Spiritual Meta Themes

Sooner or later if you are a Christian, you will need to make compromises in how you interpret some aspects of Scripture compared to others. A God of love, forgiveness vs a God of judgment and wrath. How do we balance a God of who would commit genocide with a God who loves the world to such an extent he would sacrifice his Son? You see it every where with Christians. I once knew a Christian who took 'Pauls word literally', On one hand she wore a scarf on her head to Church. Yet she also thought tongues was 'from the devil', strangely ignoring Paul's exhortation wishing all to speak in tongues. (1 Cor 14:5)
There are a number of ways you can look at this conundrum. Either you take God's word in an even more literal sense and believe that God has a reason for the conundrum which can be found in the scriptural text. 
Or you back off the literal interpretation. That the book is written by fallible humans, that much of it is  historical. That the text is just a Sign Post to God. Not God. 
It in my opinion, I like the second option. It lets the reader have more freedom with accepting truths. The reader then doesn't have to dismiss there own faith straight away, on the basis of the text been literal or not.

One aspect which has helped me, is looking at the 'Meta Themes'. That biblical 'Signposts' can be found in these "Meta Themes'. For me the basics are:: 

-A God of Love
-A God of Redemption
-A God inhibits the prescence of the broken and disadvantaged
-A God who is fair

I write about these themes in following posts.

Frank Viola, Re-imagining church, Chapter 9, Reimaging oversight

There was some interesting observations in this chapter....

Elders whose function was overseeing and shepherding the members of the church.

Very interesting was the claim that

"...The Bible unshakably demonstrates that a plurality of elders oversaw the activity of the early church. No church in the first century had a single leader
Consequently, the common accepted notion of sola pastora (single pastor) is at odds with the New Testament. The bible knows nothing of a person who stands at the helm of a local church, directs it in the world, officiates its Communion (or Lord's Supper), blesses civic event, marries the living, and buries the dead. No such person exists in the entire New Testament."

This paragraph certainly rocks who is seen as traditional 'Church' in regards to structure. I cannot help but think though it is a natural tendency for people to look for an individual for leadership. But maybe as suggested by Viola it should be a plurality of 'Eldership'
Interestingly Ranges is currently working in the manner at the moment, and as far as I'm aware not really interested in changing.

Also of interest, Viola claimed the only time when there was a single leader as such, was when it was getting started, the 'apostolic worker' such as Paul.