[OBW]

The problem is that you keep using this example that only the die-hard CoC people don't see as being ridiculous. And I guess you could say the same about the LRC and a lot of others about other specific things.

But when you have any kind of assembly, you will have points which are eventually agreed through some mechanism as being a certain way, or within certain bounds. That should not mean that you cannot discuss alternatives, but I would expect that the assembly would (at a minimum) frown on actually teaching contrary to the established position until the group decides differently.

For example, I attend a Bible church. The one I have attended for many years decided after months of study, discussion, and prayer to allow women to teach (preach) in the church. There was a national firestorm over it, with other Bible church leaders in the area being quoted as seeing it as a slippery slope or some other dire warnings. (And all of these were still very much "friends" with the Senior pastor at our place and continue to be so.)

The way it is handled there is like this. You can believe whatever you want about this subject. It can still be discussed and debated. (There is still the outstanding restriction that a woman cannot be an elder.) But you can't simply teach it as so. And if you are going to become part of leadership, you need to affirm that you are able to refrain from openly opposing the group's position. (Again, this does not mean the topic cannot be discussed.)

But my older son and his wife are attending a different Bible church. It was the place that he interned at during his studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. To see them a little more often we have begun to drive a little further on many Sunday mornings to where they are. At times I think that people "in the know" are a little cautious of us because we are from "that place" that does not hold to the "essentials" in the same way. (Actually, I do not think they consider this an essential. They have accepted Robert and his wife even though they agree with IBC that women should be able to teach.)

The real problem is what they do about it.

And I have come to realize that despite the great benefit that we gain from being able to read for ourselves (unlike so many for so many centuries of history), we have come to appreciate our own little thoughts as more important than the carefully thought-out positions of those that we were recently taught to despise as "clergy." The reality is that when it comes to truly understanding the scripture, the scripture itself at least somewhat expects that most of us need others to teach us. This runs contrary to the "me and my bible" mentality that so many inner-life proponents buy into.

Here is a statement that will start a firestorm: "Most of us should be careful how we read our bibles without proper supervision."

I realize that the old RCC way of discouraging scripture reading by the masses outside of the Mass was too much. But at some level we may be better off to focus our biblical attention where those with training lead us rather than trying to just do it ourselves. The funny thing is that we learned in the LRC to think we were reading scripture for ourselves when we were really reading exactly what the LRC leadership wanted us to read, and to read it the way they wanted us to. And they didn't begin to have the training and integrity that even a CoC preacher may have.

And to dig myself out of the hole that you probably think I am in, I did not mean to suggest above that we should stop reading our bibles. What I really mean is that we need to have a structure around us when we read so that we start with something sound as meaning and interpretation of what we are reading. That does not mean we should not question. But it should be questioning within a structure in which the "old" does have some status and requires more than a light bulb floating over a head for its status to be revoked. The "old" reading has remained not just because no one ever challenged it, but because it has withstood challenges.

So don't start with the presumption that the first contrary thing you think you see/read/hear should simply jettison the "old." (And I am not accusing you of doing this.) That is the kind of foolish stuff we did in the LRC when we went around swinging pom poms and singing "bury that old-time religion." Problem is that right about now we could all use a little more "old-time religion" rather than less. The "truth" that we were taught for those years was contrary to much of the truth of the scripture that is part of that "old-time religion."