![]() It is up to us, as we read the Bible, to separate the heavenly treasure from the earthen vessels. Some of it is timebound by the culture in which it was written, but at its heart it holds timeless truths about God and humanity. It is “heavenly treasure in earthen vessels.” It was not written for scientific or historical accuracy, but to convey the timeless message of God’s love and care. I was eight years old when the great Methodist theologian Georgia Harkness wrote, “Understanding the Christian Faith.” Her chapter on “Understanding the Bible” lays out the perspective I grew up with, that the Bible is a sacred book, written over a period of about a thousand years. By which he did not mean that everything that happened was good, but rather that God expected us to make progress, morally and politically as well as scientifically. ![]() Half a century earlier, in the years when evangelicals were also progressives, Walter Rauschenbusch had declared that progress was not just inevitable, it was also divine. And folks often concluded a discussion of religious differences with the closing remark that they were glad “we are all going to the same place.” ![]() In those years the mainstream offered a very big tent. We embraced science and biblical scholarship and the moral evolution of our society. The Methodist Church that welcomed me as an infant was a central part of the liberal mainstream of American Protestantism. I read Bishop Mike Lowry’s letter of resignation from the Council of Bishops and the United Methodist Church “with a heavy heart and deep grief." This is a major issue for the church, but for me it is also deeply personal.
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