I havent seen the movie Noah and really wasnt too interested in watching it until I saw all of the fb posts from Christians giving it a bad review for not following what they believe to be the biblical narrative of the story of Noah. The last few movies and television series that have been released, in my honest opinion, have taken many liberties with the biblical narrative and many Christians have openly accepted them as sound promotion of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in spite of the perceived inaccuracies and misrepresentation of biblical text. One of the most recently released biblical movies, Son Of God, took many liberties with the story of Jesus Christ and was produced by a couple who openly professes their practice of New Age religion yet Christians across America packed out theaters in droves on opening night with all of the excitement of a three day revival. One of the things that we must not fail to remember, as Christians, is the fact that we dont have a monopoly on the Old Testament Biblical Narrative. We share much of it with numerous religious around this world including but not limited to Judaism and Islam. In my curiosity and desire to always know more about God, how He relates to us, and how we relate to Him I find that I must search and oftentimes critically examine how others within Christianity or outside of Christianity relate to Him. In the Jewish religion (the people who actually wrote the Old Testament) there is a common practice among the Rabbinical leadership called the Midrash which a old method of scriptural interpretation that fills in the blanks found the passages the Tenakh. This method often calls for a bit of embellishment and added detail or speculation of what really happened. Its much like what many preachers and teachers in the Christian church do on a weekly basis to make the sermon or lesson more exciting without jeopardizing the most important parts of the biblical narrative. Sometimes the most important parts of the story are skewed which often causes confusion and feeds ignorance. This is what most commonly stirs up Christians against each other especially when we fail to study the text in context for ourselves. The story of Noah is covered over a series of four chapters, which are fairly short in the book of Genesis (Genesis 6-9). Its one of the earliest accounts of Hebrew text written by Moses, who is recognized as a prophet of God in a number of ancient religions. Much of what were taught in church about Noah is often speculation due to the lack of biblical detail in the text surrounding his life. I havent seen Noah yet, but when I do I will view in a whole different light than looking to it for biblical teaching, but rather identifying how another believes or interprets scripture. Interpretation is something that we all do when reading scripture and what our interpretation is based on is very important. If we interpret scripture solely based on what we have been previously taught then we limit the power of the text to fit in what we already know, but if we approach scripture with a mind to understand the context and the message within the context of the scripture we are enabled to grow and develop beyond our preconceived condition. Im neither endorsing nor condemning the movie Noah, but I am endorsing understanding and wisdom in the study and teaching of scripture. My first instinct is to sit back and dismiss this movie as another Hollywood attempt to debunk biblical integrity, but wisdom will not allow me to respond in that way. I must search the scriptures and seek to understand how the world sees scripture so that through my living I may win some to Christ.
Posted on: Tue, 01 Apr 2014 22:20:20 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015