Showing posts with label Steve Stewart. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Steve Stewart. Show all posts

A List of 101 Bible Discrepancies, by Steve Stewart

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Steve Stewart was a music pastor in a large Evangelical church who's now a freethinker. This is Part 3 in a series of posts from a paper he wrote [See tag below for others].
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THE BIBLE AND TRUE THEOLOGY

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.      -2 Timothy 3:16
Evangelical Christians believe that every word of the Bible as originally written was inspired by God.  Why hasn’t God acted throughout history to make sure the text passed down from one person/generation to another remained pure and unadulterated in the thousands of times it has been translated and/or copied?  Why are there thousands of textual variants in the very ancient copies?  Why didn’t he preserve the original “autographs” so that many textual disputes could be avoided?

Are We Wrong to Expect the Bible's Assertions to be Reliable? Part 2 by Steve Stewart

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 Steve Stewart was a music pastor in a large Evangelical church who's now a freethinker. 

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FAITH

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.      -Hebrews 11:6
Why is “faith” so important?  How can people in the 21st Century be expected to believe as absolute truth statements written down thousands of years ago purportedly from God and about God, but without current substantiation to affirm the trustworthiness of the statements?  The fact is, In order to trust God, we must trust/believe
  • The Bible
  • The versions of the Bible we read, and all the people involved in the translation processes from the original languages.
  • The fallible 4th Century men who finally decided which books should be part of the Bible, since God did not “dictate” what the list should include and exclude.
  • The people who actually penned the original manuscripts thousands of years ago that became the Bible
  • The absolute purity of memories of several generations of people who passed the stories and ideas on to others who passed them on to others, etc., down through the years before they were written down
  • The people who hand-wrote copies of the copies of the copies of the original manuscripts, none of which have survived.
  • The absolute integrity of every person involved in producing the Bible, from the first person who gave an account or a testimony of an event or teaching, to the translator of the ancient languages.
  • That nobody who wrote down any part of the Bible, nor anybody who passed on oral tradition before it was written down, had any hidden or private agendas, or had any private point of view which influenced how he/she worded any phrase or sentence.  Further, that no one involved exaggerated, lied, minced words, or altered or added words to the original.
  • All who were part of the process behind the Bible - the hundreds of men and women who lived thousands of years ago, most of whose identities, motives, ethics, life-issues, religious and cultural “baggage,” and intellect or emotional health we know nothing about.

"Are We Wrong to Expect the Bible's Assertions to be Reliable?" Part 1 by Steve Stewart

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Steve Stewart was a music pastor in a large Evangelical church who's now a freethinker.
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INTRODUCTION

For almost all my life I have been taught, have believed, and have taught others that the Bible from cover to cover is absolutely and infallibly true and inerrant, having been inspired by the Holy Spirit. This has been the position which I learned from my parents, our Baptist Church, my Mom’s Good News Club, my Presbyterian Church, the conservative Christian College I attended, the Evangelical Seminary where I earned my Masters of Divinity, and which I have held and taught through my many years of pastoral ministry. It’s why I received Christ as my Savior at a very early age, was baptized, and later ordained to the Ministry.

At various times during my life, I’ve had questions about things I have read in the Bible: things that just didn’t make sense or seemed pretty strange; or statements made in the Bible that didn’t jive with life as I know it. Being very strong on sound, orthodox theology, and always a defender of “true truth,” I just wrote off my misgivings and questions to simply not being able to understand the mind or ways of God. But someday – in heaven – everything would make sense and “we will understand it better by and by.”

I was known for championing “the truth” and disallowing worship songs whose lyrics were not consistent with Biblical concepts.

And then in 2012 something very disturbing and disconcerting happened in the life of our church. I just couldn’t make sense of what occurred. For the first time I was really disillusioned about the efficacy of prayer, for one thing. I began to wonder if God was really listening to His people bringing their deepest requests before His throne day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. And if God WERE listening, why He didn’t respond with an answer that would bring glory to Himself, His Name (reputation) and the Bride of Christ? So my first question about my faith became a momentous catalyst which brought many others to the surface – some of which I had buried for years, and others which came to my mind, one after another. I started to step back from long-held assumptions and presumptions and decided to be open and honest with myself regarding questions that “bubbled to the surface” in my mind.