Monday, February 13, 2006

Easing The Burden Of Faith

It seems that everyone does it. Everyone skims thru the Scriptures of their choice and weeds out the things they either wont believe or dont want to affect their lives. This isnt a Muslim thing or a Christian thing. It is universal to all faiths. White or Black, Jew or Gentile, Protestant or Catholic. Throw any other group in there and you will find it.

The question is why? Why do we place so much importance upon some Scriptures (John 3:16) yet totally ignore so many others? Certainly there is room for simply not being aware of what the Scriptures say, but what of us that do know what it says? What of the pastors/priests/rabbis whose job it is to know the Scriptures inside and out? Why pick and choose?

In particular (because it is relevant to me) why do Christians ignore so much of the Scripture? Is there some passage that I am missing that says it is okay? Does Grace truly cover willful ingorance of what pleases G-d? How does one decide how to weight certain Scriptures above others? I have been struggling with this for some years and have yet to find an answer to my question.

I'm not looking to castigate any particular denomination or group of people. As I stated before there are very very few who stick to the whole of their Scriptures (Ultra-Orthodox (and perhaps Orthodox)Jews being the only ones that come to mind.

Still nothing but questions and doubts in my mind (Not Doubting G-d, simply the way we interpret and act out Scripture here, and how to justify those actions...)