Is The Bible the only Record of Man’s “Personal” Encounter with God? However, we have universalized that encounter on other experiences and encounters of man with God for the ages.
A Lecture Presentation: caribbean-thought-journal-the-bible-audio_06_22_2021_11_12_07.mp3
By: Rev. Renaldo C. McKenzie, Presenter/Lecturer
The Bible is considered the Word of God, in that it was written by Men who claimed to be “inspired” by God (Appealing to authority, seeking credibility). But is The Chrisitan Bible the only Record of Man’s “Personal” Encounter with God? Absolutely not! However, we have universalized that encounter on other experiences and encounters of man with God for the ages.
The Bible was said to be written by mere men moved when moved by God—who is omnipotent, Omnipresent and Omniscient, and perfect— can only respond without wills, devoid of subjectivity and rationality to inspire a Godly and perfect thing. The inspiration is said to be like none other and infallible and therefore sacred. Any other book that claims or attempt to claim inspiration by God is therefore false for there can be only one.
Yet we also believe from the same scriptures that God in his perfection made man perfect but with free will to choose. And man has chosen in times past and the present to do either good or bad or that which is pleasing to him. God does not impose himself on the decisions of man and therefore if the scriptures are inspired by God, it is man who chooses how to act on that inspired knowledge based on his own conditions, lack or gain, limitations and experience.
Nevertheless, we have accepted that the Bible is without human error, limitations and choices.
However, God had once Made man “perfect” (is the accepted Judeo-Christian view and probably the view of many other religions.
But man has erred and seems to be imperfect and limited by time, space, knowledge and his own egos.
So, if God made the Bible or inspired it,
can we also assume that it was perfect but like all things, man has “imperfected” it or imposed his wills, conditions and experience on it?
I share an activity with my students in my class. I said to them: you throw an egg against a wall it doesn’t break it doesn’t fall how comes? It’s actually a trivia or quiz which breaks the ice and gets them thinking. They struggled with coming up the answer. However, it was right there. After some prodding and repetitions of the trivia, one student came up with the answer after several wrong answers. They responded that the egg was broiled and stuck to the wall. Some replied that the wall was made of some special material preventing the egg from falling. One student replied, “it must be the wall”. And YES, she was right. “The wall does not Break; the wall does not fall”. You see they were looking at the wrong thing. They were trained to see things in a certain way, or they were limited to see the bigger picture. For the antecedent of “it” was actually the wall not the egg. Sure, the egg falls but not the wall, yet they saw something deeper into a simple message or exercise. But that is human.
Secondly I share another activity with the class, I said to them recently, if I were to play a game called “Chinese telephone” where I whisper a statement to a student at the front of a line of 10 other students in a queue and have them whisper it back one to the other down the line and then have the last student restate what was said by me, it would have lost its original verbatim and probably it’s essence and devoid into some myth, which is always the case. And we know that huge portions of the biblical record, we claim as the Word of God, was first information and stories that was passed down through generations orally and then with the advent of writing years later came the recording of these stories which may have deviated from the original.
However, we cannot accept a Bible with fallibility because we say God is perfect and inspired the infallible word. But if The World is far from God’s perfection and the world is made perfect by a perfect God, how can we claim to have an infallible Word of God. Sure, God is infallible, but man is not and so, is it not prudent to also question the Bible’s essence and infallibility with man’s limitations and affect upon it. Especially with what we know about human’s ego and drive to compete and better himself among the rest at every cost and the expense of another. With what we have witnessed and discovered about the atrocities of man to advance power through a strategy of false truths, corrupt information and institutions that have created inequalities, racism, divisions, slavery, poverty while advancing the “gospel”.
Mary Grace said of God… “[He/She] is still speaking…” If so, what is he/she saying and why should we believe your interpretation, record and translation of these sayings and should we hold your message from God as normative for us… is he/she speaking to us or is it just for you?
And who determines this? And are we to also ask these questions of the biblical account of man’s encounter with God?
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