Lead Zeppelin

No, I’m not talking about Robert, Jimmy, John and John Paul, a mean guitar riff or even a reunion tour (past, present or future); I’m referring to the inability of my last blog post to get off the ground. Oh well, it was Monday and I did toss out something very difficult to deal with.

You see, there are verses in the Bible that sometimes go under explored. Most of the time we can quickly point them out if the verse in question supports our vista while debunking someone else’s.

“Why, if they’d just take the whole Bible, instead of only part of it …”

I’ve said it myself many times.

It seams so clear, what I read in the Word of God. This verse obviously means “this” and that one surely says “that”.

But then, along comes a passage that is somewhat more difficult. What then? We read it of course. We have too; it is part of God’s Word. Speaking only for myself, I find that it becomes easy to “gloss” over a difficult passage; to quickly read through it so to minimize my chair squirming.

Let’s be honest for a second, we aren’t going to understand everything God has put in His book (at least I’m not). Still though, that fact needs to be balanced with a healthy dose of “What in the world does that mean?” questioning.

Is this kind of questioning good to do or is it not?

I sat in a Bible class once while we discussed the way Jesus healed the blind man at Bethsaida. You’ll recall the story found in Mark 8:22-26 where Jesus spits in the man’s eyes and puts his hands on them but the healing doesn’t seem to "take" and the man can only see what looks like “trees walking around”. Jesus touches him again and then the man’s eyes are opened and he sees everything clearly. In class, I asked the question “Why did Jesus heal the man in this way?” One of the men thought I shouldn’t ask that question. He thought me disrespectful to question his method. I explained that I meant no disrespect to the Master, only that perhaps there might be something to learn from asking this question (and the many other questions that come to us in our study time).

Was I being disrespectful or was I digging in the Scriptures?

And what of our previous blog post (I mean besides “the crickets”)? Does Paul's mention of "baptism for the dead" in 1 Cor. 15:29 change anything for us? Let me make three statements and see if this pushes us to any further thought processes (and please allow me the freedom not to necessarily believe what I state herein).

1. If I can be baptized for someone who is already dead, then I can argue that baptism is more of a symbol of a relationship with God and less of a critical factor in the development of that relationship.

2. If baptism for the dead is viable without the dead person’s consent or agreement, then I can argue that infant baptism is certainly valid (since the infant is at least alive at the time of the baptism).

3. Also, if baptism were so important to the early Christians that they would go so far as to be baptized for someone who had died, can we afford to blink at its importance for us today? (Alright that was a question and not a statement, but who’s counting?)



My thanks to all for letting me play "devil's advocate" and especially to Jel for sharing in the sweet melodious sounds of cricket chatter with me (last post). I've laid out a few thoughts here that could be discussed, but I'll also re post the picture of the confused lady with the Bible so we can talk about how silly that is, if nothing else.


Thing Two:
Please go see the movie by Ben Stein “Expelled, No Intelligence Allowed”. He is challenging “Big Science” on evolution and intelligent design. I don’t know if this has been highly publicized, but it should be. Here is a link to his site.
"http://www.expelledthemovie.com/"
Thanks,
Tom