Can We Trust in God's Word?

My previous post was about hermeneutics, or the lenses through which we read Scripture. While noting that our lenses may change depending on what exactly is being studied (one would use a different lens for studying a parable than say a list of laws in Leviticus), I made it clear that I do firmly hold to the primary or default lens that views everything through Christ. I hope to see everything through cross-shaped glasses.

Today I want to touch on the theological ideas of inspiration and inerrancy (Small Catechism, question #3), but I want to make an important distinction. Hopefully this will generate some discussion, but I believe the entirety of Scriptures to be inspired and God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16-17), and fully inerrant when it comes to every issue about life and salvation, but I have my questions on whether every word is fully, factually accurate. However, I fully believe that not every word in the Bible need be factually accurate to be inspired or God-breathed.

Why? Most of the following of this post is inspired by a two-article series by one of my favorite bloggers, Zach Hunt. But, so I can formulate my ideas for myself and articulate where I myself come from, I wanted to use a different analogy. Before I begin, please click here for the first article and here for the second.

I come from Nebraska, where football is king and who reigns over the kingdom? The head football coach of the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers. If you are a good enough coach, you will be revered for years to come; and thankfully we (and I apologize here on out but I'll likely be saying 'we' since I fully identify myself as a Husker!) have had the pleasure of having one of the best coaches of all-time - Tom Osborne.

True enough he won 3 National Championships (94, 95, 97), and has the highest winning % of any FBS coach with over 200 wins (.836). But what made him special in our eyes was that it was more than winning to him.

In the second championship season, one of the players, Lawrence Phillips, was charged with assault and battery. He was immediately suspended from the team and was not allowed to play the rest of the regular season. Because of this decision, Osborne came under fire from national media for not kicking him off the team. Many of the outsiders painted Osborne as a win-at-all-costs coach. However, those that knew Tom, and have followed him for 20 years by that point, trusted him when he said that he fully believed that to kick Phillips off the team, and thereby removing the only positive influence in that young man's life, would have caused more harm than good.

Now, was Tom always correct in everything he did? He's a human, just like all of us, so... no, even T.O. was not correct in everything he did. Was every word that came from his mouth sacrosanct? No. Yet, his players respected, loved and followed him anyway. Why? Because Osborne coached with the mindset of what was best for his players, not only as players, but as young men. It is this love-based paradigm that has earned our trust in this man and gives him the benefit of the doubt in our relationship with him.

So it is with God's word, in my humble opinion. We should never read the Bible as a textbook to make sure everything is factually and scientifically accurate; because if we do so, we run the risk of losing sight of the forest through the trees. We would easily be entangled in the Law-based paradigm that would state that one must believe that every single word must be factually accurate otherwise the entirety of Scripture would come crashing down on itself.

Instead, I find myself believing in a Grace-based paradigm that is telling me that God has chosen to work through (and not dictate) fallible, limited, human writers to express to us how much he loves us and cares for us. I find myself not needing to jump through hoops to make certain inconsistencies match up exactly to allow for certain passages to be accurate because I know that God is in control and he is giving us this faith in which to believe. Rather than being in the courtroom of semantics and technicalities; I find myself resting in Jesus' arms as he leads me on the way of life.