{"id":3197,"date":"2023-07-05T21:43:48","date_gmt":"2023-07-06T01:43:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.graymanwrites.com\/blog\/?p=3197"},"modified":"2023-07-05T21:43:48","modified_gmt":"2023-07-06T01:43:48","slug":"out-of-context-out-of-our-minds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/out-of-context-out-of-our-minds\/","title":{"rendered":"Out of Context? Out of Our Minds"},"content":{"rendered":"

This thought occurred to me tonight:<\/p>\n

To take any single verse of the Bible and claim that it represents God<\/strong>, or describes God, or gives insight into the mind of God, is like taking one cell of a body and claiming that it represents the whole person<\/strong>, or describes the person, or (especially) gives insight into the person’s mind. And larger parts are not much more definitive–a chapter is like an organ, a book like a bodily system, but only the entire living body really represents, describes, or gives insight into the person.<\/p>\n

Some part of the person is in the cell, in the organ, in the system; even at the subcellular level (the letters, the words) resides the DNA that outlines the totality of a person. But cellular DNA is only potential, and the cell is not the person. Just so, the verse is not God, nor even a microscopic glimpse of God.<\/p>\n

\"
\n(Image: “The Gutenberg Bible,” by Kevin Eng, on Wikimedia Commons.)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

More literally, the verse is not the Bible, and the Bible taken as a whole is still not the Lord God.<\/strong> The Bible, taken as a whole, is a picture<\/em> of God–and often not a very clear picture–but it is not God.<\/p>\n

It may be that a single cell describes the entire population of human beings that have ever lived and will ever live, better than a single verse in the Bible describes the totality of God.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But, what do you think?<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This thought occurred to me tonight: To take any single verse of the Bible and claim that it represents God, or describes God, or gives insight into the mind of God, is like taking one cell of a body and claiming that it represents the whole person, or describes the \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[109,110],"class_list":["post-3197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","tag-christianity","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3197"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3198,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3197\/revisions\/3198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}