Quote for the day

“…has it not again and again become terribly clear in all that we have said here to each other that we are no longer obedient to the Bible? We prefer our own ideas to those of the Bible. We no longer read the Bible seriously, no longer read it as against us but only as for us.” —Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Reflections on the Bible

<idle musing>
It is so much easier to read the biblical text and find what I want, rather than what God is trying to say to me through it. When Bonhoeffer says against us, he means against our flesh, against our ideas, against all that would exalt itself against God.

Proof texting is a dangerous game, in doing it, we remove a word from its context and re-form it into our word instead of a word from God. We take the Holy Spirit breath away from it and breath on it the breath of hell instead. That is what Bonhoeffer saw happening, the church ceased to stand against the wickedness of society and instead endorsed it—even Nazi theology. But, before we condemn the German church, let's look at ourselves. When was the last time we even stopped to think before indulging in something that society would say is "normal?" We need to stop and ask what God says is normal, taking our definition of normal from the scriptures, instead of from the scripts that society reads to us all day and night.
</idle musing>