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Our listener, Mike Harper, has some questions.
This week, we three failed pastors get to field some feedback from an esteemed listener!
Here are Mike’s questions for your reference:
Hey Guys,
Here’s a couple precursor comments to set a little context. First, I hope you know that these questions originate out of not knowing you all very well, except for Kent, and not listening to everything you all have talked about. So, I want to remain open and humble to ask and receive your feedback.
- The bible – If the bible is not a reliable way to define the Christian faith, what is reliable to do it? Meaning, what sources, people, experiences, fill in the blank do we rely upon to define the Christian faith.
- The gospel – in many podcasts the gospel was often referred to and probably clearly defined, but let’s try to help me, by clearly expressing it. If it is what I remember, it is captured by an holistic and deep understanding of Jesus as the God-man who willingly took on humanity, lived a sinless and exemplary life and taught on and introduced the kingdom of God, willingly embraced his mission to lay down his life for us demonstrating God’s love and selfless sacrifice and rose from the dead to
- With something like this view of the bible as background and passages and verses often used throughout the podcast for teaching and our learning…How do you get a gospel or a subsequent gospel ethic, without the bible being a reliable way of defining the Christian faith?
- What is your all’s view of inspiration? How do we apply the bible or what place does it have?
- Sometimes the show criticized how it was difficult to draw good application or good ethics from the bible because it does not address contemporary issues and addresses issues that we do not face currently, This is essentially a scope issue with the bible and questioning its sufficiency to handle the extent of the moral or good life. What’s wrong with drawing general principles from the bible to apply to life? If we cannot do this, how can a generalized gospel handle very specific moral issues?
- I might add that I remembered the “faith acting in love” ethic that Nathan advocated for as a Christian ethic to me continues to cry out for further explanation, what is “faith”? To me there continues to be the chicken and egg discussion. In early podcasts the comment that the NT scriptures support or confirm the gospel, and something like they authenticate the authority of the gospel, yet the gospel remains the authority. Both the gospel and faith seem contentless without the context of the what the text brings to the table to truly flesh out what those things are.