[In doing class preparation, I realized this lesson would likely take only 45 of the 55 minutes we now have. And so I added about 30 minutes worth of new material.]
A very long time ago, when I was a teenager, I remember showing up for Sunday school class with the other teens. One of the deacons entered the class and said, “Well, I tried to run, but the elders caught me and insisted that I teach this class. So what do you want to study? I’ll teach any book of the Bible that you’re interested in–except Romans and Hebrews.” He winced, to make his point. “I don’t understand anything those books are saying! If you want to study those, you’ll have to get a better teacher than me!”
In my experience, we in the Churches of Christ don’t spend much time in Hebrews. I’m glad that Romans has come back into fashion. It’s the book we usually use to teach lessons on grace. It’s a thorough grounding but raises a whole bunch of really difficult issues.
On the other hand, I find Hebrews relatively straightforward. Now, I didn’t use to. In fact, it used to be completely opaque. I later learned that I couldn’t understand it because I was reading it with false assumptions–lots of false assumptions. You see, Hebrews is about as un-traditional-Church of Christ as any New Testament book can be. I’ll explain why. Continue reading →
It gets so tiresome, you know, arguing about the Bible. And the worst of it is that you rarely actually convince anyone. They have their verses. You have your verses. And you just talk past each other, knowing that your verses represent perfect saving truth and their verses are taken just so badly out of context and misunderstood. Of course, the person you’re arguing with feels exactly the same way … but that’s okay. He’s deluded.
