Thoughts From A Few Pages...

I just finished reading this book, "A New Kind Of Christian" by Brian McLaren. It was amazing, and it will change your view of how you look at Christianity and the Bible. One of the things I have realized is that we have to accept that we don't have any answers. We may not even be looking at the Bible through the right lens. We might think we know what something means, but who decided what that something meant, and how are we to know if that person was even right or way off track? I am learning that I need to be open, open to change, open to differing perception, open to a whole new way of understanding. What does it mean to follow and live like Jesus?

I am also in the middle of reading "Velvet Elvis" by Rob Bell, which also expands the mind to truth. We cannot spend our whole life building up a brick wall of unchangeable faith and doctrine, because the second someone challenges that and proposes the idea that there might be another way, a brick is removed and the whole wall comes tumbling down. Instead, we should be jumping on a trampoline, where the springs are our doctrine, the truths we believe, but they are not solid like a brick. The flex, they bend, they can form, they change. This is so important. Everything we know we learned from someone else, whether we think we did or not. We act certain ways because someone acted that way and we think it is right. Become open. Allow change. Allow questioning.

Our faith grows and lives in the questions that we ask. When we think we have it all figured out, we no longer need God. Questions are essential. We never have it all figured out. We may think we understand, but who are we to say that there isn't another way of understanding?

I want to be open, to different views, to different opinions, to different ways of looking at things. I want to be out of the box. Not someone building a brick wall. This must sound like unorganized rambling, and it may be. These are just thoughts going through my mind from these books. I wish I were able to describe more. The knowledge is in my memory, but I just can't put it all into words. The only way I can say it is I have been in awe lately, and have more of this desire to learn, to be, to live, for something new. I may not find it, but I am on the path to search for it.