A New Year: Where do you want to go next?

We began this journey in September with a simple goal of providing folks at Grace Presbyterian with a safe place to explore questions about faith, God, Jesus, and the Bible. At times, we succeeded in getting a good discussion going; other times, we didn't do so well. We'll see if we can do better in the new year.

We've been using the book Banned Questions About the Bible by Christian Piatt as a background source for discussions. If you've been following along, then you know we haven’t exactly been following the table of contents (bouncing willy-nilly with a sometimes purpose might be a better description). We've also taken on some questions that weren't in the book. 

We began with the question “If Adam and Eve were the first people on earth, where did their sons’ wives come from?” which turned out to be the most “popular” post of the year in terms of views and comments. It’s not easy when you go downhill after the start, but we’ll try to bounce back. 

We also had some interesting discussions on violence in the Bible and how we resolve it with Jesus’s teachings, whether Jesus was married, and what the Bible says about the role of women in the church (here and here, with a follow-up here). After Hurricane Sandy led to a discussion on God’s wrath, I thought it might be a good idea to tackle some of the questions on whether the Bible has inconsistencies and errors and how we deal with different interpretations. That may have been better in concept than in practice. I suspect it’s better to wrestle with those questions in the context of actual passages.

While I've spent a lot of time wrestling with the often-exaggerated conflict between science and religion, as well as how both can (and should) co-exist. That appealed to hardly anybody else. Maybe it was the subject matter, the presentation, or the busyness of the Christmas season. Either way, we’ll move on to other topics.  

One of my favorite posts was the discussion on whether the church is still relevant today. It’s something I ponder a lot as a parent and a volunteer with our youth group. How we engage people outside the walls of the church will continue to be an underlying theme here (at least from me). 

What’s next? That depends on what questions you would like to explore. Here are a few questions/topics from Banned Questions… that could be interesting:

• What does the Bible say about homosexuality? Given the mounting evidence that homosexuality is something people are born into and not a “lifestyle” choice, how should we respond?
• How can God be all-loving and allow some people to be condemned to hell? Are some people really “predestined” to hell? [That’s more of a Calvin question]
• What is hell? Are we supposed to interpret it literally or metaphorically?

Here are a few other questions not in the book that might also be interested to discuss if there’s broader interest:

• What does the Bible say about justice? Why does it seem that some Christians are more obsessed with sexual immorality than with greed, hunger, and inequality?
• Why would God send Jesus as a sacrifice to die for our sins? Why didn’t God just offer grace and forgiveness without the sacrifice? Why would God choose to sacrifice the one who embodied God among us? 
• What is salvation? Is it all personal or is there a larger aspect that applies to all of creation?
• When Jesus says “I am the way,” is he being as exclusive as some people make him out to be?
• Paul said we’re justified by faith alone. James said faith without works is dead. Which is it?

Actually I have a longer list, but I’d rather hear from you. It’s a new year. What questions would you like to explore? What questions are you wrestling with right now? Let me know in the comments below.