This is why practice indeed makes Truth perfect. If our right beliefs do not lead to right actions they are meaningless. But powerfully transformed living proves the rightness of our beliefs. And this must be lived out in the public eye, not in a building on Sunday morning.

The young postmoderns I meet have not rejected the idea of Truth they are actually starving for it, they just haven't seen it yet in those who claim to have it.

But if we begin to produce the true fruit of the Spirit they will see it and respond.

(Especially between the extremes of "You can know all the truth perfectly! [I do!]" and "You can't ever know any truth for certain! [Just because I think doesn't prove I am!]")

As you might expect, several folks reacted pretty negatively to that, but the few who came to speak to me about it did acknowledge that there must be more to God than what has been revealed in the Text.

Too often, folks in the CofC forget that they don't know everything about God — and that is the threat of Postmodernism. But, as you observe, it's only a threat to those know they know the answer to everything.

I rely on God's grace for what I don't understand.

But Dobb's declarations that we are still under Law, even in the face of Jesus' statements to the contrary, is just an example of the traditional CofC view that seems irrational (and personally, very scary) — and in fact, misses the true joy of knowing Jesus' love and God's grace.

That's a very interesting article. Very insightful in many ways. But I'm really thinking along different lines. The distinctions are kind of hard to express.

The last thing I'd want to have the Churches of Christ take up is theological liberalism. No, we need to stay as close to the scriptures as we can.

On the other hand, I find the opposite just as dangerous — the presumption that we have all the answers. Been there. Didn't like it.

The middle road is humility before God and his word. It's recognizing that we've been mistaken in the past on some things and might be wrong even now — and so being willing to hear what others have to say, to genuinely listen and learn.

On the other hand, this humility doesn't mean we doubt our faith in Jesus. Or our confidence in scripture. Or our salvation.

Rather, this is the kind of humility that allows us to study the role of women or divorce and remarriage expecting to learn something, rather than to prove the other guy wrong.

It's the kind of humility that allows us to be moved and challenged by The Shack, even though we aren't in agreement on all the doctrine the book teaches.

Am I making sense? Yes, the scriptures are true. Yes, truth is attainable. Yes, we can teach hard, firm, certain moral truths.

But, no, we don't know all the answers. We know enough to go to heaven and to serve God in his mission, but we expect to grow in our knowledge of God and to change our opinions as we do. Therefore, we are delighted to exchange ideas and sometimes be proven wrong by other believers.