Anyways, what I am getting at is why do we look to other people for information about things like this? Please do not take that the wrong way. I know it could sound bad on the screen..lol. Please understand my tone of voice is very much sincere. I do understand why we talk about things like this among ourselves, but in all reality, would you not agree that seeing how we both have the same exact Spirit living in us, that He could not 'supernaturally' bring wisdom and understanding on something like this? And while I am not saying He cannot, or will not, use discussion like this among ourselves to bring about the understanding; would you not agree that the answer is to the question at hand is contained in the Bible?
I dunno. Maybe its just me, subconsciously, trying to provoke you to go deeper Spiritually. Please, again, do not take this negatively. I just found it interesting that we are studying the very Person that lives in us, and found it somewhat ironic and similar if the president was standing in the room and we were talking about him...batting ideas about his actions before he was president verses after he was president...all the while he is standing right there in the midst of us.
I understand completely what you are saying Nathan, but please look at it another way with me. Yes, we indeed know this truth of the Spirit who is abiding in us and can teach us all things, and as I have already said this is
no dry intellectual exercise for me, but the Scriptures were also meant for
discussing and
edifying one another among the saints. Some believers are even given
gifts of teaching, preaching, and prophecy which allow them to expound the Scripture in clearer ways than others, and it can edify the Body by nurturing them in God's truth! Paul among the Greeks used to go to their public buildings and reason with them and discuss important matters. Some accepted the truth of his teaching, others rejected it, and we have the same choice when encountered with the Word of God, but there is
much to be gained from collaborative discussion. I have heard people, when distorting the principle to an extreme, use the "
The Spirit is in me and I have knowledge of God and have no need for anyone to teach me" (paraphrased from
1 John) to justify a position that there is "no need" to attend a Church or congregation of believers, because they can "teach themselves" (I'm not implying you were taking that position at all though - just making a related point). Not only is there no accountability or checks and balances against incorrect private interpretation, but they also consequently cut themselves off from the very
life which the Spirit has corporately
baptized them into when he grafted them into the full Body of Believers. This is why the author of Hebrews says that we should
not forsake the gathering of ourselves together. I see these boards also as an extension of that fellowship, and it has personally been very valuable to me over the years.
I have even had incorrect views
corrected on this board before, and have also found strengthening as well and supporting insights to things that I already held to be true and evident from Scripture. Both have helped keep me doctrinally on track, and I am very appreciative for this community.
Also, as you could tell from what I've said in this thread, this issue has been unresolved in my mind for
almost 3 years now, and I decided that now is a time to settle the truth of the matter for myself. Do you know how maddening that can be when
you feel you are on the precipice of something big, deep, and fundamental in your spiritual understanding
but cannot quite grasp it? I cannot just sit in my chair and ask God to download the knowledge to me if I in turn put forth no effort to seek it myself. I DO read my Bible, and I do pray for understanding, but often seeking advice of others (and for me, being young, often from my elders) who have spiritual wisdom from experience the rich fruit of their own studies in Scripture, and in their own life, can open up immesurable riches of understanding and consolation to the one earnestly seeking the knowledge of truth. I believe God blesses such discussions if they are edifying. It certainly has helped me recently just discussing this matter, and getting it off my mind and chest. It's a releif, really, to bring it to a community who shares my own heart in seeking after God.
It is hard for me to describe how big this present question is for me, because (as I have often found in my own study of Scriptures) asking a question about
one theological truth impacts our understanding about
another theological truth and so on, and it can have a ripple effect. If our thinking is off, even slightly (and mine has been before in certain areas, and thankfully it was corrected to be back on track), it misaligns
other truths which can
then impact our understanding of yet
other truths, whereas a correct understanding brings them all into alignment. They need to be in alignment so that we can rightly divide the Word of Truth when we relay it to someone else. Thus why we discuss such things.
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I am a Computer Science major, and an IT guy by profession, and I find an analogy akin to my thoughts on this matter which may help you understand what I'm trying to say. I learned when I started studying algorithms (predefined patterns of code to calculate or accomplish some result - such as say a sorting algorithm) that you can write (as per my example) a "sorting" algorithm to take 1,000 numbers in random order and step through each one and compare the two and swap each number in the right direction until the 1,000 numbers are organized in ascending or descending order. A neat trick I learned is that
for those algorithms that are notoriously hard to write you can write a
partly working algortihm that can more simply sort (but not completely sort - it
fails at some point to complete it correctly), say, 90% of the numbers in correct order - but there will
be a remaining 10% of the numbers roughly dispersed through the (now
mostly sorted) list of 1,000 numbers that are then still out of order. Sometimes we learned that in the real world (depending on the application) this may be "
good enough", if you only needed to see the main trend (and not the outliers) of the number values, but still you leave 10% unaccounted for/unsorted/unfinished.
Similarly, I have found that by practical experience that even a
basic yet naive/not-fully-matured understanding of the Bible's truths can indeed overlap and agree with the convictions of someone who has chewed on the meat of the Word and has a developed understanding of God's Word
for a while (maybe they have even up to "90%" [as per my anaology] the same understanding on certain issues - often less though),
but only up to a point, and then at some point they start to diverge in their understanding. I would say that between any two Christian denominations this overlap of belief exists
up to a point and then they begin to diverge in their understanding. Sometimes we think that the other group would
not even have such misunderstandings
if they had the right foundation in doctrine in the first place (of course, though, they all say that
). Anyway...
Let me further illustrate. Have you ever begun building or putting something together, and it seems to actually have been put together correctly thus far
almost until the very last step and then you realize you did something slightly wrong but (because of it) cannot continue
unless you go back and start it all over again? This is what happens when you build things on a faulty or even
slightly faulty foundation. Yeah, it may work for a while, and even last as only half-done for a while, but up to a point when you want to complete it you find you were infact off to begin with. This is what happens each time I start down a road when my understanding of God's truths are
slightly off and I wont notice it sometimes for even
years because my very simple/basic understanding of the foundations of Christianity (yet simple enough and
sufficient for saving faith! this is not something that is "eternally" impacting per se, not impacting on whether I'm saved or not) is solid and I will go on agreeing with every other Christian for a protracted period, until one digs real deep on a particular issue to examine a
true understanding of what something means, and then I may realize my view is at odds with someone else and I have to figure out "Why?", if I believe what the bible says and so does the other person. Someone one must have
sincerely misunderstood it. Much of this has come from rather innocent yet solid Baptist upbringing for me, but the thing is they instill certain
assumptions in you that you seldom think about until it comes to a fork in the road that
forces you to examine it. Thus why, to this day, I
still find some of my
former ways of thinking reformed as I read more and more Scripture (
And shouldn't this be the reality for all Christians as we mature in our faith and understanding?) When something big becomes revealed I "reform my thinking" to adjust to the truth of Scriptures as best I can. And it is not necessarily always me who is off either: sometimes I come to the fork and realize that I took the right road and the person I'm talking with took the other road, and I need to try to correct their thinking (with gentleness and love, as Peter tells us) according to Scripture.
...continued below...
2 Its a weakness of mine to let something 'dwell' on my mind when I should just look past it and move on. I am working on it. He is still working on me..:yes