Bridge of Reason

  G.K. Chesterton was once asked if we should take the Bible literally, this was his response: ‘The Bible says that Herod is a fox – that does not mean he has a bushy tail and pointy ears. It also says that Jesus is the door – that does not mean that he is wooden, flat and swinging on hinges.’ It is not possible within the scope of this article to cover the subject of hermeneutics in any great depth, but I will suggest a good book below in case you want to study this subject further. Hermeneutics is the art of biblical interpretation. As seen from my previous articles, this is matter of great importance. Many handle the Word of God in a slapdash and frivolous fashion and, in doing so, cause great damage to the body of Christ. This is sad because there are tools available to us that would greatly help our understanding of Scripture. Let us briefly consider some of them. What musical genre are national anthems? Country. The Bible is a book like no other. There are sixty-six books col...

  "A young couple from another church came to one of our assistant pastors for counselling about marital problems they started having soon after their wedding. After just a few minutes of interviewing the two, he could see they were miles apart in tastes, ideas, and opinions. “What made the two of you get married?” he asked. “A sermon our pastor preached on Joshua conquering Jericho.” (to which the pastor replied) “ What did that have to do with getting married?” “Well,” explained the husband, “Joshua and his army claimed Jericho, marched around it seven times, and the walls fell down. Our pastor told us that if we trusted God, claimed a certain young girl and marched around her seven times, the walls of her heart would collapse, and she would be willing to marry. So, I did it, and we got married.” Our assistant pastor stared in disbelief. Was this man putting him on? No, indeed. In fact, several couples in that particular church had gotten married on the same basis after he...

  Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.     2 Timothy 2:15 When I was young, I used to love nothing more than playing football with my friends. Near to where I lived was a large grass area and when we arrived, we would take our jumpers off and lay them on the ground to use as goalposts. The problem with those ‘jumper’ goalposts was that they were broad and easily relocated. The goalkeeper could move them when we weren’t looking to make the goal smaller, and a sneaky opposition player could use his foot to move the posts to make the goals bigger. These were not the only problems. I remember heated discussions regarding whether the ball had crossed the line (pretty difficult to be sure when there was no actual line to cross); or whether the ball had gone in or over the extra-large goalpost – such fun!   As fondly as all this lives in the memory, and as entertaining as it...