This post is going to be controversial so please feel free to unsubscribe if it crosses some kind of line with you. I dislike people quoting isolated bible passages out of context and using them to their own ends. I am tired of people passing judgement on various topics but forgetting the number one message Jesus came to give us was one not of judgement but of love, acceptance, peace and forgiveness- Yes I freely admit I have struggles of my own to overcome.
However I am personally sick and tired of pious nonsense spoken by people who have forgotten that Jesus reached out to and through the most surprising of people and that he went out of his way to be inclusive.
I do not usually last long at bible studies. Within a short space of time my experience has been that too often the activities at many such groups are often at odds with the words being studied. For example how can you study the bible but complain and cast disapprovong looks at the woman struggling with noisy young children or scoff at the person who sits in the wrong place, or judge a person by their car, house, clothing etc etc etc.? If today we are meant to be studying the bible, we should at the same time be living it. It is not ok to ignore people who don’t fit in for example. It is not ok to be so focussed on the business of the day, we miss people who are in need in our midst. I learned as a teacher that sometimes the greatest lessons are learned when we go a little off script. Lesson plans are made to be broken
(Ok so I just blew my chances of future employment as well as being invited to any future bible studies.)
Jesus dropped everything, just because a woman reached out and touched his robe. Jesus appeared to break with the script all the time.
I am personally very grateful to the teachers who have gone a little off script both with myself and with my own children.Those moments have often been priceless-the occasions when they have admitted they are human, don’t know everything and have made mistakes for example.I will never forget the deputy headmaster of a large school, who called my son into his office, to see a monarch butterfly
just because he knew of his interest in all manner of wildlife.
I believe the bible is an interactive 3D experience and I have a theory that when we study something God often gives us an immediate opportunity to practice whatever we have just been learning about, sometimes at the very moment we are investigating a particular passage.
2Corinthians 5:17
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
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