As a spiritual-futurist, I have a BA degree majoring in history. One cannot know the future without knowing the past which holds clues to what is on the horizon. The world is in such a rapid expansion of knowledge that we are close to entering a tipping point that will forever change earth as we know it.
Richard Rohr caused me to smile when he said on one of his visits to LRC that he had become a thorn in the side of Catholicism precisely because they taught him how to think. My previous denominational leaders in all their zeal instructed and admonished me to READ the Bible.
I studied it, studied it some more, and I have kept studying the Bible: and I always will.
It is in the reading and studying the Bible that I have some to see it as a SACRED work, greatly INSPIRING in many of the books of the LIBRARY called the Bible; however, that same time spent with the Bible also taught me it was NOT infallible, nor INERRANT. But, neither does that change anything, nor diminish the critical importance.
If you're a fundamentalist or if you have fallen prey to Bibliolatry, then of course any contradiction is not good news and opens the door to a host of possibilities and probabilities that create that infamous "slippery slope" into the "rabbit hole" that is very dark and deep.
I am indeed grateful to literally HUNDREDS (no stretching the truth here) of Biblical scholars (from Raymond Brown to Richard Rohr, Spong, Ehrman, Neville, Goldsmith, Starcke, Fox, Grubb, Lanyon, Campollo, Williamson, Robinson, Pagels, Pittenger, Montifore, O'Donnell, Michaels, Borg, Boyd, Sweet, Slaughter, Merton, and another hundred or so) who have been a part of shaping my life.
I stand on the shoulders of some mighty spiritual and intellectual giants.
My ability to navigate the perilous religious waters, to challenge the illogical, to accept the mysterious, to doubt and yet to have faith could not have been accomplished without so many pieces of the puzzle. I have even remained sane while trying to comprehend what others feared as dangerous- even cult-tinged.
I love the Bible. I love the world and all of God's people. I've even come to the place where I can love hard core fundamentalists who hate abortionists, homosexuals, and liberal Democrats. :-)
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