People who love art, or music, or cinema can go away and study these things in a scholarly way – they lose their innocence, their naivety. It can take time, even a conscious effort to re-appreciate the art, music, or films. There, hopefully, comes a “second naivety” – even deepened by the study.
The same is true for the scriptures, and our general appreciation of our faith. We can fall in love with the scriptures and then find, when we study them in a scholarly way (“critically” is the technical term) that people lose their innocence. Many people are shocked to discover contradictions; and that some “history” in the Bible never happened; and so on. Some react by losing their faith. Some react by hardening a fundamentalism: the contradictions, they argue, aren’t really there; the history did happen; and so on.
Or we can find a third way – not losing our faith, not fundamentalism – we can find a second naivety which accepts contemporary scholarship and still hears what the Spirit says to us and to the Church through the scriptures.
This is yet another attempt of me as a beginner shorts creator.
One way of finding what the Spirit is saying to us is Lectio Divina.
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Yes, ‘ unless you change and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.’ (Matthew 18:3)
When did it become about attempting to consolidate the whole of knowledge into some kind of Adult-Rolodex-Wisdom-of-the-Universe…what about Divine Mystery?! What about the things we do not, can not know?
In psychology/social work/ education we often tell people to go where they feel most challenged in order to learn and grow. If you are ‘a fundamentalist’, go investigate interfaith. If you think you are ‘a liberal’, go serve in a fundamentalism community. Whatever we do- if we do it with love and the teachings of Jesus in mind, including those same teachings of Jesus as represented in other faiths, it will always be okay.
I have said this so many times. There is only one unforgivable sin in the Bible. When we ‘blaspheme the Holy Spirit.’ People are called variously via that Spirit, but it still means we all, who recognize ‘God’ in our universe…we must exhibit compassion first and foremost, to love God above all and our fellow person as ourself…
I’ve been called naive many times myself, or felt naive when someone with superior education was talking to me. As I get older I don’t really care about that feeling so much, for as you say ‘we can find a second naivety which accepts contemporary scholarship and still hears what the Spirit says to us and to the Church through the scriptures.’
(Preaching to the choir again I know X)