Answering Your Faith Questions - Part Three

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Title - Answering Your Faith Questions - Part Three
Church - Living Word Lutheran in Katy, Texas (ELCA)
Author - Pastor Mike Aus
Citations - Psalm 119:105
Quality -Good quality

Summary - Pastor Mike Aus takes some prewritten questions about faith, Christianity and the Bible. This is part three, which has to do with discerning God's guidance.

Well, how do we discern God's guidance? A lot of people say that God is telling them to do things that don't seem to be very God-like. The easy answer is to consult the Bible, which is our best witness of God's word. Honestly, it's a huge book, but it's also the clearest witness to God's love for humanity that we have. If you want to do study in a group? Go here.

Another great way to learn is pay attention when you make mistakes. Life lessons are learned through struggles and challenges. God can also speak through dreams, visions and intuitions. Joseph, Isiah and others get types of visions. The Bible is full of such events, the important thing is to listen.

Radio waves, the WiFi 802.11b network, your cell phone and all of that is transmitted through the air all of the time. Is it that hard to imagine that there are spiritual waves transmitted through the air? There is guidance all around us, always, and you're hard-wired to hear it (God's WiFi network is free, too. You don't even need to buy coffee).

Answering Your Faith Questions - Part Two

(Click the title above to download directly to your computer, or follow the directions on the right to subscribe to the podcast)

Title - Answering Your Faith Questions - Part Two
Church - Living Word Lutheran in Katy, Texas (ELCA)
Author - Pastor Mike Aus
Citations - John 20
Quality -Good quality

Summary - Pastor Mike Aus takes some prewritten questions about faith, Christianity and the Bible. This is part two, which has to do with questions about the Bible, the gnostic gospels, et cetera.

Q: What does the word Bible mean?
A: It comes from the greek word Biblos, meaning paper, which eventually became book.

Q: What about the non-canonical books or gnostic gospels? Why don't we follow them? Hasn't the Gospel of Judas been verified?
A: It has been authenticated that it's from ancient Egypt, but it hasn't been authenticated as true. People knew about this as early as the second century, but they didn't believe it was a true Gospel?

Q: Has part of the Bible been covered up? Is there a conspiracy to hide books of the Bible (a la The DiVinci Code?)
A: Here are some quick answers to counter the conventional wisdom:

No, we know exactly what happened in the early church. There is no hidden truth or conspiracy to supress the truth. There are tons of alternative gospels (Mary, Thomas, Peter) created by an early Christian movement called Gnosticism. It was a quasi-Christian movement that showed up around 100 A.D. What they did was combine Greek mysticism, philosophy and a little Christianity.

So why weren't they included? Because the consensus was that they weren't authentic. The included Gospels were written between 65 and 90 A.D. The Gnostic Gospels didn't come around until later (past 100 A.D.)

Even more so, the Christ of the Gnostic Gospels isn't the same Christ of the included Gospels. He says things like he's part of the rocks and trees, which is quite pagan.

There were tons of books written about Christianity at the time, but they weren't supressed. They just weren't very good (ahem, Left Behind). The Bible is full of the most important works written at the time.

One of the biggest problems with The DaVinci Code is that it asserts that one of the big reasons the Gnostic Gospels were supressed was that the Gnostics were more progressive, especially towards women. However, this isn't the case. The Gnostics drew from Greek philosphers who assered that women were lesser forms than men. This is repeated in the Gnostic Gospels through teachings such as this from the Gospel of Thomas:

"Let Mary go away from us, because women are not worthy of life... for every woman that does not make herself male will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven."

Say what? That's not the Jesus of the New Testament. He treats women as equals. If the early church was bent on keeping women down, they would have supressed Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Q: If evolution undermines faith in a fact-based Bible, how will we confront science?
A: There is no contradiction between science and scripture. God invented them both, yet we are told there is divide (by both secular-humanists and Creationists). There are so many things in the Bible that preceed scientific discovery we've discussed.

The whole Evolution v. Religion thing is just a distraction from the central message of Jesus (hmm... I wonder who would want to do distract us? Ask the Church lady).

The whole Creationist thing is settled in Genesis, which won't allow you to believe the earth was created in seven days. A day is measured as the rising and setting of the sun, but the sun isn't created until the fourth day. How does that work? How do you measure time in the first three days?

Do not be taken in by people saying we must take the Bible literally, word for word. Jesus says the "I am the door." Is Jesus actually a door? No, the Bible requires some interperation. How do we do it? Maritn Luther tells us to look at it through the lense of Jesus. That it is the manger that brings us to the Christ child. In John 20, it says "These things are written, that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name."

Answering Your Faith Questions - Part One

(Click the title above to download directly to your computer, or follow the directions on the right to subscribe to the podcast)

Title - Answering Your Faith Questions - Part One
Church - Living Word Lutheran in Katy, Texas (ELCA)
Author - Pastor Mike Aus
Citations -
Quality -Good quality, some clicks

Summary - Pastor Mike Aus takes some prewritten questions about faith, Christianity and the Bible.