So, typically at church on Sunday mornings, the scripture lesson will precede the sermon. Today, the lesson was:
4 The word of the LORD came to me, saying, 5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
Now, reading through that lesson, one would have to ask themselves, “hmmm…how’s Pastor Scott going to discuss abortion?”
He didn’t talk about it at all. Didn’t come up once.
In fact, Scott talked about having purpose in your life (the sermon title was “Motivation for Life”). He specifically discussed how the prophet Jeremiah was around 16 years old when God talked to him, and even at that young age, he had meaning in his life and was motivated to continue along the path put forth in front of him. The verse talked about how Jeremiah, specifically, was called to preach God’s Word to the masses.
So, I sat there thinking: “how could two so drastically different messages come from the same verse?” What Scott talked about was a motivation, a purpose, for all our lives and how we can do good with them. Instead, there are other voices that stop after the word “apart” midway through the 5th verse. These voices disregard the context in which the words were written, inserting their own meaning.
I realize we live in a world of soundbytes now, when a politician’s words can be cut and cropped to make it sound like they said something when they really didn’t. Largely, I think this occurs because people are generally lazy and don’t care to listen to the full series of phrases, let alone the entirety of a single Bible verse. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure that all of the world’s religions are guilty of the same mistakes…
…but I’d like to think we were smart enough now to know better than to accept the easy answer.
I like this.
I also think it’s important not just to try and read an entire, “verse” for understanding, but also to take the chapter, book, and the entire story and history to heart when reading the bible.
Of course, you also have to start somewhere- and do we ever really have an excellent grasp on what’s going on with everything biblical? There’s so much of how you live your life and what your troubles and talents are that make you see the story in a little different and better way. I guess that’s the part about being made a prophet to the nations. I can get something out of God’s story from Andy that I can’t get from myself.
Also- I’m tired of politics and the arguments therein. I listen, but with a little sick feeling in my gut.