In the past couple of weeks, i have joined a couple of conversations on the internet. One was discussing rejoicing over Bin Laden's death. Those who believed it is ok to rejoice over Bin Laden's death quoted the Psalms where the psalmist rejoices in the demise of their enemies. They quoted the Proverb which declares the earth rejoices when the righteous rule. Those who declared we shouldn't rejoice over anyone's death quoted Ezekiel 18:23 and a proverb which said not to rejoice in your enemy's downfall as well as Jesus' words to love your neighbor. Another conversation I passively joined was the topic of Hell, Heaven and the authority of Scripture. My part in the conversation was mainly an attempt to get us to think about how we use Scripture.
For so long, Christians have used Scripture as individual proverbial pieces. We pull them out to buttress our position or viewpoint. In the worse cases, we use them as weapons. And too often we take Scripture and force it into our political, religious, and individual worldviews rather than taking our worldview to Scripture--to the whole of Scripture to be changed by God's Presence as the Spirit uses Scripture in our lives.
We can all find and quote Scripture. So the questions I have been pondering are: How do we/you "prioritize" Scripture? Does Jesus trump the rest of Scripture, then the NT over the OT, prophet over Psalm? What do you do when, like in the case of the Bin Laden discussion, Scriptures seem to say different things?
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