Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Reality is not based on perception

At the event I was at last Friday, I was sitting next to a person who told me that he no longer believed in the inerrancy of the Scriptures. Inerrancy refers to the Bible's being without error. The main reason this person gave me for his doubts was that there are certain passages that bothered him - that he didn't like. These passages were not in synch with his view of God.

I have to admit as I have done more than once in TorahBytes that there are several passages in the Bible that bother me. But so what? There are lots of things in life that bother me. Take gravity for example. Do you know how much suffering we have had to endure because of gravity's insistence of puling us down to Earth? Then there's the weather. I don't know where you live, but there are all kinds of days that I really don't like. Have you ever experienced high heat and high humidity at the same time? Where I live hot, sticky weather has existing long before the invention of global warming. And how about mosquitoes? I don't have time to get into that, but let it suffice to say that they really bother me. I wish, like the person I met, I could deny the existence of these things, but I can't due to the simple reason that they are real.

It's the same with the Scriptures. I don't believe they are true and without error because I like them (which for the most part I do), but because they are true no matter what I think about them. In order to live life effectively, we need to discover what really is, and not simply based on our personal preferences.

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