Faith Venture

The Trinity for many of us–Father, Son, and Holy…Bible.

Have you ever talked about spiritual things with Christians with any of a variety of “literalist” beliefs and seen them become quite uncomfortable? Or a spiritual world? Or a spiritual life?

Steve Carter, teaching pastor at Willow Creek Community Church, had been speaking about his upbringing with emphasis on the Bible and no mention of the Spirit. I stole the title of the post from him.

He is teaching a series called Cultivate, and its theme seems to be cultivating the Holy Spirit in our lives.

I blame a lot of the emphasis on strictly Bible reading (see yesterday”s post pondering a statement of Jesus about searching the scriptures in vain for eternal life) on the rise of rationalism in 17th Century Europe. The East has its own tradition of rationalism.

Emotionalism is not the answer. Any psychologist will tell you that giving in to emotions and living a life on an emotional roller-coaster is self-destructive.

But life in the spirit. The fruit of which are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

What is to be feared by living like those describe?

This entry was posted on June 28, 2017 at 6:38 am and is filed under Disciplines, Spirituality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.