Dyer Decisions -part 2

Last time I wrote about 'knowing' and truth. I guess I left myself hanging never mind my readers. Truth in this age? But one has to have some basis on which to decide matters of life. All around us we here of Fake News. We don't know what to believe. I heard today someone doubted the bible as they'd only seen a copy published in the past decade and thought, therefore, it can't be true, it can't be real. I explained the original manuscripts and how we have them, how they're used, how teams of experts study the original languages and between them arrive at how they translate/ interpret [I know - they're different!] into today's languages- and update them constantly into the ever-changing languages we speak. I really think he thought someone just decided to sit down and write an English Bible without reference to anything. The teams are accountable to experts theologically and linguistically across the world.

So how do we trust what we read? It's all in the age-old tension of experience versus absolutes, empirical reality [what I can see, observe, work out, interpret for myself] versus Actual actuality...

So how do we put our lives on something solid? Dependable. Real ... true?

Have you tried it out? on anything?

I tried it out as a child accepting the biblical stories of God, Jesus and all the historical stories...as true. I even answered 500 questions and won a bible, as a result, aged 11. So what? Was it parental teaching? perhaps -but my parents were of two different belief backgrounds. What made me go with my mother's understanding of truth as accepted in the bible and not my almost atheistic father's non-belief in the bible? Was it actually reading it and studying the history of the cultures, people, politics.... of the area we call the Middle/Near East (it's all relative from where you and I are) from x year BC[E] and first Century AD? I did a BA degree in it and gained a First class honours. So.. did that ratify my belief? It may have helped - despite the opposing views I found.

I actually tried depending on these words of the Bible to give me life. Life decisions made on the basis of an ancient text? Well, if I believe the source of the Bible then it belongs to more than a time long ago; it has eternal significance. It can be revelatory.... Oh oh... more on this tomorrow. NB The word 'reveal' is attached to a Greek word from which we get apocalypse. And no, it isn't the end of time- yet! It is a revelation of the originator and sustainer of time and space. or so it purports. Did it work out? Next blog...