The Bible and Frostbite

This past week I had the opportunity to sit on an ordination council for one of my good friends.  At one point someone had asked him a question that he hadn’t considered before, so he said that he wasn’t quite sure what his answer would be to it.  One of the people on the council (there were 12 people questioning him, that not intimidating!) followed up by asking him what process he would go through to find an answer to the question.  He responded that he would talk to our senior pastor, one of his seminary professors and review what the Bible said about the issue.  I thought that was a very succinct and proper process to go through to help a person think through an issue.

In the discussion after the questioning (when my friend got to stand out in the 20 degree night for 30 minutes) the person who had asked about the process he would use revisited the response my friend gave.  And he said something like this, “The process he said he would use to find the answer to questions concerned me a little bit.  I wanted him to say that if he didn’t know the answer to something that he would go to Scripture and find the answer.”  

Holy crap!  Does anyone else have a problem with that or is it just me?  If I lock myself in a closet with the Bible I will come up with the proper answer to every question that could be asked (or at least about theology, I don’t think I’d find an answer to who’s going to win the Amazing Race or how long ice cream takes to melt on a hot sidewalk).  Notice that my friend said he would consult the Bible, but also talk to people he trusted and respected for their interaction with Scripture.  

It’s not as if we can ever read the Bible from and objective perspective anyway, so the “answers” we come up with will always reflect our experiences, cultural and historical position, prior beliefs, and what we happen to be thinking about that day.  This is why interacting with a variety of interpretations and answers to theological questions, from our time and the rest of Christian history, is so important.  We will naturally make a decision about what we believe on certain issues, but we should do so humbly understanding our own limitations.  

So I say to my friend, great answer, it reflects a great understanding of how we can responsibly pursue truth.  And I hope you’ve recovered from your frostbite!