Baptist Pastors Disagree on the "Literal, Infalible" Word of God

I've posted on this before, but I believe my points bear repeating since more information has come to light.


From EthicsDaily.com:


Half of Southern Baptist pastors believe God gifts some people with a "private prayer language," according to poll results released Friday by LifeWay Christian Resources, fueling a minor controversy ongoing on Baptist blogs for a year and a half.

The Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board approved a policy in November 2005 to no longer appoint missionaries who make a practice of privately praying in unintelligible tongues. The act is usually associated with neo-Pentecostal, charismatic or "Third Wave" Christians, but some Baptists, including IMB President Jerry Rankin, acknowledge having a private prayer language.


"Southern Baptists, at least half of them, have become more open to a practice that was not mainstream a hundred years ago," prior to the modern Pentecostal/charismatic movement...


Could some Baptists be gaining a further revelation of God's word? Does that mean that there are still points made or inferred in the Bible that have been beyond their understanding that has gradually come to light? Is the Bible, in truth, not just infailble but not quite so easily broken down into black-and-white as the SBC has worked so hard to do over the last generation?


If as many as half of their leadership, the pastors, are wrong about speaking in tounges (some have to be right, which makes the others wrong by my math), how can they take such a hard-line stance on what they perceive as the evils on homosexuality, especially in light of how little is written about it in the Bible? If they can't get on the same page about speaking in tounges, how can they be so absolutely certain about their stance toward GLBT people?


Enough questions. My answer is, of course, THEY CAN'T and that the leadership is pursuing an agenda based more on tradition and their own prejudices than anything written in the word of God.


One ranking member of the SBC even tried to discredit the study, which was conducted by Lifeway Research, a department of the SBC publishing house Lifeway. They're trying to discredit their own study because they didn't like the results.


One SBC theologian, Malcolm Yarnell of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, questioned both the methodology of the study and its timing, just before the SBC annual meeting later this month, where the issue of private prayer languages is expected to surface.


In my opinion, this issue of speaking in tounges in clearly not a heaven-or-hell matter. Personally, I'm convinced that I was going to heaven before I received that gift from the Holy Spirit, and I still am after receiving it.


My point is that there is a LOT more that God wants to teach us beyond the written word of the Bible. He will never teach us anything to contradict it, but there is much to learn beyond the events and lessons taught over 2,000 years ago.


There is much he wants to teach us. We simply have to open our hearts and minds and listen to what the Holy Spirit has to say.