We Hold These Truths....

I'm in a Bible Study here at college and we are discussing John Piper's book, Don't Waste Your Life. Each week we take a look at a new chapter of Piper's book. The central thesis of the book is that we need to break the mold of living to please ourselves and step out into living our lives solely for the purpose of glorifying God.

Tonight we talked about objectivity some. Piper brought up the importance of taking an author's text for what he or she originally meant it to be. This was obviously applied to the Bible. Our group discussed the errors that can arise when the Bible becomes a book that is custom fit to an individual. One group member said something to the fact that there is no such thing as an interpretation of the Bible, we must hold it to be exactly what the original author intended.

This prompted me to ask the question, "What about denominations...there are certain things that we as a church hold to be non-negotiables (Christ is our Savior and Lord, etc.) and certain things that seem to have wiggle room such as baptism, communion, etc. Each denomination looks at the same Bible and gleans different meaning about these negotiables. Who is right I asked??

When I was in high school, my youth pastor used the negotiables vs. non-negotiables argument. To this day, it is the one I hold to. See in my mind, there are certain issues in Scripture that are discussed that I believe are ok to be left up to interpretation, the negotiables of faith. I refuse to believe that any denomination that believes Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior will be missing the boat (yeah, that includes Catholics too). It is because Protestant and Catholicism recognize the holiness of Jesus and his sacrifice on the cross that they are going to be saved, they agree on the non-negotiables. This does away with the arguments about other cults, or quasi-religions. They mess with the non-negotiables.

The question then comes up how do you decide what are the negotiables. Well, reader, that is if there are any readers except Taya and Sam :) yay for you guys!...it is something I am working on. I believe that non-negotiables are tied in with salvation. Not believing Christ is the way to heaven directly opposes the central theme of Christianity and would lead to a person's damnation. This makes Jesus's status as God and Savior unquestionable. However, if I decide to be baptised as an adult, have my child baptized as an infant, or not baptized at all, I do not believe my or my child's salvation is in jeopardy. Likewise with how I take communion, they don't take away my salvation. Now, I'm not saying they aren't important, but I am saying they are not the give all end all to our faith.

More to come on this later I'm sure.

In other news, I watched a bit of the President's remarks on television today. Regardless of how you feel about the man personally, I feel as though he will be the leader our nation leads. Whether his policies are what our nation needs or not will be decided by our children, not us, but I do feel as though he has the leadership qualities our nation needs during these tough times.