Posted on 07/22/2014 2:22:53 PM PDT by Faith Presses On
Jesus certainly was not a “Bible believer,” as we use that term in the post Billy Graham era of American fundamentalist religiosity that’s used as a trade-marked product to sell religion. Jesus didn’t take the Jewish scriptures at face value. In fundamentalist terms, Jesus was a rule-breaking relativist who wasn’t even “saved,” according to evangelical standards. Evangelicals insist that you have to believe very specific interpretations of the Bible to be saved. Jesus didn’t. He undercut the scriptures.
A leper came to Jesus and said, “Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.” If Jesus had been a good religious Jew, he would have said, “Be healed,” and just walked away. Instead, he stretched out his hand and touched the leper, saying, “I do choose. Be made clean,” even though he was breaking the specific rules of Leviticus. Two chapters teach that anyone touching a person with leprosy is contaminated.
The stories about Jesus that survived the bigots, opportunists and delusional fanatics who wrote the New Testament contain powerful and enlightened truths that would someday prove the undoing of the Church built in his name. Like a futurist vindicated by events as yet undreamed, Jesus’ message of love was far more powerful than the magical thinking of the writers of the book he’s trapped in. In Jesus’ day the institutions of religion, state, misogyny and myth were so deeply ingrained that the ultimate dangerousness of his life example could not be imagined. For example his feminism, probably viewed as an eccentricity in his day, would prove transformational.
Jesus believed in God rather than in a book about God. The message of Jesus’ life is an intervention in and an acceleration of the evolution of empathy...
(Excerpt) Read more at patheos.com ...
And we know about God exactly how then?
The message of Jesus’ life is an intervention in and an acceleration of the evolution of empathy...
Then by that reasoning, so is Jesus.
Just goes to show where deception can land you.
Lots of typos, but ypou get my drift. If you’re gonna stake your eternity on some cock-sure dismissal of the Bible, based on the flimsy evidence you’ve presented....good luck with that.
Isn’t it amazing how frothingly infuriated Satan’s minions get about The Word of God...
Even to the point of trying to co-opt Jesus against it.
Lots of typos, but you get my drift.
Is the writer form Colorado? It sounds like he is on drugs.
Frank(y) went off the deep end IMO when his "evangelical filmmaker" career failed in 1988/89, costing his financial backers millions. Out of the several commercial vehicles he directed, the only "evangelical" film he managed to make was the apocalypic anarchy tale Wired To Kill. I suspect that Franky took his backers' wrath as a lack of forgiveness. (You want irony? He authored the book Addicted to Mediocrity, before he directed Wired To Kill.) I strongly suspect he converted to Orthodoxy as a form of protest against the very Evangelicals whose money he lost in his filmmaking career.
Inbetween then and now, he promoted the Greek Orthodox Church and it's then-Archbishop Spyridon. When the latter was sent packing by the Greek Orthodox Church, Schaeffer lost his soapbox. But promoting Orthodoxy doesn't pay the bills quite like trashing his father's legacy and shilling for liberals and Democrats. Franky always liked attention.
With such a son, who needs enemies? To be sure, Frank tries to nuance the conclusion: "I once thought Dad's ability to present two very different faces to the world—one to his family and one to the public—was gross hypocrisy. I think very differently now. I believe Dad was a very brave man," one who simply had to "carry on"—the victim, presumably, of his own unresolved but inadmissible inner tensions. Yet there is no way round it. Francis Schaeffer, in his son's portrait, lacked intellectual integrity. There was a lie at the very heart of the work of L'Abri, and the thousands of people who over the decades came to L'Abri and came to faith or deepened in faith, were obviously conned too.I challenge this central charge of Frank's with everything in me. I and many of my closest friends, who knew the Schaeffers well, are certain beyond a shadow of doubt that they would challenge it too. Defenders of truth to others, Francis and Edith Schaeffer were people of truth themselves.
For six years I was as close to Frank as anyone outside his own family, and probably closer than many in his family. I was his best man at his wedding. Life has taken us in different directions over the past thirty years, but I counted him my dear friend and went through many of the escapades he recounts and many more that would not bear rehearsing in print. It pains me to say, then, that his portrait is cruel, distorted, and self-serving, but I cannot let it pass unchallenged without a strong insistence on a different way of seeing the story. There is all the difference in the world between flaws and hypocrisy. Francis and Edith Schaeffer were lions for truth. No one could be further from con artists, even unwitting con artists, than the Francis and Edith Schaeffer I knew, lived with, and loved....
- Os Guinness, "Fathers and Sons", a review of Frank Schaeffer's book Crazy for God.
I think you’re being a little too hard on the General.
He is quite correct that the final canon of the Bible was not fully in place when Jesus walked the earth.
The OT was in process of canonization, with some sections of the present fully accepted as such, and possibly others, notably the “Writings,” not yet promoted to canonical status.
The NT of course has not yet been written when Jesus was around. There was a generally accepted NT canon by early 200s, but various groups were still arguing over the issue of which books to include and exclude a LOT later.
For instance, Luther tried to get four books of the canon removed from his followers’ Bibles. It didn’t take.
The Council of Trent accepted several books of the OT as canonical that most Protestants consider apocryphal.
uhhhhhhhh, NO.
that’s the possession talking...
ph
I had the great blessing of spending a few months in the Swiss Alps with Edith & Francis Schaeffer. He would walk with me in the morning as I told him everything on my mind and on my heart. His questions and answers where always from Torah as I am a Jew. In short order he took me in a circle to come back to understand who Yeshua is. A few months later as I stood at the Wailing Wall and prayed I thank G_D for leading me to this wonderful man of G_D.
That was a wonderful blessing!
It all fits Roman Catholic indoctrination.
Really just a pretty stupid article all the way around.
The stories about Jesus that survived the bigots, opportunists and delusional fanatics who wrote the New Testament.
He sounds like a religious nut who hates Christians.
The author is relying on words written by delusional fanatics to make his judgment about who Jesus was and what he believed?
Quite strange belief system.
Fascinating. Thank you for sharing your experience.
His dad was a great man of faith...this fellow has wandered from that legacy.
He then gives stories about Jesus from the....New Testament....written by men he calls bigots.
The bigot is you, Frank. May your soul be awakened.
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