We wrapped up our Sure. sermon series with a Q&A hosted by Greg Boyd and Paul Eddy. The audio and video media files contain questions and answers from all three of our services on March 24/25, 2018.
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Sure. Q&A
• Greg Boyd, Paul Eddy
Topics: Controversial Issues, Defense of Christian Faith, Faith
Sermon Series: Sure.
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2 thoughts on “Sure. Q&A”
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My belief goes like this … Jesus is the absolute truth, and God is the carrier and “Alfa and Omega” of absolute truth and everything else is a relative truth. As we are seperated from Eden and we got falsehood and distortions of truth from the Devil (and his/her/it’s demons) we’ll have to admit that our whole society and mindset have pitfalls and the absolute truth will only reveal itself fully in heaven as we can walk and experience the fully untouched objective truth together.
If God gives free will he must admit the existence of false beliefs and lies because (if my reasoning is correct) everything outside God is false. So, in love of us being individuals (just as a parent) he let us choose wrongly if we want to (even though it hurts him). Even if we all have a relationship with absolute truth (whether we believe it as a philosphical statement or not we will still place it somewhere on a line of existent to non-existent, truthful to false – therefore at least granting the existence of the idea of objective truth – and in turn because it exist as an idea, it grants it’s possibility) and some of us have a relationship with The trinity (Jesus the Son, Jehova the Father and the Holy Spirit) no one can unopposed claim to know the whole truth on every matter there is. Christianity, as I see it, say that the only one who can say so unopposed is God himself.
As it is written in the bible, Jesus is the head and we can (though only as a community – never alone) form Jesus body and act on behalf of Jesus. Therefore there will never be a replacement of the “actual” head, and the only way we even can get close to the essence of truth is in a group setting, which enables us to reveal our own lies and deceptions and sins, to see more clearly and let the objective truth show the way if possible (God). God created us to belong together and when the Devil seperates people it is also a direct assault on the absolute truth, God himself/herself.
If what Jesus says about being the Truth is to be considered in a faithful manner then it must be true not only in the realms of the study of Theology, but all possible subjects – Physics, Maths, Philosophy, Medicine, Chemistry, Engineering, and Social Sciences among others. To me it does not seem impossible that if there is a Creator of all matter, then he/she would already know what there is to know about everything, and that we humans are just trying our best to figure it all out. After all, God is the greatest Scientist of all.
Even though we through our faith experience God in a relationship, we must admit that if we believe the rationality of God the Creator, then God must also encompass all logical truths following my previous reasoning. So someone might claim they know the absolute truth as they have experienced God in a relational way. Yet if God is rational and we can see the imprints of God on science and life in general, then the person that claims to know God fully through their relationship can not possibly know the rationality and the logic of God as it is probably not yet manifested through our scientific knowledge today. Even being an expert in all existing subjects makes absolute truth as a conviction obsolete if it can change… Therefore the same person must also claim that 1. the person knows everything 2. in every subject 3. and that what they know is eternal in its being the same way God is rational and logical in an eternal way.
So if we believe there are different paths of “absolute truth,” and not that Physics and Social Sciences actually are the same subject after all, so that there is a “absolute truth Physics”, “absolute truth Social Sciences”, and that the different paths go through errors and falsehoods and distortions of our perception of it on the way we can still believe that the source of all “objective truths” are in God. Like the path starts and ends at and with God. In that way if someone asks, I think it is rightful according to Scripture (probably not in a worldy post-modern way) to say that we have seen/felt/heard/read the voice of all objectives truths – Jesus himself – in a relational way, through the Miracle of the Cross. Not in all possible relational ways there is (as some have the gift of seeing, some of hearing songs, some of dreaming, some of interpreting the holy bible etc and that goes into the ministering of gifts and is a totally diffrent subject to dwell on), and we can’t possibly be “the head” and know all there is about the objective truth… But in that way we can say we have experienced objective truth and that we through our belief of our own perceptions trustworthiness (our perception is in the end were our every thought and feelings and insights and instincts arise from to become a field of study) know that objective truth exist and that we believe (in the same way we believe some other fundamentals truths for our everyday existence to function – like “I have toes” or “there will be a ground to walk upon tomorrow”) it to be God.
I think that a scientist saying he/she/as a group found a part of the objective truth in their studies would probably not be shunned in their fields of study (someone saying zero is a constant value or 1+1=2 would probably not be afraid to say that it could be called the objective truth in a mathematical sense, for an example) . To see part of the “TRUTH” does not mean you are able to see everything truthfully and insightfully (especially alone). What is radical with Christian faith is that when you claim that you see part of the objective truth in your relationship with God you are also simultaniously claiming you see the source of all “TRUTHS”. A mathematican seeing 1+1=2 would probably have a hard time claiming that mathematical objective truth, is equally an objective truth in Gender Studies or whatever. In that way I believe there is one source of objective truths but a lot of diffrent paths of objective truths… If that makes sense to anyone reading this? In our fallen world the only place you can see the source of all truths is looking in the eyes of God and still you must humbly admit you do not know shit. Looking at a source – like looking at Big Bang and understanding it is the source of all matter physically does not equal to knowing why , when or how it came to be. The see a source of truth is not to have all the answers.. So as a Christian to claim to relationally experienced the source of objective truth is not the same as to say you know all about the objective truth(s).
Why don’t we see Paul Eddy preaching on sundays???