A Thought For The Week Of November 2

"All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness ..." (2 Timothy 3:16) This verse has, for me, become a guiding text in how to understand what we mean by the inspiration of Scripture. I don't accept the traditional understanding of the absolute inerrancy of Scripture. I accept that there may be mistakes in the Bible, and that there are some contradictions. To me, that's to be expected - and it even strengthens the witness of the text. After all, when you're dealing with the Bible you're dealing with writing that encompasses literally thousands of years and dozens of authors. Why wouldn't there be contradictions here and there? It's actually quite spiritually liberating for me to realize that I can accept that and not have my faith shaken. But what of inspiration? Do I give up on the idea of the divine inspiration of Scripture? Of course not, and this verse helps me find a way forward. After all, this verse doesn't declare Scripture to be either inerrant or perfect. It declares it to be (1) inspired by God and (2) useful (or, in some translations, profitable) for various things. Perfection or inerrance is not a prerequisite for something to be useful or profitable - and by accepting that the Bible need not be perfect I find myself much more in sync with the biblical authors. Maybe they were a lot like me - or any of us. Maybe at times they struggled to interpret what was happening around them and to them. Maybe at times they struggled to figure out just what God was saying in the midst of it all. Maybe God didn't dictate the Bible the way some seem to imagine, but rather tugged at the hearts of those who wrote. Maybe this is as much an inspired WITNESS TO God as it is the inspired WORD OF God. These inspired words are Scripture because the wider Christian community accepts them as such, but perhaps there are  words that don't become Scripture but are still inspired by God in the same way. Such a view of inspiration requires us to think deeply about our own experience of God and to listen carefully to the experiences others have had of God.