Only Human...

In order to understand some of the difficult things Scripture suggests, we would do well to consider how God inspires. Now, there are several schools of thought on this. However, I will provide one that I feel does a reasonable job at tackling this issue. It is important to form some understanding of how scripture is inspired. Let us consider the following:

1) God inspires us without negating our humanity.

As I suggested earlier, I believe the following passage of scripture illustrates this truth perfectly. There is a passage of text in the gospels where Jesus asks Peter who Peter thinks He is (Matt. 16). Peter responds by declaring Jesus as the Messiah, God’s Son. After this declaration, Jesus tells Peter that God is the One who has inspired him to see that. A few verses later, when Jesus is talking about His impending suffering and death, Peter rebukes Him – to which Jesus also rebukes Peter. The question that comes to mind then is, “In a world and time where everyone was wondering who this Jesus was, I thought Peter was inspired and had it figured out.” However, as I stated, when God inspires, He does so without negating our humanity. Early Jewish conception of the Messiah was someone who would liberate them from Government. When Peter is listening to Jesus talk about death, Peter can’t understand what that will accomplish if Jesus is their liberator. Peter was thinking about Roman liberation and not liberation from sin and death. This is an example of how someone will be inspired without their own humanity negated.

Now, you may ask, “why would God worry about negating our humanity?” As I stated in an earlier comment, if God reveals Himself in all of His glory and splendor, not only would there be no faith, but who could resist Him? Implicit in the claim of love is freedom. If someone forces you to love or compels you beyond your control, it depreciates the value of that love. No one would force their spouse to love, even though it would provide the superficial “perfect marriage.” God saw that a perfect relationship with His creation is one that involved human freedom. What makes love so beautiful is that the person who is doing the loving has freely chosen to do so. God will reveal His truth without eradicating all of their human/cultural ideologies. Therefore, we will see the culture of the authors emerging from scripture.