Picking and Choosing

Bookstores are not places I should go when I have a few extra dollars.  It is always hard to walk out empty handed and with the same amount of money I had on entering.  The other day it happened again.  I was in a bookstore, saw a book written by Eric Metaxas who wrote a really good book on Bonhoeffer which justified gettng the one in front of me, so I opened the wallet and walked out with "Letter to the American Church."    

While it is a book that lifts up the similarities between the Lutheran Church in pre-World War II Germany and the church today in America, there was a interesting side section about Martin Luther from which I learned some new things about the old reformer.  According to the author Luther was so into justification by faith alone that he wanted to cut the whole book of James out of the Scripture.  Though he reconsidered his opinion about this "epistle of straw" as he called it, he was ready to leave it out of the Scripture because of the contradiction it created.    

Luther was not the first or the last to want to pick and choose when reading the Word.  When we read a Word that goes against the grain of what we want the Scripture to say, or which goes against the common consensus of culture, we find ways to relegate it to a place which justifies ignoring it.  It happens all the time to this writing which is "inspired by God."  (II Timothy 3:16)  C. S. Lewis once said that Jesus is either Lord or lunatic.  There was no middle ground for him.  In the same manner the Scripture is either the authoritative Word of God, or it has authority according to our personal opinion.  There is no middle ground.