible as a human document that has undergone several different revisions over the ages.   They study the Bible as they would study any ancient book.  They acknowledge that the authors of the Books of the Bible wrote long after events occurred and they may have included material that was not truly historical.   Some state that parts of the Bible are mythological.  Taken to an extreme, this view calls into question many of the doctrines of the Christian faith.

Many of you would view the position of the “higher critics” of the Bible as an extreme position and you may struggle with it. You don’t feel comfortable calling the Books of the Bible into question.

Are they all wrong?

Then you explore the history of the manuscripts we have of the first Bible and you begin to see they are not 100% wrong.

Why?

No one has the original first writings of the Bible.

Of course we do have significant fragments of old copies of the Bible, the most famous are the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered between 1946 and 1956 in the ancient settlement at Khirbet Qumran in the West Bank. The caves are located about 2 kilometers inland from the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, from which they derive their name.

How old are these copies?

One of the scrolls was the complete book of Isaiah. Paleographers date the scroll to 125 B.C. Scholar Gleason Archer says “Isaiah copies…proved to be word for word identical with our standard Hebrew Bible in more than 95% of the text.  The 5 percent of variation consisted chiefly of obvious slips of the pen and variations in spelling.”  Millar Barrows adds “It is a matter of wonder that through something like a thousand years the text underwent so little alteration.”

Yes, the original Bible does not exist but we do have very old parts of the Old Testament that show very little variation over time when compared to today’s copies of the Bible.

Does this undercut the argument of the “higher critic”?

Not entirely, but it does prove that those manuscript copiers were not just quickly writing some version of the Bible just to put in their eight hour work day. They knew what they were copying and they tried hard to get it right and they did get it almost entirely right.

Were they perfect?

No, the more you dig into the literal word-for-word text, you have to admit that some variance occurred but not much.

Is there so much variance that a high critic gets to call the Bible just any ancient book?

I don’t think so.

But in this post, I am not attacking or defending the high critic; I am just trying to explain him…and how his point of view kind of rocked a college sophomore’s view of God’s word.

For a while…

“All in God’s timing.”

“God has perfect timing; never early, never late.”

“Learn to wait on God’s Timing.”

“Trust in God’s Timing”

Type “God’s timing” into your browser and search for images and you will see a lot of posters with expressions about timing. I guess we all question the timing of things that happen in our lives.  I do too.  As we leave Chapter 7 where Pastor Hamilton in his book Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White discussed Christian denominations, you wonder where he is going next.   He has just taken two Christian denominations and tried to show a dichotomy and how Christian denominations should be able to overcome their differences.  Now he turns to opposing views about how Christians view the Bible.

I just finished the Bible this morning, from Old to New Testament. I have had a hunger to read it since blogging about Dallas Willard’s book Hearing God.  Maybe a chapter on “The Battle over the Bible” is good for me right now.  God’s impeccable timing.

Let’s start with why do people read the Bible? Pastor Hamilton states that some see it as just a collection of ancient writings that describe the faith of the Israelites and then the first followers of Jesus.   Maybe they read it as a history book.  For many years I saw the Bible just like that, a book on the shelf, just like any other history book.  Others see the Bible as the Word of God, every word chosen by God with the writers of the book serving as scribes or secretaries. There are no errors; there are no real inconsistencies.  They declare that the Bible is totally true and trustworthy. This is the “inerrant posture” and people who think this way just don’t believe that there could ever be any error in Scripture.  They see the Bible as a Perfect Sacred Book.  Some see the Bible as a collection of “timeless truth”, with advice that transcends cultures.  Maybe these folks see the Bible as a self-help guide.  Of course there are those who see the Bible as a collection of documents written by human beings who are fallible, capable of erring in their use of facts and their use of interpretations.  They see the Bible as a story book, probably fictional in nature.

We could go on and on, expressing all the views that people have about the Bible but the fact of the matter is this: it is the most owned book in the world; the average American home has 4 Bibles. It is also the most read book in the world, a whopping 3.9 billion copies sold over the last 50 years.*

However, is it the most understood book in the world?

That is hard to pin down but probably not. I have been in so many Bible studies where people seem to struggle coming up with answers.  I have read so many passages that baffle me and others.  I have had so many discussions with people who are all over the place regarding their views about God’s word.  In my own personal study, as I have matured, the Bible is maybe more meaningful today than it was years ago in earlier readings. Maybe I am beginning to understand the Bible more; some would say I am a maturing reader of God’s word.  It is not for me to say.

In the next few days, Pastor Hamilton will describe how people feel about the Bible as a battle. The two warring camps are the modernists [more liberal in their approach to Scripture] and the fundamentalists [more conservative in their approach to Scripture].

As I did with opposing ideas regarding Christian denominations, I will comment on opposing ideas about approaches to the Bible.

Let me give you a hint before we begin our discussion. Pastor Hamilton will be searching for a middle ground regarding Scripture. He knows that there is some value in the modernist approach and there is some value in the conservative approach.  Can we find a way to bridge the gap between the two?  Can we see some gray in this world of black and white?

As I opened this post with the tip of my hat to God’s timing, I guess I am a little qualified to thrash out how I feel about God’s word; I have just finished reading it in 134 days. But what did I read?  Why did I read it?  What does it mean to me now?

More importantly, what does the Bible mean for you? Are you actively reading it today?  If you are, why are you reading it today?  What are you seeking from the Bible?  Are you not reading it today?  If not, why are you not reading the Bible?

Remember, it is the most purchased book in the world. The Business Insider statistic I used put the total at billions of copies but purchasing the Bible and reading the Bible are two different things.  Reading the Bible and understanding the Bible are two different things.

Maybe your Bible is opened and read daily and that is great or maybe it looks like the image I placed at the top of this post.

*From The Business Insider, 2012

In the chapter entitled “Being Pentecostal without Losing Your Mind,” Pastor Hamilton sets up two ideas that some see as opposed: a concern for the heart and a concern for the head. Said another way, emotion and intellect.  For the purposes of argument, he proposes that there is a middle way.  He states that two denominations of Christian churches illustrate the opposite ideas:  the Pentecostal Church [the heart] and the United Methodist Church [the head].

Of course, he uses generalizations and we all know when we do that, it causes problems. Generalizations never seem to cover all the experiences we have.   However, he is trying to make a point with his argument and the point is this:  Christian churches do not need to be in the business of critiquing each other.   We are better off cooperating.  We are better off making disciples in this world.  There is plenty of work to go around.  We need to work together and get to it.

But what can we do when we seem to be so different in our approach to worship?

Hamilton says we need to evaluate what we offer and then see if there is something the other church is doing that could improve our worship experience. As I have posted earlier, I have attended several Pentecostal worship services and I have been a member of the United Methodist Church for nineteen years.  Hamilton was a member of the Pentecostal Church for five years and he left that church to pastor in the United Methodist Church.

Again, where is the middle way?

Hamilton states “Today in many conservative churches pastors are not required to have any theological training at all. One can be ordained by another pastor in a worship service even if the candidate has had no training, no education, and the church has conducted no background check.”

Training may benefit a pastor, especially if he offers little more to his congregation than a strong ability to speak. Again Hamilton says knowing about the history of the church, how the Bible was formed and some answers for the difficult questions of faith can be so beneficial for people of faith who need some solid guidance.

Can a pastor from a conservative church train on their own? Of course they can.  Study on an individual basis can yield much fruit as well as a mentor relationship with a more experienced pastor.

In contrast, in the United Methodist Church the focus can be on such a reserved worship experience that the soul is left “empty, dry and devoid of the Spirit’s power” [Hamilton, 55].   The United Methodist church comes out of the tradition that the most educated person in the community was the pastor.  He was seminary trained and people looked up to him for wise counsel and solid theological answers to faith problems.

Where’s the problem? Many Methodist churches just don’t seem to have the capacity to help people experience the presence of God.  Also many members don’t encourage an emotional response to worship due to their very reverent attitude toward behavior in the pew.  “Amens” or other exhortations are often discouraged.  I have rarely ever seen a Methodist service where worshippers held their hands up in praise.  I even heard not long ago that a Methodist church in our community was upset because the congregation applauded a musical performance by the choir.  Applause was deemed undignified.

Hamilton states it best when he says “Too often, the challenge for mainline pastors, and one of the reasons church began to be cautious about an educated clergy, is allowing our education to diminish our passion. When you focus on the intellect, and you devote yourself to study, there is a tendency to become a bit more broadminded, but often this comes at the expense of conviction and passion.”

Ok, where is the middle way?

Conservative churches could seek out more training for their pastors while still emphasizing the Holy Spirit experience in the worship service. A little education never hurt anyone.  I was serving on a district Methodist committee and an aspiring pastor came before us, saying God had called him to preach.  Our committee said “Great, but you have to have some training.”  He said but “God has called me to preach!”  As was our duty, we asked him some basic doctrinal questions that any Methodist pastor should know and he did not do well in his answers.  Our committee did not pass him on to be a pastor.

Were we wrong?

He had the passion.

What did he lack? The knowledge.

Adam Hamilton says so well, “We cannot afford to have a reasonless Christianity, but neither can we afford a passionless one.”

We have to find the middle way.

The title of Pastor Adam Hamilton’s book is Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White.  As we think about that title, it becomes clear that he is trying to comment on how we love to polarize our world.  It is so easy to see clear cut choices between black and white, right and wrong, and good and bad.  Polarization is about opposites or poles and it makes life easier and almost thoughtless at times.  There is nothing wrong with that, I guess.  Our minds just go to the pole that feels right.

It’s that gray area between the poles that is troublesome. That gray area makes us think.  That gray area makes us consider the view we have of opposing opinions before we make our choice.  We begin to think of why other people feel the way they do.

Heart ……… and Head

In yesterday’s post I shared my personal experience in visiting the Pentecostal Church and to be honest, I am “at home” there. The worship service is different from my usual service but as the old saying goes sometimes “different is good.”

Today we are going to try to illustrate a polarization with the Methodist worship style as a polar opposite to the Pentecostal worship style. Some may think this big difference does not exist.  I apologize for generalizations in advance.  I don’t intend to represent every Methodist Church.  I can’t.  But for purposes of discussion, let’s look at what the Methodist Church offers to a worshipper and since I have been a member of a Methodist Church for 19 years, I have become pretty familiar with the “method”.

While a Pentecostal believer emphasizes the Holy Spirit in worship, the Methodist believes that the Holy Spirit is alive and well and manifests itself in a believer’s daily life as they try to grow closer to the Lord. The Methodist worship service would be described as “reserved” compared to the Pentecostal service.  Pastor Hamilton was a Pentecostal before he became a Methodist Pastor and he says:  “The Pentecostal church had sermons preached with fervor, that aroused the soul but which at times, lacked substance, while the United Methodist Church I attended had sermons of lower decibel levels, but which I would remember and reflect on following worship.”

Why is this?

One factor is the founder of the Methodist Church was John Wesley, a well-educated Oxford University seminary student.   As the Methodist Church began to grow, Wesley felt a need to make sure that all pastors were trained in Christian doctrine and he insisted on meetings called conferences where pastors could be connected to other pastors and pastors could receive as much training as possible.

In short, his concern was about the head, the intellect.

Pastor Hamilton comments on the state of the intellect in churches today: “Many Christians seem to think that proper training is not important, and that it may even be a detriment to ministry.  No one would go to a heart surgeon who had never been to medical school, or a lawyer who hadn’t been to law school.  Many feel like pastors just need charisma to carry them through.”

Before you go too far, I am not pointing fingers at any particular church or any particular pastor. I know pastors who have very little formal education but they know the Bible inside and out and up and down.  I also have experienced the “intellect” effect and I know first-hand that it is not all good all the time.

An example of this effect can be seen in my love for history. I grew up very fascinated by the American Civil War.  When I enrolled in college, I just had to study the Civil War so I majored in history.  The more history classes I took, the more the professors made me think about the Civil War from a “big picture” view and I found myself far away from the battlefield, the soldiers, the cannons and the commanders riding their big horses.  I had intellect, but I lost passion for my subject matter.  I was educated in causes, generals, massive troop movements but not the real action on the battlefield.

Another example is a friend I have who literally was “on fire” for Jesus and to stoke the flames, he enrolled in seminary. He told me one day that he could not complete his seminary degree.  The more courses he took and the more professors he encountered, the more he felt distant from the feelings he had that caused him to enroll in seminary.  He dropped out.

What does the United Methodist Church offer that the Pentecostal Church does not? Many people feel the Methodist Church offers worshippers an appreciation for Christian traditions, a concern for social justice and a church experience that is less heart-driven.

However, maybe we need to be aware of the need for passion regarding our faith.  What can the Methodist Church do to get The Holy Spirit to come forth?  What can the Pentecostal church do to appeal more to the intellect?

The middle ground of our “polarization” will be in tomorrow’s post.