While I don't always agree with Steve Gregg's conclusions. I came across this in the early posts of this thread. This is a pretty amazing assessment of living and learning....
1. There are some things that would not be so confusing if I had not learned them wrongly in the first place. Human traditions have been with us for thousands of years, and we learned them from those wholearned them from a previous generation. Even if we had not prior prejudices, it would take a very long time of study to master the contents of the Bible, but it is definitely made more difficult by the added task of seeing our way clear of embedded orthodoxies that have put our studies off on a false scent in some areas. Unlearning is perhaps more difficult than is learning;
2. There is no hurry to reach total understanding. The Spirit of God has our whole lifetime to school us, if we do not lose patience. It can be frustrating to think that we have to go back to square-one and rethink subjects that we thought we had previously mastered...but it is made more frustrating if we feel that we have to be in a hurry to "get through" this learning stage (like getting through college) so that we can get on with the business of fully knowing. MY perspective is that all of my life is for learning; heaven is for knowing fully (1 Cor.13:12). Besides, I think life would not be half so exciting if I now knew everything and had no more thrills of discovery to look forward to.
3. Some things simply aren't as important for us to know as we think they are. God is more interested in discussing and revealing the things that He believes to be essential than satisfying our curiosity about things that we think we want to know (like, "Is there life on other planets?"). Part of maturing, I believe, is becoming content to know what God wants me to know and to let Him know the "secret things" that "belong to the Lord" (Deut.29:29).
I want to know the truths of God's word. It is very important to me. I don't want to believe something simply for the fact that it's popular. But God said He wants us to worship him in Spirit and in truth.
Sometimes I have the greatest difficulty mixing the two. It may just be a problem I have. When I am in deep search of truth, I find a weakness in me to become combative. To think down on people that believe what I consider may be false assumptions (though not necessarily to their detriment every time) and I just want to be argumentative, and I exclude the duty and privilege I have of worshipping God for the sake of
investigating God, but when I try to block all that out of my mind and allow fellowship without concerning myself with all the doctrinal differences I find a peace with my brothers and sisters in the Lord, but my natural desire to seek God is impeded and I have to get back to it.
Now - truthfully - I don't have so many contradicting conclusions to the popular opinion as most of you do. There are a lot of things that I feel fine with accepting (so far) along with most traditional beliefs...such as the one that is discussed in this thread. Of course I've not looked so deeply into it as most of you have. But (and my apologies for getting this train off the rails) how do you all have such contradictory opinions and still feel the closeness and bond that you should feel with other brothers and sisters in Christ? Or DO some of you have difficulties with folks that believe something without investigation WHY they believe it, such as I sometimes do?
