Second sight...or a lack thereof
My grandmother started this the other night. She lent me a book, eyeing the object with disgust. "Here," she said, "read this. These people have a messed-up view of Jesus." So I read it. Nonstop. I couldn't believe what I read.
The book was called "Second Touch," thus named for Jesus' touch of the leperous woman. It was a wonderfully touching story about Jesus' healing of the lepers, from a leperous woman's point of view. The story is her struggle to find Jesus - literally - and what happens when she does. It had many loose ends in it that eventually tied together in the end. Basically, it starts with Jesus' healing of the blind man, lepers, and a Pharisee; and, the feeding of the 4,000 (NOT the 5,000 - check Mark 8:1-9).
I don't know what angered my grandmother. I thought it was a wonderful story of how Jesus came for everyone, regardless of what the world thought of them. It didn't matter whether they believed in Him from the beginning, or hated Him until the bitter end and then believed. If we truly have faith in Him, we will be saved from our "disease" of sin. That's what the book told me...I have no idea what it said to her.
I guess it only proves that I can't agree with what I call "cookie-cutter God." I think so many people try to fit God in a little box. "He was or wasn't this, He meant this and not this, He will or won't do this." As though we have any way of knowing! The Bible is our guide to what God wants us to know. Depending on your "flavor" of faith, you could interpret the Bible as 100% accurate that means exactly what it says, or as a book of symbols, or as a book that's mostly true, or as the divinely inspired word of God translated through sometimes-faulty humans, or even as any combination of the above. God is what He wants to be, and the Bible tells us what that is, and even shows us through accounts of real happenings in Biblical times. It is up to us, though, to interpret; not by what we want the Bible to say, but by what God has said to us through it.
The book was called "Second Touch," thus named for Jesus' touch of the leperous woman. It was a wonderfully touching story about Jesus' healing of the lepers, from a leperous woman's point of view. The story is her struggle to find Jesus - literally - and what happens when she does. It had many loose ends in it that eventually tied together in the end. Basically, it starts with Jesus' healing of the blind man, lepers, and a Pharisee; and, the feeding of the 4,000 (NOT the 5,000 - check Mark 8:1-9).
I don't know what angered my grandmother. I thought it was a wonderful story of how Jesus came for everyone, regardless of what the world thought of them. It didn't matter whether they believed in Him from the beginning, or hated Him until the bitter end and then believed. If we truly have faith in Him, we will be saved from our "disease" of sin. That's what the book told me...I have no idea what it said to her.
I guess it only proves that I can't agree with what I call "cookie-cutter God." I think so many people try to fit God in a little box. "He was or wasn't this, He meant this and not this, He will or won't do this." As though we have any way of knowing! The Bible is our guide to what God wants us to know. Depending on your "flavor" of faith, you could interpret the Bible as 100% accurate that means exactly what it says, or as a book of symbols, or as a book that's mostly true, or as the divinely inspired word of God translated through sometimes-faulty humans, or even as any combination of the above. God is what He wants to be, and the Bible tells us what that is, and even shows us through accounts of real happenings in Biblical times. It is up to us, though, to interpret; not by what we want the Bible to say, but by what God has said to us through it.