A Fresh Perspective

Samir Selmanovic has written a wonderful book titled: “It’s Really All About God.” He shares how his devastated parents tried everything within their power to turn him away from Christianity when he embraced the Christian faith. They recruited one of Europe’s best psychiatrists and over fifty relatives to take their best shot in helping their son get over his infatuation with God. While his parents were not religious, their background was Muslim, and on one occasion they invited Imam Muhammad, a man respected in the Muslim community of their city, to their house to talk with Samir. His parents figured Islam was the lesser of two evils. Samir says that Muhammad “was the most environmentally progressive and socially conscious person” he had ever met. He was a vegan who walked to his house from the other side of the city, avoiding transportation on principle in order to protect the environment. He was a small gray-haired man with a large smile emanating peace and playfulness. Samir wa...

Most Christians look to the Bible, especially the New Testament, as their major source for determining what is relevant for a life of faith. This process of discovering God’s will from the Scriptures is not simply a matter of understanding what the biblical writers were saying. We inevitably bring our presuppositions, beliefs, ideas, and biases to the text. Always. Our interpretations of the intended meanings of the biblical writers/communities and our applications of these texts to our contemporary lives are always shaped by our worldview, that is, the theological, social, political, and other cultural perspectives with which we approach the text. Hopefully we are open, honest, and humble enough to acknowledge this and allow two thousand years of Christian tradition, modern science, psychology, and other branches of knowledge, as well as reason and good common sense to guide us in our interaction with Scripture. Interpreting the Bible as a means of discerning God’s redemptive will i...