"Debate........................."

Does an “absolute truth” demand and “absolute theology”? If so, is there anyone who possesses one? Does “relativism” stipulate that allowing others the right to their own opinion eliminates my right to disagree with their conclusions? A friend of mine recently briefly discussed such subjects with me, believing the Holy Scriptures to fulfill the first one and finding the second opening a door for people to claim all paths capable of leading us to God. My own thinking, however, finds this, at least in part, where Christianity long ago sailed off into dangerous waters. The institution, like the Jews before them, defined the Book above Giver, creating multiple versions of the Gospel and, in the process, burying the solution within their doctrinal enigma. Good news, simply stated, tells us of His re-established anchor-line being the best hope we have for survival. In “picking up our cross” to follow Him, we haven’t eliminated our humanity. “Dying daily” doesn’t translate to us having been permanently stripped of our former identity, but to our need of continually facing Him in the reality of our imperfection as it yet exists. I am not suggesting that the Church, at large, is defunct and without any demonstration of His resurrection within it. There is yet a pulse within the body. The Holy Ghost has not totally departed the premises. We, though, who fill the pews, who seek to be vessels through which the kingdom might come forth are so submerged in dogma and tradition that hearing His voice amidst all the others is a stagger down the path all in itself. It is as much a mystery within as it is outside the sanctuary. Rene Descartes is quoted as saying that he would not accept anything as true that he could reasonably doubt; and C.S. Lewis supposedly observed that the whole point of seeing through something was to see something through it. All I’m trying to say is that the journey teaches us as we go if we remain open to His tug on the anchor-line, realizing that none of us, even with the Bible as an authority for our faith, have got this all figured out. As Paul said, “If any man think that he knoweth anything, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know.”………