I'm genuinely interested in some feedback on this.
In April of this year, I did a post entitled, Matthew 12:22-37: Blasphemy Against the Holy Spirit. Basically, I argued that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit seems to involve words, not just a rebellious attitude (as many evangelicals claim). And because the Greek verb that discusses such blasphemy is in the aorist, it appeared to me that Jesus was saying that a single occurrence of it is unforgivable.
Well, someone took issue with my reading of the text, and he got me thinking about something that's continually been in the back of my mind: to what extent should I be concerned about the pastoral ramifications of what I write? I would hate for a person who thinks he blasphemed the Holy Spirit to stumble across my blog, conclude that he has no hope for forgiveness, and then commit suicide, or something horrible.
At the same time, my purpose in this blog is to wrestle with issues. Things in the Bible do not sit well with me all of the time. And I don't always find the typical evangelical explanations for Bible difficulties to be all that convincing. Should I just shut up and let people assume that they're true? If I don't question them, then people won't look for better explanations.
I think it's important for people to realize a couple of things: First of all, I don't present what I write as the final say on issues. I think there are some people who think that, just because I studied this stuff in school, I have access to secret knowledge that no one else has, making my opinion more weighty than the average lay person's. Look, I struggle too. There are scholars who would disagree with my arguments, and all sorts of people--inside and outside of academia--can come up with possible solutions to my perplexities. My blog posts represent my struggles at a given time. They are not the final word. People shouldn't lose their faith over anything I say or write.
Second, I myself am a person of faith. I may struggle with fundamentalist concepts of biblical inerrancy, but I'm a person who wants meaning in his life. And I look to the Bible for that. My interest in this blog is not just "The Bible is wrong here," or "The Bible has all sorts of contradictory documents," or "This biblical event didn't happen." I look to nourish my soul, and hopefully in the process to give others some inspiration. The person who wrote that response to my "Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit" post said that I was portraying God as cruel. Look, sometimes the God of the Bible strikes me as cruel! But I am still looking for a spiritual life, which includes a God who loves all of his creation and is transforming me to become loving as well.
I am well aware that Jesus warns against being a stumbling-block to believers (Matthew 18:7), and that James warns teachers that they will be judged with greater strictness (James 3:1). But does that mean that I can never publicly question things? Should I just assume the typical fundamentalist and evangelical spiels because so many people's faith is wrapped up in them? Should Galileo have stopped his research because his conclusions would make people question their religious beliefs?
I apologize if I sound arrogant, as if I have delusions of grandeur. I know I'm not Galileo. And I can imagine someone saying, "Look, no offense, but I'm not going to lose my faith over anything YOU write." But the fact is that anyone who blogs has some circle of influence. A person can run a search on a topic and stumble upon something that you've written, too. How responsible are you for how that person reacts? And this will impact me when I become a professor as well: should I not cover the historical-critical method in my classes, then that contradicts students' fundamentalism, and they may lose their faith if they take what I say seriously?
Hard stuff.