If you don't trust the Bible enough to let it challenge and correct your thinking, how could you ever have a personal relationship with God? In any truly personal relationship, the other person has to be able to contradict you. For example, if a wife is not allowed to contradict her husband, they won't have an intimate relationship. Remember the (two!) movies The Stepford Wives? The husbands of Stepford, Connecticut, decide to have their wives turned into robots who never cross the wills of their husbands. A Stepford wife was wonderfully compliant and beautiful, but no one would describe such a marriage as intimate or personal. Now, what happens if you eliminate anything from the Bible that offends your sensibility and crosses your will? If you pick and choose what you want to believe and reject the rest, how will you ever have a God who can contradict you? You won't! You'll have a Stepford God! A God, essentially, of your own making, and not a God with whom you can have a relationship and genuine interaction. Only if your God can say things that outrage you and make you struggle (as in a real friendship or marriage!) will you know that you have gotten hold of a real God and not a figment of your imagination. So an authoritative Bible is not the enemy of a personal relationship with God. It is the precondition for it.Tim Keller—The Reason for God, pages 113-114
(HT: Josh Harris)
1 comment:
Z - Here's the comment I left on Josh Harris' blog:
Is this good logic to use to argue for what a true personal relationship must be? What if I were to say, paraphrasing Keller:
If we are made a perfect Bride in the resurrection so that we will never challenge him, how could we ever have a personal relationship with God? In any truly personal relationship, the other person has to be able to contradict you. For example, if a wife is not allowed to contradict her husband, they won't have an intimate relationship. Remember the (two!) movies The Stepford Wives? The husbands of Stepford, Connecticut, decide to have their wives turned into robots who never cross the wills of their husbands. A Stepford wife was wonderfully compliant and beautiful, but no one would describe such a marriage as intimate or personal. Now, what happens if you eliminate anything from the Bride of Christ that offends His sensibility and crosses His will? How will Christ ever have a Bride who can contradict Him? He won't! He'll have a Stepford Bride! …and not a Bride with whom He can have a relationship and genuine interaction. Only if your Bride can say things that outrage you and make you struggle (as in a real friendship or marriage!) will you know that you have gotten hold of a real Bride and not a figment of your imagination.
Just a thought – it seems his requirement for the possibility of “challenge” and “contradiction” in a personal relationship poses some problems when reversed. Thoughts?
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