Concordance Like Strong's Worthless For Serious Study

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Concordance Like Strong's Worthless For Serious Study

Serious biblical study consists much more of trying to look up words in a concordance such as Strong's that lists all possible Greek meanings. It would be nice if it were so simple.

For example, what is the literal meaning of "Trunk"? A concordance would list such things as the front end of an elephant, the back end of a car, the bottom of a tree, the middle of a person, or all of a large suitcase! Strong's concordance is just as meaningless in trying to understand Greek. In fact Greek may be much more difficult to translate than English. For serious biblical study you not only need to understand the Greek word, you have to evaluate the context and evaluate other uses of the word.

True Biblical theology begins not with Church tradition and dogma but with the biblical texts themselves. Biblical theology seeks to understand how the biblical authors expressed themselves in terms of their culture. Only with this understanding is it legitimate to define biblical sexual ethics of the NT and find implications for today.

Many serious Christians writers without any personal bias come up with very different biblical truth than Church tradition regarding sexuality. There are some Christian's whose maturity enables them to study other viewpoints without becoming emotionally agitated. Others do not have the maturity and revealing other scriptural interpretations, rather than being a blessing, ends up being a curse on them, resulting in agitated emotions and a need to prove their point over any logical presentation of possible alternative views.

No Christian should judge others just because they take the scriptures more seriously than looking up words in a concordance. If you are happier in your beliefs that sex is wrong outside of marriage that may be what is best for you. But it is not the only legitimate interpretation of scripture. If you understand Church history and its biased translations through history you soon realize the lies and deceptions the Church is teaching regarding many sexual issues and especially homosexuality.

The one clear teaching is Christ's love and that all the rules we seek are but gnats and we should exhibit more love (I don't mean sexual), and non-judgmental acceptance of legitimate different scripture views.

My final thought is to encourage us to look at scripture more in light of Christ's love and not as a rule book. I assure you the more liberal position is very legitimate for some, but it may not be legitimate for God's will in your life - but remember the prostitute gets to heaven before the literalist which was what the pharisee's were !

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