Tag: deconstruction

502. Breaking Free From Indoctrination | Embracing Love

Mike Parsons –

Over hundreds of years, false doctrine has infiltrated the church and shaped what many people simply accept today.

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Simplicity of the gospel

Over many years, even hundreds of years, false doctrine has infiltrated the church and shaped things into what we see today, and people have simply accepted it. However, there are explanations for this and different alternatives to all of it. To be honest, why spend your time trying to understand something that was never written for you in the first place?

With all of this, whether it is true or not, let us go back to the simplicity of the gospel that Jesus talked about. Let us love one another. We do not have to agree: let us love one another. Let us love the world rather than trying to convince someone of something. Let the Holy Spirit, who is the only one who can renew someone’s mind, do that work. If people are genuine, then you can have a conversation, but if they are just trying to prove you wrong, then it is a waste of time.

A different view of God

If someone is genuinely searching and thinking, “I am struggling because this does not align with God, how could this be God?”, then they are on a journey towards restoration and renewal of their mind, and you can help them along that path. If all they want to do is convince you that you are wrong, and that there is going to be tribulation and judgment and a millennium and all of that, then that is a very deceptive doctrine, and you will not argue someone out of it. I think God will renew many people’s minds and deconstruct a lot of people, but many will remain stuck in religion and in the system, sadly. But many are leaving it, and many are coming to a different view of God.

We can help them discover that God is love by loving them. It is better to love them than to argue with them. It is better to keep a friend than to win an argument and lose a friend. I think saying, “Look, I do not really want to get into a lot of this stuff, because I think it will just cause problems in our relationship, and I value our relationship more than being right,” and leaving it at that, is often the best way.

It is better to keep a friend than to win an argument.

It is a difficult deception that keeps people in darkness and in bondage, and ultimately only God can bring the light into that. If people had tried to convince me that my eschatology was wrong back in the 1980s, I would not have believed them. But God spoke to me. God did it. I could not argue with God. I just went on a journey where he unfolded a whole different view that I had never even imagined.

God deconstructed me himself

I did not read books about it at first. God showed me through the Spirit by taking me through the whole thing. Once I realised that my whole understanding had been twisted, then I found some books that supported that view, and I realised I was not on my own. Loads of other people believed this as well. But I did not find it through other people. God totally deconstructed me over a two or three year period himself. Then that was confirmed by me reading other things, and there were people who were helpful to me, especially David Chilton: Paradise Restored, The Great Tribulation, and The Days of Vengeance, which is his book on Revelation, a massive book. You can find free PDFs online here:

Paradise Restored: A Biblical Theology of Dominion (1985)
The Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation (1987)
The Great Tribulation (1987)

David Chilton started off as a partial preterist in that he believed chapter 20 of Revelation was still future, but he ended up a full preterist because he came to realise that it was all in the past. He got himself excommunicated from the group he was in because he believed that and was persecuted.

Inevitably, I think, if you are open, you will move through partial preterism into preterism. I do not want to be labelled a preterist or not, because there are other things within that system that I do not necessarily think are true, but let us say I am a realised eschatologist. All eschatology is realised. It is already the end. The study of the last things is the study of what happened in the past, not the study of what will happen in the future. For me, that is where I have moved towards.

Not the end of the world

Ultimately, my understanding of that, and the same Bible verses that talk about what would happen at the end of the old covenant, also talk about and have been interpreted as what is hell. Then I realised, I do not believe this is talking about the end of the world. So this is also not the end of the world. Gehenna is not hell. Gehenna is literally talking about the end of the age when the old covenant was put into the fire and destroyed. Jerusalem and the people were put into the fire in Gehenna if they continued in Jerusalem, as Jesus warned them would happen.

They did. The Romans crucified hundreds of thousands and burned them in Gehenna. That was not the end of their life. That was the end of their physical body. Their actual soul would go into the fire of God’s love and hopefully bring about their restoration. I imagine a lot of people would have remembered what Jesus said when the armies turned up, but it was too late if they were besieged, and they would probably have remembered what Jesus said, “You are going to end up in Gehenna.” Hopefully, they would also then have remembered Jesus’s offer of life.

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266. A Happy Eschatology

431. Breaking Free from Deceptive Teaching | Rediscovering God’s Love

426. The Nature of God: Rethinking Our Beliefs

345. The Rapture of the Saints

318. Not the End of the World

501. Deconstructing Beliefs: A Journey to Authentic Faith

Mike Parsons

The deconstruction of our way of thinking comes from experiencing God. If I present people with theory about God, they will soon spot the gaps in that theory reflected in my own life. If I share the testimony of my experience of God, based on knowing that God loves me unconditionally, that there are no conditions attached, that I have been reconciled and included in Christ and all those wonderful things, then I am able to share that good news with others because I have truly experienced it.

If you do not see the video below, please click here.

If I only offer theory, people will sense it is not real in me. The best form of deconstruction is to experience the truth, which will then challenge the areas in our lives that are not true. Rather than attempting to change lies, experience the truth. Focusing on changing the negative aspects of our lives only makes us focus on the problem, causing it to grow and become more difficult to overcome. If we focus on the solution, the solution addresses the problem.

No one can deconstruct their own mind. Only God can accomplish this. If we keep walking with him, he will do things in our lives that will completely challenge everything we have thought about ourselves, about him, and about everything else. People may try to teach you to deconstruct your mind, though they might use the term “renew your mind” instead. I see deconstruction as the removal of negative things. However, I do not believe it is something God attempts directly; rather, deconstruction happens as a result of God revealing his true nature to us. Instead of God saying, “I am not like this,” he focuses on showing us who he truly is.

Renewing our minds brings about deconstruction because it challenges what I previously believed was true and shows it is not. Those beliefs are then deconstructed. You cannot deconstruct yourself because you do not know what you do not know. You allow God to reveal to you his truth, his love, his light, his relationship, his grace, and his mercy. Those experiences will change the areas in our lives that do not align with such truths.

Deconstruction is a consequence. God is not actively trying to deconstruct you. He is trying to give you the truth, and the truth will change the lies. If people focus on trying to change the lies, they end up concentrating on them. You can modify your belief system, but that is only a set of facts you have chosen to believe are true. That is quite different from truly knowing the truth.

I have changed many things I used to believe because I became convinced that something else was better or that it was actually true. However, until I experienced the truth, it remained an intellectual understanding; the truth is a person – Jesus, who is the way, the truth, and the life.

I am never going to discover truth by simply trying to invent a new belief system. You need to allow God to show you his character, and that will naturally transform the areas of your life that do not yet reflect who he really is. I know people, and I was the same, who tried to change their thinking by memorising, quoting, or confessing Bible verses. I did that myself. The Holy Spirit was able to work with me to some extent through that process, but essentially, confessing scripture will not make me experience it. It may provide a new perspective, so that I know the verse and can quote it or use it, but until I experience the truth behind it, I do not have a testimony of it in my life. That is the key.

I think deconstruction is spoken about a great deal at the moment because many are undergoing this process. It is not, however, God attempting to deconstruct their minds; it is God giving them a new revelation and experience of the truth, which then causes what is false to fall away. God is not going around trying to destroy your beliefs; instead, he wants to give you something true, and those false beliefs will simply fall away, which is far better. Having a testimony is so much better than having a belief.

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190. By Personal Encounter and Experience

426. The Nature of God: Rethinking Our Beliefs

330. Find Truth Within: Trust Your Own Connection with God

 

492. Evangelicalism Unravelled: The Fall of ‘Sola Scriptura’

Mike Parsons –

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They didn’t believe it in the early church. There was no penal
substitutionary atonement. The atonement, or what Jesus did on the cross, was Christus Victor, mostly. Christ victorious over what? Our lost identity, our death, over everything. A very different view of what Jesus did.

But Protestantism very quickly picked up on penal substitutionary atonement and it became the cornerstone of Calvinism and lots of other streams of thought. When that got removed, and when that evangelical pillar crumbled, all the other pillars started to wobble.

So sola scriptura was the second pillar. Well, without evangelicalism holding it up, that went over, which is why it changed my whole view about the Bible, the way I see the Bible, and the Bible being ‘the word of God’ and all that stuff: “It’s got to be in the Bible!” and  all the challenge that came
with that, because God totally took me to task over it.

363. Deconstructing the Pillars of Your Mind

299. PSA Sounds Nothing Like Jesus! (Penal Substitutionary Atonement [1])

403. So you think the ‘Word of God’ is the Bible? Think again!

490. Can Changing One Belief Change Everything?

Mike Parsons

If you do not see the video, please click here.

“Do you want me to remove these pillars from your mind?” asked the Father.

I believe six of them were religious pillars, and three were cultural or scientific. It was then that I realised these pillars were framing how I viewed the world and understood reality around me.

The first and strongest pillar was evangelicalism. He removed that one first, shaking me to the core by taking it away. Every evangelical thought I had was challenged, especially the idea of penal substitutionary atonement, which was the first belief to be questioned. God didn’t just take the pillar out; he shook it, challenging my beliefs and creating instability in my belief system around those topics. And penal substitutionary atonement was the first to go.

363. Deconstructing the Pillars of Your Mind

299. PSA Sounds Nothing Like Jesus! (Penal Substitutionary Atonement [1])

250. Pillars In My Mind

304. Wrath is not the solution | Penal Substitutionary Atonement [2]

 

483. Is God Bored? A New Perspective on Church Practices

Mike Parsons

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Bored with this church stuff

God spoke to me and said, “I am really bored with this church stuff.” And I thought, you cannot say that. That cannot be you. How can you be bored with people worshipping you? But he was not saying he was bored of people, or of their desire to worship. He was saying he was bored of the format, the same things, week after week.

So I pressed him. “What do you mean, bored?” He said, “Why do you not ask me what I would like you to do?” I said, “We do. We ask you every week.” And he replied, “Yes, but you are only giving me a menu of five things to choose from. What you are really asking is: what order do you want to do those five things?”

I had to admit he was right. We claimed to be led by the Spirit, but only within the boundaries of those five things. That realisation shocked me. I kept quiet at first, because I knew it would cause an uproar. Instead, I began teaching the Engaging God programme in my office on Sunday mornings. The main meetings had to stay at a basic level for the newer people and those from the rehabilitation unit, so others handled that.

I would spend the first part of the service downstairs teaching, then went upstairs to join the main gathering. And when I did, I felt the same as God had said. This is really boring, is it not? I enjoyed myself more in the office than in the service. It was not the people—I loved the people. But while we were on the cutting edge of engaging God, with angels and portals into heaven, we were still doing everything in the same tired format. Someone would say something, we would sing, there would be ministry, and perhaps something else—but always within the same framework.

What is church?

I began to understand what God was saying, and I felt it too: this is not it, is it? He took me out of that scenario and began to press the deeper question: what is church? Why do we run a meeting? Because church is not a meeting. Church is people in relationship—with each other and with God. But what we had built, with worship, a preach and the rest, was the very thing God was challenging. “Why are you doing this? Who said I wanted you to?” And that challenge shook us.

It challenged people. What was this going to look like? So then we did not do any of that. We turned up on a Sunday and asked, “Oh, what does God want to do then? What do you want to do, God?”

God said, “If you had asked me before you got here, I would have told you I did not want you to come and do this today.” Ah. So it is not about meeting this way and turning up in a building then? No. Not every Sunday. No. If you had asked me, I would have told you I wanted you to go and do something yesterday, to go for a walk and enjoy the beautiful fresh air.

That was a very different challenge to our thinking. This was not just, “Oh well, we will turn up in the building and then ask you what to do.” This was actually, “Do you even want us to meet this way this week?” People struggled with that because they were so conditioned to being told they had to turn up on the day to do whatever was going to happen. That was ‘church’, and they were expected to be there if they were part of church.

What is the way forward?

So it was very challenging, and we got to the point where those who were meeting together began saying, “Well, let’s just seek God and ask Him to show us the way forward. What is the way forward?” This was November–December 2019. Then God used COVID to show us the way forward, because suddenly we could not meet anymore anyway. We had all the technology to meet online, but we asked God, “Do you want us to meet online?” No, because all you would be doing is recreating something online that you cannot do in person.

Eventually, people were weaned off church — the meetings, the format, the structure that we called church. They were still relating to one another, still building relationships, still pursuing the mission God had given to care for people. Some people could not cope with not having a church service, so they went off and found one that made them feel comfortable. Great. If that is what they want to do, no problem. They were free to do that. But some people were so free that they realised they did not have to go to a meeting on a Sunday — or two meetings, or whatever it might have been. They would never want to go back to that. They discovered that being church is very different to going to a meeting that we call church.

That deconstruction took place in people’s understanding of church over quite a long period. I did not turn around and say, “You can’t do this anymore.” I did not say, “You can’t meet this way anymore,” because that would have been forcing them. I said, “Okay, I am not making these decisions. I am not going to be a leader anymore who tells you what God might be saying or not saying. You are responsible to hear God for yourself. So you decide what you are going to do.”

An everyday relationship

When COVID came, with all the restrictions, we could not meet the way we had been meeting, and for a time, we could not even meet together individually. People realised their relationship with God was just as strong, if not stronger, after they stopped doing Sunday church meetings than it had been before. They found their relationship with God was an everyday relationship, not based on the structure we had put in place to ‘help’ them.

Some people struggled. Some wanted the fellowship of meeting together in a bigger setting, and they found that elsewhere. But others found their relationship with God growing anyway. They discovered that their relationship with others, if genuine, is not dependent on meeting on a Sunday. They still had relationships and friends.

It is very interesting to see the process God takes us through to challenge our preconceived ideas about the Christian life, about what church is, about what we ‘should’ or ‘should not’ do. And when we are free from it, we find freedom. Now, I am free to go, free not to go, free to do whatever I feel in God. And I know God enjoys me watching the football just as much as He enjoys it if I went to a home group!

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473. Why Do We Assume? | Questioning Our Beliefs and Practices

Engaging God

430. Being You | The Heart of Your Relationship With God

482. Is Your Heart Aligned with God’s Kingdom or Culture?

Mike Parsons

If you do not see the video above, please click here.

There are many questions we should be asking and signs we should be looking for. If God is doing something—like Enoch appearing or other unusual things—what is that about? I cannot give a hard, fast answer, but I do believe God is challenging us to think and to question what we believe. What are the foundations of our lives and the way we live? Are they kingdom foundations, or are they cultural?

If they are cultural and oppose God’s kingdom, which is love, then we must ask, where is my heart? Is it aligned with God’s heart, or with the culture where I live? I do not want to be known culturally as British. Yes, I was born in Britain, it is on my passport, but I do not want to be subject to the culture of Britain if it is anti-kingdom. I would never call myself a British Christian, or even a Christian. I just want to be seen as a follower of God, of the Father.

So, what might cause me to have views which may be contradictory to the kingdom? We need to ask: what has shaped my life, my thinking, my belief systems, my worldview? Are they aligned with God’s heart, or do they need deconstruction? I see three main areas where God is challenging people (there may be more): religious deconstruction, political deconstruction, and financial deconstruction. A friend of mine said God was taking him through those things, and I realised he was doing the same with me. I now know to look at things differently in those areas and make sure that I am not thinking in a cultural way that puts me into contradiction to God.
So, financially, my views have changed from religious rules about tithing to simply asking, “God, what do you want me to do?” Politically, I had to face assumptions about why I voted as I did. I had assumed God agreed with me, but he showed me I had never asked him. I had to be completely unravelled and deconstructed in that area. Now I ask, “Is there a way you want me to vote?” And if he says it does not matter, then I examine my own heart and motives. Each of us may have a different way of looking at that question.
God wants our whole mindset aligned with the kingdom and with one another, to become one mind, the mind of Christ. That requires major shifts, deconstruction, and honest questioning of why we think, believe and act as we do. Most people never really consider these things, but I believe it is part of the process God is taking us through so that heaven can be established on earth.

For the past ten years, God has been deconstructing most of my old assumptions. My thinking has changed in many areas. This does not mean there are simple answers, because each of us must discover what God is asking of us in our own sonship. But it does mean we must begin to make decisions based not on selfishness, economics or cultural conditioning, but on God’s heart.

Strong opinions are often shaped by culture rather than by God. Even in raising my children, I tried to let them think for themselves, yet they still reflected my political views. That made me wonder whether I had been more vocal than I thought. The key is not to pass on political perspectives but to help people find God’s heart.

Some people vote based on economics, others on compassion, but the real question is whether our choices reflect God’s heart or merely our conditioning. I am not convinced God is as invested in political systems as solutions as we might think. Much of the prophetic movement seems to have become politicised in a way it never was 20 years or so ago, perhaps out of disillusionment when promised revivals did not happen as expected. Whatever the reason, it seems to have become blind to the real issues in some way…

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288. Enoch’s Secret to Walking with God

241. You Have Not Desired

277. On Earth as in Heaven

 

466. Quantum Integration | Connecting Spirit and Soul for Transformation

Mike Parsons

If you do not see the video above, please click here.

Separation and reintegration

Once I had gone through that process and reintegrated, I became whole—spirit, soul, and body—in a genuine sense of completeness. My soul no longer felt the need to validate itself or dictate the terms of my actions. Suddenly, my soul and spirit were functioning in different realms but remained connected. This reintegration of spirit and soul brought a quantum entangled perspective, enabling me to be anywhere, as it were, and allowing my spirit to function in that realm.

Previously, I was tied to my soul; I would journey into heaven and then come back out, rather than having my spirit truly dwelling there, seated with Christ in heavenly places. Although my spirit was seated with Christ, I couldn’t fully understand or consciously realise the connection, as my soul kept pulling me out. As a result, I would have amazing heavenly experiences but would always return, rather than remaining in that place. God intended for me to dwell there consciously, uniting my spiritual and physical consciousness—linking my mind and spirit.

The bridal chamber

When that happened, everything came together. Things changed quite dramatically, and a whole range of new experiences opened up, eventually taking me into union in the bridal chamber. Now, this union is not sexual, but it is just as profound as sexual union, as described in 1 Corinthians 6:17. In the previous verse, it refers to whoever is joined to a prostitute becoming one flesh with her, illustrating the depth of true union.

I truly didn’t know what to expect. I felt invited to come to this place to meet the person of God—that was the union I experienced. After undergoing the process of separation and reintegration of spirit, I entered into the person of God and engaged with Him face to face. The encounter was overwhelming—far too much for me to handle. My limited beliefs and my mind simply could not cope with the magnitude of the experience, so I withdrew very quickly. But in that brief moment, I saw God and encountered something far too wonderful for me to explain or even process with my understanding of who God was.

Cognitive dissonance

This encounter created cognitive dissonance and prepared me to re-experience the true God, because the religious concept of God I had did not align with what I felt in that moment. It was simply too wonderful for the God I had believed in. I had to go through the process of really coming to know and dwell with Him. This began back in 2012, and over the years, I underwent a time of deconstruction—discovering who God truly is.

My relationship with God deepened, revealing the true God behind the false one I had previously imagined—the one who needed me to serve, be obedient, and fulfil duties out of obligation. All of that fell away as God challenged those beliefs. The ‘old covenant’ concepts I still held were also challenged. Throughout all of this, I continued to have encounters which led me to new places. For example, I passed through a series of firestone experiences—nine encounters in total—which took me into different levels of identity as a son of God.

There were many strands of experience, all drawing me towards union. Looking back, I realise how much work it took to get me to this place. I was so far removed from it, but I persisted in the journey, not knowing how each strand or encounter fitted together. All the experiences had a purpose, even if I couldn’t see how at the time—there was indeed a goal at the end.

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274. Separating and reintegrating soul and spirit (1)

275. Separating and reintegrating soul and spirit (2)

363. Deconstructing the Pillars of Your Mind

Video summary

The Word of God

The traditional Evangelical view of the Bible as the inerrant and infallible word of God is problematic. The  true “Word of God” is Jesus, the Living Word, and direct experience of God through the Holy Spirit takes precedence over scriptural interpretation.

Biblical passages often used to support legalistic or fear-based theology, including those about the “deceitful heart” and “missing the mark,” point to humanity’s lost identity in God rather than inherent wickedness or behavioural failures.

Redemption

Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross was not to appease an angry God but to restore humanity’s true identity as children of God. Redemption is not earned through religious practices but is a free gift received through recognizing our inherent union with Christ.

Religious Conditioning and Personal Experience

Religious indoctrination, particularly within Evangelicalism, parallels cult-like control through fear and guilt. Personal experience with God, guided by love and discernment, is preferable to blind acceptance of religious dogma and trusting external authorities (including charismatic figures and self-proclaimed prophets).

Nine Pillars

In my personal journey of deconstruction, I once viewed the world through a framework of nine “pillars,” primarily rooted in Evangelical doctrines but also influenced by cultural and scientific conditioning. The process of each pillar being challenged and ultimately dismantled led to a transformed mind, grounded in love and direct relationship with God.

The Role of Love

Prioritise direct relationship with God through the Holy Spirit over rigid adherence to scripture or religious systems. Love is the ultimate measuring stick for discerning truth and evaluating personal experiences. Actively seek God’s guidance in a process of ongoing deconstruction and renewal, leading to greater intimacy with God and a more accurate understanding of our true identity in Christ.

341. Unlocking Hidden Abilities

Mike Parsons

There are abilities we all were intended to have that have become disconnected.

 

Video summary

We all have abilities that have been disconnected, and after deconstructing my mind, God wanted to reconnect me to them. I needed to change my thinking to believe in abilities beyond my current experience. God used the illustration of a perceived gulf to show me that there was no real separation, just my perception of it. Once I accepted this, I realised there were abilities to unlock, such as multi-dimensional reality and creative consciousness.

Like many, I had been programmed by religion and life, and deprogramming opened up new possibilities. He showed me a new way of thinking aligned with the mind of Christ. You don’t need my exact experience; it’s about your journey with God. It’s important to seek these revelations in relationship with God, not independently.

We were created with abilities to engage with sound, light and frequency, but over time, we moved away from our original reality. Jesus came to restore that, but it’s a process. Intimacy with the Father reveals who we really are and our potential for creating. I never thought I could create beings, but God showed me I could. He said there are things left for us to create as sons of God.

Sharing this with others, I found someone who had similar experiences. My journey has shown me that God wants us to form and create our own realities in alignment with His heart. We’re always creating stuff that is not in alignment with His heart; it’s just how we live. But when we start to choose realities aligned with His heart, our realities will be different from what we experience now.

263. The Word of God

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

God spoke

“…the period of restoration of all things about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from ancient time” (Acts 3:21).

In his sermon on the day of Pentecost, Peter tells his audience that God has already spoken about the restoration of all things in the past. So who were those prophets He spoke through, what did He say and when did He say it? And if these things were spoken, were they also written down, and if so, where?

  • In the 39 books which we call the Old Testament? Or the 24 books of the Hebrew Tanakh? Or the Talmud or Rabbinical writings?
  • Is it only the Bible that records what God spoke by His holy prophets? Are there other written records of what the prophets said?
  • What about the Apocryphal books which were once included in our Bible? What about other Jewish mystical writings such as the Talmud, Targum, Midrash and Zohar?

Those are the kinds of questions which go through my mind when I read something like that.

In His Son

God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son… (Heb 1:1-2).

That is where we are. We actually do not need a prophet to speak to us anymore, because we have Jesus to speak to us. The Father can speak to us. The Holy Spirit can speak to us. And they can speak to us directly, they do not need a prophet to be a mediator.

When He spoke to prophets who lived 3000 years or so ago, He spoke to them in the context of their own society and way of life. If we simply read what they wrote, it might not mean the same to us (especially if we don’t speak their language). We need God the Holy Spirit to speak to us so that, whether we have it in writing or not, He can say it in a way appropriate for us and apply it to our situation today.

If we will learn to hear God’s voice and discern what He is saying, we may find He has much more to say than we ever thought. He speaks to me in all kinds of ways, not just through scripture. If He speaks to me through a sci-fi film, is that less valid than Him speaking to me through the Bible?

Truth and opinion

I often find I have more questions than answers! That is because I now recognise that many things I thought I knew were only assumptions, or other people’s opinions. My understanding was framed by what I was taught about how God spoke and what the Bible meant. But in the process of God renewing my mind, He began to challenge me on some of these things.

Jesus is the Truth. So wherever there is truth, it must be from Jesus. Whether it is in a movie, or a book, or music, or some other creative work, it must be Jesus. The conclusions people draw, or the way they interpret that truth, that is not necessarily Jesus. We cannot assume that just because one part within it rings true, that everything in it is true. The Holy Spirit will give us that discernment. We can find truth in many things, truth that we might miss if we believe the only way we can receive truth is through the Bible.

The Bible

So where does the Bible (and other ‘scripture’) fit into the picture of what will be restored? Where does the Bible fit into our lives? Is it a manual for living or an introduction to a living, loving relationship with Jesus, the Living Word? Is everything that is recorded in the Bible inspired by God? What do we mean by ‘inspired’? Is all of the Bible inerrant and infallible as we may have been told?

I understand that posing such questions risks causing offence. I am not setting out to deliberately offend but I do want to challenge our view of the Bible as the ‘word of God’. Everything God has ever said, through anyone or anything, is the word of God. But it is not a book. Nowhere in the Bible does it call itself ‘the word of God’ but it does call Jesus Himself the Word:

In the beginning was the Word [Gk: logos], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1:1).

Perhaps we have been taught that the Greek word logos means the written word, the Bible, and the Greek word rhema means the spoken words of Jesus, recorded in the Bible, or the words the Holy Spirit speaks to you when you read the Bible. Logos and rhema do not mean that. They were the normal, everyday terms for written word and spoken word and that is all.

The early believers did not even have a Bible when those words were used. The books contained in our Bible were not originally part of a collection of writings at all. They were letters, or books of history, prophecy, or poetry and so on. And some of the books that were included in the first ‘canon of scripture’ have since been discarded.

Evangelicalism

No one lives without influence. Everyone’s mind is framed by their belief systems. In the process of the deconstruction and renewal of my mind, God showed me that one of the pillars of so-called ‘truth’ that framed my beliefs was evangelicalism.

This is a belief system which teaches that the Bible does not merely contain the word of God, but that every word of it is the word of God. Scripture therefore carries the full authority of God: every single statement of the Bible calls for instant, unqualified and unrestricted acceptance. In fact many evangelical churches hold to the doctrine of Sola scriptura (Latin: by scripture alone): the Christian scriptures are the sole infallible rule of faith and practice.

Ironically, you will not find any of that in the Bible. It is not there because it is a man-made doctrine. Not only does the Bible never call itself ‘the word of God’, it does not claim to be inerrant, infallible or the only authoritative guide for us either. The emphasis on following the Bible only arose because no one taught us that we really could have an intimate face-to-face relationship with Jesus in which He could speak to us personally. Jesus is the One we are supposed to listen to and follow, not a book.

In reality, not everything in the Bible applies to us.

Much of the Old Testament and law only applied to Jewish people and converts, or to the specific people being addressed, not to us in the new covenant. Much of the New Testament was written to address the events of the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, the end of the old covenant system. Paul wrote letters to certain churches in circumstances we do not face today. Some passages only make sense in their own cultural context – though I was brought up in a church which had a stock of head coverings at the door for women thoughtless enough to come without one (1 Cor: 11:5-8).

The Living Word

Jesus never promised a book, but a relationship with Himself, with His Father and with the Holy Spirit of Truth. Everything we read in the Bible needs to be interpreted by the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. There is some universal truth within it which is awesome, revealing the loving nature and character of the Father. The Holy Spirit will show us that universal truth and how it is to be applied to our lives.

The Living Word, Jesus, can interpret whatever has been written, speak directly to us daily and bring truth to us even if it is completely out of the context it was originally written in. He did that when He came – and we can read about it in the Bible! How many times in the Sermon on the Mount did He say “You have heard it said… but I say…”? He still does it today.

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For interest: The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (1978):
“Those who profess faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior are called to show the reality of their discipleship by humbly and faithfully obeying God’s written Word.”

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