Genesis 9:8-17

Psalm 25:1-10

1 Peter 3:18-22

Mark 1:9-15

Sacrificial love: the anti-thesis of human culture is what God has given to us. The hallmark of our great religion is the renunciation of self for the sake of others. Jesus died for our sins that we committed so that He could bring us to God.

At the end of this passage (1 Peter 3:18-22) is a scripture that I have used as an argument for believers’ baptism. The baptism that saves is the turning to God with a clear conscience. But there is more to this than my simple understanding.

First baptism saves. In some way, I have to deal with this fact of baptism. Now what exactly is meant by baptism could be debated: water baptism could be argued from this passage, so could turning to God apart from any physical act.

Second, turning to God seems to be something that we do. I don’t know Greek well enough to say that this is our action but it seems to point in that direction. Yet the reason we turn is pre-emptive: Jesus was raised to life. Since Jesus’ resurrection happens before our action can turning be something that even infants can do? Again, I find myself short of the answers.

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Deuteronomy 18:15-20

1 Corinthians 8:1-13

Mark 1:21-28

We think that things are desecrated because of idols. But Paul reminds us that idols are nothing. Food is food is food. We have a freedom in Christ and we should live in it.
But greater than our freedom is our responsibility to our brothers and sisters. We must not destroy their faith. We must not cause them to go against their conscience.
Again, issues that this raises in my mind: What, if any, are the differences between offending and destroying one’s faith? How do we move the church into the freedom of Christ, if we have to watch for the other’s weakness? How do we stop ourselves from being controlled by spiritual bullies who only want things their way? How do we work to build each other up? How do we help the fragile in faith? What if they are older spiritually/ physically?

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Scot McKnight discusses at Out or Ur that Christians will follow one leader, whether Jesus, Paul, Calvin, Luther or Menno Simons. We invest ourselves in one view of Christian thought and dismiss all others. These he calls “Bible Maestros”.

I agree that we need to hear all the voices of the Bible and the Christian community in all its variety. The church would be richer and spiritually deeper if we could get past our own biases and listen to the Spirit through others.

I was reading Chesterton’s Orthodoxy and he talked about normal (vs. insane) humans being those who allow the world to be bigger than themselves. The mad construct a world that they are the king (or messiah) of. I fear that as we have maestros, we become somewhat insane. Listening to other voices makes us healthy spiritually (testing the spirits, of course.)

Scot writes a very good post that can help us escape our preconceived ideas of Scripture.

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Intentional Disciples has a link to an interesting chart that shows which books of the Bible are considered canonical in the various Christian traditions. I had been aware of the Apocrypha and its use in the Catholic and mainline Protestant traditions (also used in the Amish tradition). But I was totally unaware of the vast variety of Scriptures that are used in other traditions.

I think this is a valuable to get a basic understanding of the Christian canon and various traditions. I would love to read the various books that are not part of the Protestant canon.

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