I was talking to someone about various issues that come up in New Testament studies, like say differences in the birth narratives of Jesus. Churches sometimes gloss over or hide these issues. So when someone actually reads any kind of current scholarship, they feel like they’ve been lied to. This bugs me, especially since it is so unnecessary. It seems to me that it demonstrates a contempt for the user, as in ‘we must protect them from the outside world where they might hear something bad.’

The exact same thing happened to me, btw, with natural selection with variation, aka evolution. You are thinking, ‘if they knew this and didn’t tell me, that is a problem.’ If they didn’t know this, that is also a problem.’

That and/or the pastor/leader/teacher doesn’t want to feel like they’ve lost credibility if they don’t know about new scholarship, so they try to keep people ignorant of other information thus making themselves look more knowledgeable than they really are.

But I also think there’s an atmosphere created in a lot of churches that there is an ultimate truth that is not to be changed in any way and to consider anything outside of what has been taught is seen as being dangerous somehow. But I think there’s presumption to think that one knows all there is to know, particularly when it comes to God.

‘Holding to the truth’ it is known as – June 3, 2014 at 6:31am

Palm memos 11/28/05 – Abandon Edersheim and read N.T. Wright instead.