From Personal Truth to Relational Truth

For over 30 years, Ulf Ekman pastored an evangelical congregation, the Word of Life in Uppsala, Sweden.  Pastor Ekman founded Scandinavia’s largest Bible school and helped to establish over 1,000 evangelical Christian communities in the former Soviet Union.   Last month, he announced to his congregation that he was resigning his pastorate because he sensed the Lord was leading him and his wife to join the Catholic Church.  He will be received into full communion sometime this Easter season.

 

          In an interview he gave with the Catholic Herald, he made a comment that is interesting and important for sharing the fullness of the Gospel Tradition of the Catholic faith with others.  Ulf described the foundation of his decision in this way, “My basic question was: is this true or not?  If this is true, then I have to act. If this is not true, then it will go away. But it was becoming more and more, not just a personal truth, but that there was truth here that I have to relate to.” 
         This two –fold understanding of truth is of great importance as we walk with people as they make an intentional faith commitment.  It often begins with the subjective and personal; “This is my truth, something I see as true.”  In this first step, the locus of truth and its authority is my own self.  I believe it to be true, I have come to see this as true.  
          But there is also a second step revealed in Pastor Ekman’s journey.  The truth is not just personal, but is also a capital T truth that exists beyond me.  It is a truth that extends beyond my opinions, feelings and sentiments. 
         This realization becomes a moment of decision. 
          Do I affirm the reality of this Truth? Do I accept a relationship with this Truth, regardless of what it will cost me?  For Pastor Ekman and his wife, it meant walking away from his livelihood into a less certain future. In the end, they decided that it was the Lord who was calling them and in faith, trust and hope, they said, “Yes” to Him.
           The journey of faith can begin with seeking the truth within oneself but it is meant to lead to the Truth outside of the self. The truth may begin personally but is meant to end relationally.   Both Pope Benedict and Pope Francis have taught this.  For Pope Benedict, the encounter of Truth is an encounter with a Person; Jesus Christ.  It is both personal and relational. It is a subjective encounter with an objective reality that is beyond my own personal feelings.  Pope Francis speaks frequently of a “Culture of Encounter” where people can meet Jesus Christ, who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.  This is good for us to keep in mind as we walk with people on their journeys of faith.

 

The Gods of Israel: Does the Bible Promote Polytheism?

“What great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the LORD our God is to us, whenever we call upon him?”  This passage from the Book of Deuteronomy was recently proclaimed in the Catholic Church’s Lenten liturgy, and it touched right at the heart of something I have been pondering for some time: evidence of polytheism in the Bible and the relationship between ancient Israelite and Canaanite religious traditions.

Popular critics of the Judeo-Christian God frequently focus on the apparent incompatibility of the biblical portrait of God with what we insist must be essential moral attributes of the divine nature should it even exist.  Both critics and believers, however, are often unaware of another crucial problem that would seem to contradict traditional Christian doctrine concerning the nature of God.  In a nutshell, the tension lies not only in the relation of the biblical God to violence and evil, but also on the arguably more fundamental level of whether the Bible reflects belief in only one divine being in the first place.

I have devoted a chapter to this very theme in my book Dark Passages of the Bible, and even there I barely scratch the surface of this issue.  Nevertheless, I have continued to ponder this issue over the past couple years and believe something meaningful can be said within the constraints of a blog post.  In the following link you can find my response which went up today over at Strange Notions.