I find myself surprisingly disheartened by all the Christians correcting each other's "error." It's not they are disagreeing with each other, but it's that the battle over the "soul of Christianity" rests on getting all the particular meanings right in words written two thousand years ago, or more, in another language. And, they tell you, we live in constant danger of getting it wrong. There is no shortage of opinions on how to get it wrong. Why, where you spend eternity will depend on you getting it right, so you better pay attention! Wouldn't it all have been simpler if about two thousand years ago, Peter would have got up and prophesied that the New Testament canon would be complete and what it would consist of? We're never even told precisely what the Old Testament canon should consist of; Catholics, Jews, and Protestants disagree. Before a state church imposed its will, different groups had different NT canons. Wouldn't have been simpler if Wouldn't it have been simpler if Jesus, verified by 4 different gospel writers each in their own words--not repeating another gospel writer's words-- if Jesus had said, "I need to go to the Father so that you may have a complete Bible, and so the Holy Spirit will come up select men in this select generation so that they may have , and the Holy Spirit will help you tease meanings from those written words, and only the elect shall find the words of life within." It would have been easier, because then the church would've known what to expect.
I can tell you one thing. The writings in the New Testament canon could have been a lot more clear, with the passages that leave room for argument unnecessarily. After hearing one person go on, whether patiently or condescendingly, about what the text must mean, based on making the meaning coherent with other scripture and consistent with theology, it leaves me wondering, "Well, why leave so much room for interpretation in the writing? All of that could have been written down." Instead, we have so many people loudly and proudly declaring what the verses (verses? like in poetry?) of people's letters "plainly mean." "Why, the truth's just there for anyone to see it, and if you were as humble and Spirit-led as me you would see it for yourself!" Or perhaps less arrogantly: "I humbly beseech you by the love of Christ to read the scripture the right way since I don't want you to be lose your salvation, dear brother." Thank you, dear brother, but you'll have to get in line behind all the other concerned brothers who want me to give their obviously right interpretations a fair shake lest I be set on fire of hell and lead others to perdition or grave error or danger.
Most of these people would be surprised to know that I sympathize with them over the "culture war," as secular and materialist forces out there seek to replace the role of religion in community mores with various man-made platitudes and mores, so-called relativists imposing their moral absolutes on the religionists they despise. People naturally take refuge in their own absolutes, and if they can't just open up The Bible and divine the words of life, what then? Well, then anything goes, I guess.
I honestly understand what a relief it is for people outside Christianity to chuck the whole thing as a tangled mess. What a relief to not wonder whether you have to be baptized or whether you have to accept the Apostles' Creed or whether you have to give all you have to the poor or whether you have to work out your salvation constantly for fear that Jesus will say "he never knew you" when you get to pearly gates or whether you must never "deny" Jesus or whether you have just the right ideas or whether Jesus will disown you because you didn't visit someone in prison... Many within Christianity would tend to take this offputting as a sign that we all need to get orthodox and believe the same thing. Isn't it obvious that our unity as the Church is suffering, and how will the world know we are God's church without our unity? I think that all this concern over believing everything in just the right way is really us just making things rest on our human understanding and exalting our human understanding.
"Oh, but if they reject the voice of the Spirit, they are rejecting the Gospel." Maybe they're rejecting your version of the Gospel, and maybe that's not what the Spirit is reaching out to them. Maybe you're pushing them further away from the Kingdom of God because you not only won't enter into His rest, but you won't let anyone enter by walking in an understanding that isn't yours? But that can't be it, can it?
It seems ironic that many of the error-correcters in the church tar-brush various attempts to spiritually discern (i.e. going beyond the natural mind to listen to the Spirit) truth in the New Testament as Gnosticism. This is a slippery term, and I think they mostly gravitate to this term because they think that believers are talking about some state of "enlightenment" in the sense of some privileged arcane knowledge. As though to enter the mind of Christ one doesn't need personal revelation from the Holy Spirit but can rely on human common sense about what is "plainly written." Yeah, it's all so obvious, isn't it? Putting the mystery into the capable "hands" of the fleshly mind sounds to me more like the Gnostic spirit than the opposite.
I find myself more disheartened by the more reasonable souls this way than by the nastier, ridiculous people crusading for truth. It's the more subtle, somewhat more meek versions of this that have me feeling discouraged.
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