I am trying to figure out how to post a video sent to me by a lovely friend, which will be upsetting if you are a true Christian-identifying person, and not a bot masquerading as a believer, but as I am running into technical difficulties, and so as not to disappoint anyone, instead here is a marvelous Deep Thought. Still can’t embed these sorts of things, so I will just quote what the Tweeter tweets:
GOD DID NOT WRITE THE BIBLE. Please stop saying this. This view of "inspiration" & "God-breathed" [2Tim.3:16] is tantamount to God taking demon-like possession of human authors. It destroys freewill, demeans God & the Book, & creates irreconcilable inconsistencies & atheists.
Oh dear heart, telling me not to say this makes me want to say it all the more. The way of saying it that I love best in all the world comes straight from the Prophet Isaiah, who directly quotes God, neither of whom were demon-possessed:
For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven
and do not return there but water the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
What I love best about being alive today is how you can just say things without providing evidentiary support (to quote Legally Blond) to prove their veracity. Kevin “Dr. Deltoids” Young is my favorite progressive tweeter because he says so many things, unwittingly, that the writers of the New Testament tell us people will come along and say. Sometimes I wonder if he is actually being written by ChatGPT, which would be quite exciting, I think.
Either way, I love his breezy cheerfulness and how he, as I said, just makes stuff up. Like, God breathing out his own self-revelation actually “demeans” God and “destroys free will” and makes him literaleigh Satan. Oh, and also makes otherwise decent people into atheists.
Get that ya’ll? Saying what Christians have said for the whole time Christianity has been in existence puts you in league with Satan. You don’t want to be on the side of Satan, do you? Just like Jesus was when he miraculously healed all those people and made the rulers of Israel so angry that they said that he was literaleigh Satan, or Hitler, or Doug Wilson, whoever you prefer. Better quickly jettison everything every faithful preacher has said about the text for the last two thousand years.
What I really love about this Tweet, though, is that it allows me to point out how relevant the recent Kigali Commitment is. We said this about the Bible:
The Bible is God’s Word written, breathed out by God as it was written by his faithful messengers (2 Timothy 3:16). It carries God’s own authority, is its own interpreter, and it does not need to be supplemented, nor can it ever be overturned by human wisdom.
God’s good Word is the rule of our lives as disciples of Jesus and is the final authority in the church.
It grounds, energises and directs our mission in the world. The fellowship we enjoy with our risen and ascended Lord is nourished as we trust God’s Word, obey it and encourage each other to allow it to shape each area of our lives.
This fellowship is broken when we turn aside from God’s Word or attempt to reinterpret it in any way that overturns the plain reading of the text in its canonical context and so deny its truthfulness, clarity, sufficiency, and thereby its authority (Jerusalem Declaration #2).
Practically speaking, I love the “plain reading of the text” line when faced with my daily dose of Dr. Deltoids. The Triune God, through St. Paul, says that he breathed out the scriptures, carrying the human writer along, and then Kevin Young comes along and says ‘No he didn’t.’ One of these people is lying, and it isn’t God or St. Paul. That’s one part. The other part is that if you get curious enough, you might “feel led” to read the whole letter, and then the whole Bible. If you do that, you will discover how gracious is God, how kind in all his works. If you read the Bible—wherein God says that the words are his—you find the clear voice of love coming straight off the page.
For those Christians indwelt by the Holy Spirit rather than ChatGPT, or Satan, the Scriptures being God’s own Word is a strange and comforting miracle. You find, as you follow Jesus, that your own will is gradually, and usually gently, bent towards his. You discover that his thoughts and ways being higher than yours is good and not evil. That he leads you out in joy and brings you forth in peace, that the very mountains and valleys cry out his name, because he is God and you are not, and that’s better for everyone.
Or, of course, you can also be angry about the whole thing on Twitter. You can insist on dim, human wisdom which, in the name of goodness, regularly turns the Truth on its head and embraces its opposite.
Have a nice day!
Thank you, Anne. I enjoy your straight up, no nonsense biblical orthodoxy. The Kigali Commitment honors the God who reveals Himself in Christ Jesus (John 14:7) and by His Word and Sacraments. Since you contributed to its confession of truth, I quote the One who loves me, "well-done, good and faithful servant."
He is reliable, I will give him that. Then again, so is the Enemy--just endless variations on the old standby "Yea, hath God said?"