“You” Means “Y’all”
Justin Hiebert over at Empowering Missional wrote a piece last week titled The Bible isn’t for you. Justin rightly points out that our individualistic mindset has caused us to misread huge portions of the Bible. He challenges us to read the Bible as a community rather than as individuals. It seems like a small thing, but it has important implications not only for how we read scripture, but also for how we understand ourselves and our mission in the world.
From the blog post:
If we leave the focus on the singular (what you personally need to do) it is really hard to build genuine community. We entrust that each person has to do it all, and do it all by themselves. But then when we gather, we are not a community but a collective of individuals. God calls us to more than collective individualism but to genuine community. A place where people are transformed together into the perfect reflection of Christ in the world.
Category: General
Tags: Bible, Community, Individualism, Justin Hiebert, Missions
Related Reading
The Cruciform Beauty of Horrific Divine Portraits
“Only a person who is aware of the crucified Christ can properly understand Scripture.” Luther (Table Talks) In the last three posts I’ve been wrestling with how insights from Matthew Bate’s book, The Hermeneutics of the Apostolic Proclamation might help us interpret violent portraits of God in the OT in a way that discloses how…
Part 2: Disarming Flood’s Case Against Biblical Infallibility
Image by humancarbine via Flickr In this second part of my review of Disarming Scripture I will begin to address its strengths and weakness. [Click here for Part 1] There is a great deal in Disarming Scripture that I appreciate. Perhaps the most significant thing is that Flood fully grasps, and effectively communicates, the truth that…
When You Doubt the Bible
Kit via Compfight Many people enter into conversations with ReKnew and Greg’s writings because they have questions and doubts about the Bible which they do not feel they can ask within their current church tradition. When they arise, and they will, what do we do with them? How do we process them in a healthy…
Old Testament Support for the Warfare Worldview
Rebuking Hostile Waters Satan plays a minor role in the Old Testament relative to the New Testament. Instead, the warfare worldview in the Old Testament is expressed in terms of God’s conflict with hostile waters, cosmic monsters, and other gods.Like their Ancient Near Eastern neighbors, ancient Jews believed that the earth was founded upon and…
Sermon Clip: Twisted Scripture – Job
The Book of Job has often been misused as a way to explain the mysterious ways of God in suffering and pain. The truth is that the Book of Job is there to teach us that God does not inflict pain and suffering, rather it is the cosmic warfare that we cannot see which interferes…
Is the Book of Acts Reliable?
(Note: We apologize that certain German vowels didn’t translate onto this site). Introduction The book of Acts is of critical importance in the contemporary debate about the historical Jesus. The reason for this is straightforward. Those who deny that the original, historical Jesus made divine claims for himself, performed miracles and rose from the dead…