LRC, Houston - the weekends-free church in Houston, Texas

I am hearing that we need to be more honest about the Bible and less defensive. God does not need us to defend it or Him. I could die tomorrow and God will do just fine. In spite of the many ministries that appeal for money, imploring you to keep funding them, and all the while reminding you just how badly the world needs to keep them on the TV, radio, or whatever, God would never miss a beat without them. He doesn’t need our Christian apologetics. He needs our commitment to live the Kingdom.

Can you handle the truth?

There are 5,400 complete manuscripts of the New Testament in Greek alone (another several thousand in Hebrew, Latin, Coptic, etc). Oh yes, and there are tens of thousands of fragments, some smaller than a credit card- but useful. Not one of the 5,400 match. Most were copied between 900 and 1400CE. It’s estimated that there are close to 250,000 errors, more than there are words in the whole New Testament.

But, hold your powder.

More than 95% are simple spelling errors, words inserted at the wrong place, or words left out, etc. In other words nearly all of the errors make no difference in theology. What else could you expect? Most manuscripts were written without chapters, verses, or even sentences. Words were one letter after another with no capital letters indicating the start of of a new sentence. Without punctuation or letter breaks, how could we fault the simple mistakes?

But, yes there are a few troubling purposeful alterings of the manuscript to make it say what the scribe wanted it to say: pushing his opinions in place of the earlier copy, of a copy, of a copy.

For me, it’s a miracle that we have such a well preserved document of the history of Jesus and His life. We have more than enough to work with, more than enough to be transformed, more than enough to change the world. What we really need are some dedicated disciples that will take what we do have, what we do know, and begin living the Kingdom life.

I want to be such a person.

And I think that when we get REAL with the world, they’ll want the same thing as well. Anyway, I’m going to give it a try. What’s to lose when you’re following Jesus. He is the TRUTH among other things (John 14:6). And John tells us that the TRUTH will set us free (John 8:32).

Anyone wanna be FREE?