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 - Endorsed - Indifferent - Contested
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| The Nashville Statement
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Name:Daniel
Home: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
About Me: I used to believe that evolution was reasonable, that homosexuality was genetic, and that people became Christians because they couldn't deal with the 'reality' that this life was all there was. I used to believe, that if there was a heaven - I could get there by being good - and I used to think I was more or less a good person. I was wrong on all counts. One day I finally had my eyes opened and I saw that I was not going to go to heaven, but that I was certainly going to suffer the wrath of God for all my sin. I saw myself as a treasonous rebel at heart - I hated God for creating me just to send me to Hell - and I was wretched beyond my own comprehension. Into this spiritual vacuum Jesus Christ came and he opened my understanding - delivering me from God's wrath into God's grace. I was "saved" as an adult, and now my life is hid in Christ. I am by no means sinless, but by God's grace I am a repenting believer - a born again Christian.
My complete profile...
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Daniel's posts are almost always pastoral and God centered. I appreciate and am challenged by them frequently. He has a great sense of humor as well.
- Marc Heinrich
His posts are either funny or challenging. He is very friendly and nice.
- Rose Cole
[He has] good posts, both the serious like this one, and the humorous like yesterday. [He is] the reason that I have restrained myself from making Canadian jokes in my posts.
- C-Train
This post contains nothing that is of any use to me. What were you thinking? Anyway, it's probably the best I've read all day.
- David Kjos
Daniel, nicely done and much more original than Frank the Turk.
- Jonathan Moorhead
There are some people who are smart, deep, or funny. There are not very many people that are all 3. Daniel is one of those people. His opinion, insight and humor have kept me coming back to his blog since I first visited earlier this year.
- Carla Rolfe
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| Double Crucifixion. Part VII - Putting Some Things Aside |
If you haven't done so already, you may want to read the posts which preceded this one (for some context):
first
second
third
fourth
fifth
sixth.
For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt. - Hebrews 6:4-6 [ESV] Who hasn't spent time making sure that their understanding of this verse was everything it ought to be?
I think, like most people, the first time I read this passage I was profoundly immature in my faith. Being naive, I regarded even the slightest hint of sin in my life as dreadful evidence that I wasn't really saved. What horrible doubts I had on that account! It was during this time that I was devouring scripture that this passage use to make me tremble. The springtime of my faith was filled with wicked doubt - and as the scriptures teach, the wicked flee even when no one is chasing them. So it was in my heart when I would read passages like this - whatever the text was saying, all I was hearing was that I must have lost my salvation somewhere, I must have fallen away.
Whether it is a good thing or a bad thing, first impressions linger on. Even after we begin to stabilize in our new faith. Those first understanding of such passages continue, for many, to bear the scars of what was projected into them by way of our (then) insecurities. As we mature in our faith, we mature in how we read and handle scripture, disciplining ourselves to make sure that we bring no presumptions into the text with us as we study it. This can take months, years, or even decades, depending on how entrenched we are in our own opinion.
I don't mean to suggest that we should keep ourselves from forming "settled" opinions - as though there were something wrong about being convinced in what you believe. What I am concerned with is keeping ourselves from refusing to examine our opinions because we are so certain they are right.
I mention all that, of course, because whatever opinion you have of this text is probably a settled one, and though I am happy for you if this is the case, yet in the course of these next few posts I want us to try, as best we can, to come to the text as if we had never read it before or formed some opinion about it. Let's just look at it, in its context, and find out what it is saying to us, and again, what it is not saying to us - then we can compare that to our opinions and see how that lines up.Labels: Double Crucifixion |
posted by Daniel @
8:58 AM
 
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