I thought this quote by St. Augustine was powerful, especially after yesterday’s topic.
If you believe what you like in the Gospel and reject what you do not like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourself.
There comes a point where those of us who claim to be under the authority of God’s Word either rebel against what it teaches or to humbly submit to it. That has been my journey. I discovered years ago that I was more than capable of arguing away any texts that didn’t support my preferred understanding… and if I couldn’t argue it away, I could merely dismiss them.
Then I realized that I was creating a new Holy Scripture, it just happened to be the one of my own writing. And that petrified me.
Can this be a safe place? What aspect of the Gospel or of Scripture do you wrestle (or even disagree) with most?
No one likes certain theological discussions. No one likes talking about the reality of hell (no one who’s likable anyway). No one likes making any sort of statement that will cause any sort of division or relational difficulties. But we’d be fools not to study those topics and know where we land.
I get it. I’m an advocate for Reformed theology. I’m a 5-point Calvinist. I’m a Complementarian. In the current theological landscape, those are all divisive positions. And while I believe that these convictions are all rooted from Scripture and historical Christian orthodoxy, there are subtle nuances to those understandings that I believe, but don’t necessarily like.
So what aspect of the Gospel or Scripture do you wrestle with most?