To be a doubting Thomas is to be human
April 17, 2008
Well, this I must be super human!
Yesterday I was listening to the Easter message on Revolution Church NYC. Toward the end of the message Jay said, “To be a doubting Thomas, is to be human.” I was very relieved to finally hear someone say those words. I find as more time goes on I feel like I doubt more and more what is told me, at first I thought I was just loosing my faith completely, but now I’m not so sure. I feel if I had lost my faith completly I would stop going to church no matter who called me, I wouldn’t think about things like Heaven, and heck I wouldn’t be looking around for information about homosexuality and the Christian religion.
Last semester in my Lifespan Human Development class we learned about a concept that you can use to judge any part of your life. There is a formal name for it, it is a box and there are four different categories. The general concept is you are most committed to a certain idea once you have thoroughly thought out and processed any idea you cling to. If you have not questioned you idea then you will be easily swayed. As I was sitting in class listening to my professor my heart started beating really quickly for two reasons. First, I knew I hadn’t fully questioned everything that I currently believed in my faith also because I was picking up on Gaydar from her and I wasn’t ready to fess up to those feelings yet.
I am now in the process of thinking about my faith and I no longer believe that we have to follow everything in the Bible. Not that we shouldn’t follow it, but we don’t have to. I believe this for a couple of reasons, most of the books in the NT are addressed specifically different groups of people; Timothy, Ephesians, ect.. I wonder if Timothy followed the things written in Acts. I think it is a good idea to follow those things, but we were not commanded too.
What do you all think?
April 17, 2008 at 6:43 am
Dear LoveisNthehouse,
Your teacher is right in that you should thoroughly question everything, especially your faith in God. First, you want to read the bible. If you haven’t done this, start with the New Testament and move on from there. It isn’t useful either to question or to believe something until you know what the something is.
Not to say you cannot become a Christian without having read the bible. To become a follower of Jesus, you have only to hear and obey the call of the Father. But you cannot grow up as a Christian without God’s word. (My latest post on 1 Corinthians is about that subject, BTW. You might find it useful.)
You are also right, to a limited extent, that you don’t have to follow everything in the bible. You don’t have to obey the law of Moses, for example. Jesus already fulfilled that. God puts us into Christ when we believe and submit to Him, so we, too, have obeyed the law perfectly in Him.
I believe that some of the exhortations to the early church were culturally based, such as hair length, veils, women speaking in church, etc. Most, however, are timeless and equally applicable to any society.
The important thing here is not to try to parse which commandments don’t apply to you. The important thing is to get your eyes on Jesus and follow Him.
Love and Grace,
Cindy