“Christians need to get serious about Christianity again.”
You and I have clashed on a number of issues, but you will not hear an argument from me on this. A man I knew well, who evangelized everywhere he could, once told me that when America fails to send and support missionaries to the world with the Gospel, God would send foreigners here so they could hear the Gospel. I think you are experiencing that.
Also, I will take ten foreigners who truly love Christ and are obedient to the Bible for every one American who despises the priceless freedom our forefathers bought at great personal cost.
The Bible was provided as a summary of the will of God, but the real goal is to be obedient to the will of God. Even the bible says so: the first commandment to humanity existed and was violated before there was any scripture.
The danger of having a Bible at all is that, being a book of text as it is, it is subject to being misinterpreted according to the agendas of those who come to it.
I would say maybe more fully, a summary of the will and character and works of God. And there is doubtless more.
Using the bible right is a challenge and we’ve clashed over it, yes.
I think having knocked my head good and hard spiritually against WRONG ways to use the bible, has formed part of my background.
I see it now as kind of like the manual that comes with an aircraft. It’s useless without a serious attempt to actually fly the aircraft. Knowing it inside and out can never substitute for flying the aircraft, and flying it well. And it may even happen that someone might come along and fortuitously figure out some things about flying the aircraft without even reading the manual, perhaps because he heard some of the whispers of the aircraft’s builder.
And this is why the spiritual vision of Hindus doesn’t shock me as much as it used to. I will never become a Hindu, no. Christ remains the Name Above All Names and shows it, and He is the One to whom I have allegiance. I find that Hindus will listen to gospel if respectfully presented. The grace of God sure gets past the karma problem, and I have already started to let on to them about that. To them, it is an astounding blessing they do not yet fully grasp.