Faith Challenges: It Ain't All Comfort

I grew up Baptist. My parents were Southern Baptist missionaries. We lived in Brazil, where the main religious affiliation was Roman Catholic. I noticed a major difference between Roman Catholicism and Baptists, especially with moving back and forth between Brazil and the US. Baptists were focused on a set of things to believe. While we talked a lot about the Bible as the only source of authority for faith and practice, there were a list of correct answers that went along with our reading of Scripture. Not all Baptists thought alike on the correct answers, but there was a certain foundation that was taken as immutable. If you believed these particular things, you could be or were saved. Catholicism in Brazil, however, looked very different from Catholicism in the US or in Mexico. I understood that it pretty much adapted to what it found as it entered countries around the world. It was not so focused on a set of concepts one needed to believe, however. It could adapt, because...

Interpretation is basic to any communication. You have to make decisions regarding how I am using the words you read. Even simple things like, “The car is red.” Is the car completely red? Does it have a red paint job? Is the engine red, the windows, the tires? We hear the words and make quick associations to how we have heard the words used in other contexts. If someone tells you I have red hair, you will make allowances for it being anywhere among a range of color with some orange orange tint, possibly interspersed with white or gray. I’ve been called a red-head all my life, but my hair has never actually been red. We interpret the term differently in regard to a car than in regard to hair or a rose. As the United Methodist Church has taken a step towards the affirmation of the LGBTQ+ community, it is not from ignoring the Bible in any sense. Rather, this inclusion and affirmation comes from what we call the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. Along with our reading of Scripture, we ap...