Scripture: Acts 14:21
They preached the gospel in that city and won a large number of disciples.
 
Thought for the Day: Those of us who have felt the tug of God in our souls are thankful for spiritual teachers. It’s likely we’ve had many instructors on our spiritual journey. People, books, art and music all inform our spiritual development.
 
For many Christians, the Bible is their ultimate spiritual authority. But the Bible is really more a record of people like us, struggling to find relationship with each other and God, and the development of their religious traditions. It’s not the greatest spiritual text. There’s a lot of information about forming a church or a synagogue and how to behave in one of those institutions. There are ideas about how to behave in community with one another, many as pertinent today as they were thousands of years ago (and many more that are completely repulsive). But the little spiritual instruction that’s found in the Bible is steeped in ancient Jewish mysticism and sacrificial symbolism that is lost on today’s population of spiritual seekers.
 
If we are really interested in conforming more to the image of Christ, then it’s more than okay—in fact I would say it’s a necessity, to look outside the Bible for spiritual guidance. Richard Rohr, Joel Goldsmith, Ram Dass, Marcus Borg, the New Interpreter’s Bible and commentaries—these are all excellent sources for spiritual lessons. The NIB commentaries in particular free us from the mythology and sacrificial imagery of the Bible most of us no longer understand.
 
Tradition is fine. It’s good to honor our spiritual ancestors. But just as Jesus taught new ways to think about being Jewish, we must also always strive to think about the new ways God is showing us what it means to be in relationship in the 21^st Century.
 
Prayer: God who reveals all things, open my mind to Your new communication, so that I may be spiritually transformed, and not just blindly follow traditions I don’t understand. Amen.