More Thoughts on Jesus and Scissors

Continuing the conversation from Monday's post Barbie Doll Jesus, I ran across this great excerpt from Mark Batterson's newest book Wild Goose Chase... I couldn't agree more!

In the beginning, God made man in His Image.

Man has been making God in his image ever since.

Call it naturalism. Call it anthropomorphism. Call it idolatry. Call it what you will. The end result of this spiritual inversion is a god that is about our size and looks an awful lot like us. And most of our spiritual shortcomings stem from this fundamental mistake: thinking about God in human terms. We make God in our image and what we’re left with is a God who can never surprise us, never astonish us, never overwhelm us, never transcend us.

Thomas Jefferson loved the teachings of Jesus. In fact, the author of the Declaration of Independence once called them the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man. But Jefferson was also a child of the Enlightenment. He didn’t have a cognitive category for miracles so Jefferson literally took a pair of scissors and cut them out of his King James Bible. It took him two or three nights. And by the time he was done, he had cut out the virgin birth; cut out the angels; and cut out the resurrection. Jefferson extracted every miracle and the end result was a book titled the Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth or what is commonly referred to as the Jefferson Bible.

Hard to imagine isn’t it? And something rises up within those of us that believe the Bible is divinely inspired by God. Part of us scoffs or scolds Jefferson. You can’t pick-and-choose. You can’t cut-and-paste. You can’t do that to the Bible. But here’s the honest truth: while most of us can’t imagine taking a pair of scissors to the Bible and physically cutting verses out, we do exactly what Jefferson did. We ignore verses we cannot comprehend. We avoid verses we do not like. And we rationalize verses that are too radical. And we may not cut them out with a pair of scissors, but the end result is the same. We are trapped by our own logic. Our lives are limited to those things we can comprehend with our cerebral cortex. And we end up in the cage of our own assumptions. And the more assumptions we make, the smaller our cage becomes.

Excerpt from Wild Goose Chase

HT: Evotion.com

Comments

[Lisa Creps]

Dan,
In a way, I respect Jefferson for his boldness in cutting out the parts of God's Word that he chose not to believe - it made it clear where he stood - right or wrong. And at the same time, I am also upset by it. This is God's Word!

What kind of person does that??....A voice in my heart said "you, Lisa." Yikes!

How easy it is for me to look at someone's bold, out right actions of defiance towards God and His Word to be so much worse than my hidden, unbelief that God can heal brokeness within my family (just one of many examples of my unbelief). And yet, it's the same thing - both Jefferson and I don't believe - I just choose not to cut up my Bible!

Truly believing in the entirety of God's Word, and trusting God enough to rest even in His unexplainable, mysterious, unimaginable, seemingly foolish characteristics is what He has always invited us to do. That, in and of itself, blows my mind...that He is always inviting us to know more...more about Him, more about His power, more about His judgement, more about His holiness, more about His grace, more about His love. That's just crazy!! Doesn't He know who He is?? (ha ha)

In the past few months, my faith has been challenged. And the timing of your posting was Divine inspired - at least for me.

Praises to the King Most High!