I think that one of the issues why people today are becoming more suspicious of the institution of the Church is that there seems to be a problem with communication. Last time I checked I don't recall Jesus saying anything about the need to give people messages through third parties instead of talking directly to a person. We leave messages to be delivered on our behalf's by other people and then wonder why people are frustrated when they don't understand where or why there is this message. Example - this set of papers sounds too much of one thing and not another and that maybe causing you a problem is the message I received lately from a third party. The third party person couldn't tell me what sounded wrong or why. So now I have to track down the author of such comments and try to get them to explain. Why not take the middle person out? Why not just be direct? Don't want to use the phone there's email, letters, social media, etc. Messages and memos get lost in translation and people feel like they're talked about and guess what they have been. What about fostering community comes from this stuff? I'd argue nothing. I know this situation makes me question my affiliations with certain groups, I doubt others would be that far behind me.
In a conversation with a more conservative Christian then me (take in mind I call myself a bed-wetting liberal and I’m also a big time Process Theologian) the person started rambling off scripture quotes (proof texting really) to make a point. I have never claimed to be a great memorizer of anything. And even though I have read the Bible many times and own many copies of the Bible, I am still not a person who can just pull out scripture references in mid conversation. I do have several verses that I turn to and love dearly but I can’t tell you word for word what John 2:5 or Ruth 1:4 says. This got me thinking, why do Christians really feel the need to qualify their faith based on the amount of scripture that they can recite from memory? While it may be very handy to be able to quote scripture in a variety of situations, I believe that this can be dangerous. Proof texting (pulling scripture, from any religion, to support an argument without careful and learned consideration for its cont
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