I agree when you say "it was not God's 'rule' but a man's preference." I believe Paul's understood this and that is why he said, "This is me speaking .............." To say he meant otherwise is, IMHO, making a liberal interpretation of those passages where he used these words.
Many on the BB consider me liberal. I do not consider myself liberal. Rather I see my self as a conservative who takes Christ's words about how we treat others and the example of how he treated others very seriously. It seems this is not appreciated by all ... and that is understandable. Having said that I do find it puzzling at best that so many use very impolite language in responding. Oh well ...............
I believe the original documents were inspired. Sadly we do not have any copies of the originals. If one were to be found I am not sure how we could determine at this date if it really was an original or not.
Would you object to adding "To me," at the beginning of the your statement above? And maybe even "and to most Christians in the world,"? Would that agree with what you meant? I would not necessarily have a problem with what you are meaning. If we say all scripture is as relatively important to our current station in life then I think in a sense we are fooling ourselves. Our practice betrays what we say we believe. For example, and this is similar to your example of sermons, scripture memorization. Who memorizes the geneologies, or the less relevant parts of scripture before they memorize the more personally and socially relevant parts? That's not to say that those parts weren't or aren't important but that they're not as relevant. Please, for those that elevate all things to the same level, all the time, the operative word is "as"... of course all scripture is relevant, but some parts are more like "apples of gold in pictures of silver" than other parts. Some parts are more appropriate/relevant than other parts. This, to me, is obvious. To say that, in a practical sense, any part of scripture is as relevant as any other part of scripture for all situations of life and thought is asinine. This makes me think of the funny commercials from Bing.
Adding the "to me" is a good suggestion.
Relevant is an excellent word used in this case. I wish I had thought of using it in the earlier posts.
I'll take your word on the Bing ads. I watch little TV and have not seen these ads. Most of what I watch is Public TV, especially the British comedies and programs such as Masterpiece Theater, History Detectives and similar programs.
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So would you affirm that ALL scripture has been equally inspired by God, ALL
of it is also fully inerrant/infallible in ALL that it affirms, regradless if doctrines/historical etc!
