Bible knowledge, creates arrogance, pride, hypocrisy and
the like.
Book-religion creates a mechanistic system, a belief-
system or ethical-system. Such systematized religion
depersonalizes and devitalizes God, as well as
dehumanizing man. We are not functional humanity as God
intended unless the Living expression of the Word of God
in Jesus Christ is functioning in us.
A Biblical Understanding of the BibleThe purpose of the Bible is not to serve as a book of
rules and regulations, ethical guidelines fixed in the
concrete of moralistic legalism. The Bible is not an ethics
book. The Bible is not a textbook of proof-texts to defend
Christian doctrine as it has been systematized by man. You
can attempt to prove almost anything from the Bible. (I
recall one individual who maintained that it was wrong to
peel a banana on the basis of the reading "whatsoever God
has put together, let no man part asunder.") The Bible is not
a law or logic textbook to prove one's point. It is not a
textbook of theological trivia. The Bible is not a
sociological textbook that settles the institutional church
into the conservatism of the status-quo. The Bible is not an