Title: QnA: Does forgiveness get old? Does Paul agree with Jesus? How can I honor an abusive father? Source:
Bryan Wolfmueller URL Source:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ur_fe-uTxjQ Published:Aug 17, 2023 Author:Pastor Bryan Wolfmueller Post Date:2023-08-17 02:40:43 by Charles_Byrd Keywords:None Views:1095 Comments:40
Pastors Bryan Wolfmueller and Andrew Packer answer your theological and Biblical questions.
Nah, I like Paul. But Paul does conflict with Jesus, James and John from time to time. Paul has good things to say, but he's not God.
See, this is the problem you Protestants have. You act as though the Bible itself is God. It isn't. God is God. Some of what God said is in the Bible, and what other people said is too. And it conflicts with itself, as any anthology covering 4000 years of history will do.
This doesn't bother me, for whom the highest authority is the most recent things God said, and Jesus is the most recent set of those things. So Jesus, not the whole Bible, is the gold standard. Where Paul conflicts with Jesus, Paul is to be ignored. Where James conflicts with Jesus, he's wrong. Where John conflicts with Jesus, ignore John. Where Yahweh conflicts with Jesus (over shellfish, for example, or death for sexual offenses), ignore Yahweh and go with Jesus.
Jesus alone is the ultimate authority. Obviously this puts Jesus above the rest of the Bible.
No Protestant can accept that. And so Protestantism is a welter of contradicting and competing sects.
The Catholic Church gets it right that the Bible isn't God, and it puts Jesus first in the Scriptures, which is better than the other positions. BUT then the Catholics (and the Orthodox) put the Church before Jesus, so if there's something they particularly like or want, they'll fetch it from Paul, or James, or themselves in the middle ages, and put that before Jesus.
Which makes the Orthodox and the Catholics wrong also, just differently wrong than the Protestants.
The Protestants place the Bible as an idol before God. The Catholics and the Orthodox place their churches as an idol before God. They're all wrong. The first authority is Jesus. Yes, he is in the Bible, but everything else in the Bible, or the Church, that conflicts with Jesus, is obviously wrong, because, simply put, Jesus was God Incarnate, and the Bible and the Church are not.
Period. Nothing more to discuss.
If you disagree, you're obviously wrong - and an idolater of the Bible or the Church. Do me a favor and go argue with the trees - I am not interested in you.
You have quoted John, not Jesus. You are bootstrapping your belief about "the Bible" into what Jesus said referring to certain passages in the Bible.
Jesus, of course, did not have the Bible, That didn't exist until 260 years after his death. There were Scriptures, various scrolls, and there was no canon. Jesus only refers to passages in a few of them.
I focus on what Jesus said and did, which keeps it very straightfoward and simple: he said what he wants, and did it.
You have bootstrapped "the Bible" into primacy of place, which allows you to find anything in it, including the things that say quite different things from what Jesus said and did, and pretend that it's all equal.
I can't comprehend how you can really believe in what you do, other than long habit learned as a child.
In any case, what is the point? The Bible says to take the daughter of the priest who fornicates and put her in the fire, and it says that you shall not allow a witch to live. It says to execute sabbath breakers, and ostracize pork and shellfish eaters, and those who wear garments of mixed fibers (no polyester for you!). And it does NOT anywhere say "This is the ceremonial law, but this is the moral law." Actually, you quote Jesus saying that every letter of it is all true.
So, why do you eat pork and shrimp? And do you think "witches" should be killed?
It's kind of pointless, this discussion. It just provokes rage. Why do it? I'm going to stop. I know you really believe that I have these doubts and fears, because I don't think about the Bible the way you do. I wonder how you possibly cannot know that what I am saying is obviously true, and be full of doubts and fears yourself. I'm actually not, at all. I don't see how that is possible, in return, for somebody like you, because of all of the weird monstrosities in the ancient text.
But you do you, and I will be untroubled. And I'll do me, which should leave you untroubled, but doesn't seem to. You probably think that you are earnestly HELPING me, but what you're doing is demonstrating to me how much of what you believe was learned by rote, and how little critical thinking is going on there. So let's just stop.
