QC and SG accountability (19/6/20)
I was sharing how I found in the book of Judges (Chapter 1) how t4he Israelites did not destroy the Cannanites from their midst but "put them to forced labour". Their lack of total obedience and single-mindedness led eventually to apostasy and oppression by their enemies. I can see how in my own life it would be possible to forgo total surrender simply because of the usefulness and convenience of certain things and situations, even though these things would be out of God's will.
Winnie also shared her lesson about the ingratitude of the Israelites in the wilderness, who scorned manna from heaven and thought of the nice food they had in Egypt.
I shared how a participant in last week's FTP had raised questions about alleged contradictions between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, about the wrongness of the NIV translation and about the inerrancy of Scripture.
There was a claim that NIV had 'cheated' by using the tense 'had formed' (Gen 2:19) rather than 'formed' in the RSV. Thus (it was said) in Genesis 1 animals were formed before man, but in Genesis 2 man was formed before the animals. The contradiction evaporates when one assumes the unity of scripture and sees that Genesis 1 and 2 are not competing accounts of creation by different authors, but different genres (song/poem and history respectively) focusing on the 'big picture' of creation and the story of man in Eden respectively.
As a side note we said that angels must have been created early in the 6 days (Job 38:7), but within the 6 days (Gen 2:1).
So on one hand, there is an intellectual response, but there also needs to be a pastoral response. We noted that our response would be different between a personal friend and a stranger in a group. With the former we would seek to draw him or her to God's saving message in all of scripture and seeking to understand his or her interest in the Bible.
With respect to people in chat groups we should be careful (if possible) with the people we admit to study groups. We are warned to avoid "foolish...controversies" (2 Ti 2:23, Ti 3:9) and to not give holy and valuable things to 'dogs' and 'pigs' (Mt 7:6.). On the other hand, simply removing the offender does not solve any doubts in the rest of the groups and can be perceived as being high-handed. What the FTP admin group did was to try to address the intellectual component and to invite the individual to take the discussion offline. When the latter was declined the individual was asked to leave.
Winnie also shared her lesson about the ingratitude of the Israelites in the wilderness, who scorned manna from heaven and thought of the nice food they had in Egypt.
I shared how a participant in last week's FTP had raised questions about alleged contradictions between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, about the wrongness of the NIV translation and about the inerrancy of Scripture.
There was a claim that NIV had 'cheated' by using the tense 'had formed' (Gen 2:19) rather than 'formed' in the RSV. Thus (it was said) in Genesis 1 animals were formed before man, but in Genesis 2 man was formed before the animals. The contradiction evaporates when one assumes the unity of scripture and sees that Genesis 1 and 2 are not competing accounts of creation by different authors, but different genres (song/poem and history respectively) focusing on the 'big picture' of creation and the story of man in Eden respectively.
As a side note we said that angels must have been created early in the 6 days (Job 38:7), but within the 6 days (Gen 2:1).
So on one hand, there is an intellectual response, but there also needs to be a pastoral response. We noted that our response would be different between a personal friend and a stranger in a group. With the former we would seek to draw him or her to God's saving message in all of scripture and seeking to understand his or her interest in the Bible.
With respect to people in chat groups we should be careful (if possible) with the people we admit to study groups. We are warned to avoid "foolish...controversies" (2 Ti 2:23, Ti 3:9) and to not give holy and valuable things to 'dogs' and 'pigs' (Mt 7:6.). On the other hand, simply removing the offender does not solve any doubts in the rest of the groups and can be perceived as being high-handed. What the FTP admin group did was to try to address the intellectual component and to invite the individual to take the discussion offline. When the latter was declined the individual was asked to leave.
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