Andy Stanley, Jesus, and the Bible
Popular pastor, Andy Stanley, got in hot water with evangelicals once again over one of his recent Tweets. He said this:
As you can see, this Tweet has since been deleted.
People were quite upset about this. Some going as far as suggesting that Stanley is falling into heresy.
But technically, he is actually correct. Our standing with God does not depend on our faith in the Bible, it depends on our faith in Jesus.
However, my conservative friends will respond by saying that you cannot have faith in Jesus without an accurate Bible. Without the Bible, we would know nothing of Jesus.
But Stanley was not claiming that the Bible is unimportant or completely inaccurate. What he was saying was that our faith does not depend on the complete accuracy of every book of the Bible.
There could be an inaccuracy (however we would measure that) in Obadiah or the Song of Solomon and that would not require us to reject everything the Gospels say about Jesus.
Interestingly, there is a trend among both some conservative Christians and some atheists, to claim that if there is one mistake in the Bible, it is all untrustworthy. An inaccuracy in some Old Testament battle naturally leads to doubts about the resurrection of Jesus.
I just do not get that. I also find it interesting that none of the early church creeds required a belief in a certain understanding of the Bible. What mattered was what we believed about God and not what we believed about the Bible.
Andy Stanley is interested in introducing Jesus to the unchurched. He is not interested in loading them up with the baggage of a certain theory of inerrancy.
You can have full faith in Jesus without believing that the sun literally stood still for Joshua or that Jonah was literally swallowed by a whale. It is not an all or nothing situation.
I am actually quite concerned that many evangelicals have put the Bible in a place over that of Jesus. There is no other name by which people are saved, not even the name of “Holy Bible.”
no surprise that Christians can’t agree and alas they all make up different versions of their supposed messiah.
“Interestingly, there is a trend among both some conservative Christians and some atheists, to claim that if there is one mistake in the Bible, it is all untrustworthy. An inaccuracy in some Old Testament battle naturally leads to doubts about the resurrection of Jesus.
I just do not get that. I also find it interesting that none of the early church creeds required a belief in a certain understanding of the Bible. What mattered was what we believed about God and not what we believed about the Bible.”
You don’t get that because you don’t want to get it. If there are mistakes, then how do you know which parts are mistakes and which are the supposed “truth” you all claim to have?
The point is that you don’t, and you all use your personal magic decoder rings to tell you that you and only you are right.