Bible Question (short): Can I express my opinion? |
Question (full): JVH0212 I think I understand, I think? I still have the concern that someone that may be looking for direction or an answer to a question and may stumble upon the erroneous response and decide since it hasn’t been challenged by other contributors it must be correct. JVH0212 I think (my opinion) it is fair to challenge another man’s interpretation of the Bible. Many times we read what we are conditioned by environment and previous training to read. We assume more than anyone of us care to imagine. It was said by someone else in the forum and of course it was refuted, but I still believe it to be true. ‘We all have religious beliefs that have been influenced to some degree by others’. All the ideas we have about God, man, sin and salvation are not just ideas formed purely by reading the Bible. I further submit that when we do read the Bible these ideas, beliefs, reconceived notions, and prejudices effect how we comprehend what we are reading. Have you seen the example of the 6 hidden “f’s” in a story. They are hidden in the word “if’ and most people reading English do not focus on “if” as a word therefore they can only find the two or three “f”s in other words used but cannot find the ones in the word “if”. All three men you mentioned are in fact very intelligent theologians, however they too stand at opposite corners, on a few issues. Experts don’t always agree, nor should anyone expect them too. I suspect(I guess)there must be over 100 translations of the Bible, because either a person or a team felt they could do a better job than the previous. The original or manuscript languages are not as cut and dried as many believe. Look how many times there are misunderstandings here in the forum and I think we are all talking English. One of the biggest things in life I learned is that, things that appear obvious to me are not always so obvious to everyone. When someone responds to a question, answer or note different than I did I must first ask myself what did they see that I didn’t and what is it I see they don’t? I have had threads that have ran 20 or more responses and to this day I don’t believe many of the people that responded understood what I was asking. It was because language in fluid and what communicates to one person does not always say the same thing to another. Let me say I'm not trying to convince you on anything or to judge what you did. I just felt a need to express my opinion. |