From: kilroy@gboro.glassboro.edu (Dr Nancy's Sweetie)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.christia
Subject: Trust Despite Flaws
Summary: We get along just fine trusting imperfect sources.
Keywords: perfection, trust, flaws, salvation, truth, `Woof!'
Date: 13 Oct 92 17:20:25 GMT
Organization: Wheaton College Alumna of Mullica Hill, Inc.
Disclaimer: Brandy the WonderDog stayed in Maryland, but we'll show him our
            pictures of Chicago.


[ Nancy & I have been in Wheaton, Illinois, for her college Reunion.  Over
  the next few days, I shall probably catch up on replies to people who are
  waiting for them.  This is not entirely an aside, as we shall see below. ]


Michael Million wrote:
> I am not convinced that the apostles, with all of their good intentions,
> presented the teachings of Jesus without flaw.

and Tom Brewer replied:
> Then how can we trust what they teach about salvation?

To which I answer: exactly the same way I got on the airplane at BWI this past
weekend.  The people who built the plane were imperfect, and the people who
operate the plane are imperfect, and air travel is not completely safe -- but
I am convinced that they do a good enough job to safely transport me at almost
the speed of sound.

Mr Brewer is hardly alone in the sentiment he expressed above; we have many
posts that speak of wanting "absolute certainty" about some thing or another,
and which claim that the Bible, or the Apostles, or the Church, can give it.
Often, as Mr Brewer has, they ask rhetorically: "How can we trust it if it
might be flawed?"

But everyone does this every day: we all ride in cars, get on elevators, drink
tap water or sodas or milk, eat food in restaurants or purchased from stores,
walk up and down stairs, use telephones -- we all do dozens of things every
day which could kill us.  We trust that the milk is properly pasteurised, that
the safety seal on the aspirin bottle protects us, that the cables holding the
elevator are secure, that the insulators in the telephone system will keep us
from being electrocuted.

None of those things is perfectly safe: people have died in their bathtubs,
in their cars, taking Tylenol, falling down stairs -- many people have been
killed doing things that we all do.  Almost nothing we do is perfectly and
totally safe; there is no absolute certainty that we won't be killed in the
next five minutes.  (Consider the victims of the air crash last week -- people
in their homes doing nothing, only to be interrupted by many tons of aluminum
and burning jet fuel.)

So I ask those who want "absolute certainty" whether they drive or ride in
cars; whether they get on airplanes; whether they drink milk and take medicine
and eat in restaurants.  How can you trust that these things are safe?

The answer, of course, is that you judge serious errors to be very unlikely.
While the people who assembled the plane may have put the wing flaps out of
alignment by a millimeter, that is not enough to be a serious problem.  While
the pilot may misunderstand a communication from the control tower, there is
enough room for error that you (usually) won't be killed.

And so it goes: there are millions of things in this world that can kill you,
but you trust that reasonable precautions are taken and that they will keep
you safe.  You act in the face of risk because you have no choice -- the risks
are not going away -- and because you judge the advantages (rapid transport,
eating, having shelter) to be worth the risks entailed.


Someone might object at this point, saying that earthly life is one thing, but
eternal salvation is quite another -- how can we trust our eternal fate to
something less than perfect?  To this, I reply by observing that you have to
do this anyway: your beliefs, in the end, are in your own head.  Even if we
suppose that the (Bible|Vatican|Apostles) were absolutely perfect in their
understanding and transmission of Jesus' teachings, how can you be certain you
are absolutely perfect in your understanding of them?  You cannot be
absolutely, perfectly certain of your own thinking and reasoning -- you may
well belong to a church that teaches truth with no mixture of error, but how
do you know that you properly learn what your church teaches?  If it is
possible for your understanding to be flawed, how can you trust in your
salvation at all?


I believe that the Scriptural writers were inspired by God and did their best
to accurately record what they thought important.  But whether they did so
perfectly or not is irrelevant: there are many potential sources of error
AFTER the writers were done.  There are transmission problems, translation
problems, recognising metaphors from literal statements, and my own thinking
about what I finally read.  Even if the Apostles taught with perfection, that
is no guarantee that my beliefs will be perfect.

I trust that the errors which may be present -- either in the transmission,
translation, or interpretation of the Bible -- are not serious ones.  I trust
that God can cut straight lines even with crooked tools, and that he will do
what is best.  But this is with the recognition that there may be, and almost
certainly are, mistakes at every level involving sinful humans.


Darren F Provine / kilroy@gboro.glassboro.edu
"If only the perfect could speak, what would there be to read on the net?"
                                                          -- Larry A. Shurr