“Start in John,” Eh?
Jun 25th, 2008 by Micah Tillman | 3 Comments |
I just turned on the TV for a second to give myself a break, and saw a woman (Terry Meeuwsen?) on The 700 Club say that new Christians should read the New Testament.
Start in John, she said, and read through to the end (i.e., Revelations).
“Never mind the first three Gospels?” I wanted to ask.
The “start in John” thing is typical of the conservative evangelical approach. Christians on the other end of the spectrum (e.g., my progressive Mennonite fellow congregants) would have said:
“Start in Matthew (chapter 5, verse 3), and read through to the end (i.e., verse 12).”
HA! :)
I actually do have something more helpful than this to say about the Mennonite (or “progressive”) and evangelical (or “conservative”) approaches. :-)
And I will say it later.
But for the moment I couldn’t help myself . . . . *grin*
(Actually, I’ve argued elsewhere that the evangelical approach is often to start in Revelations, and read backwards.)
[...] I promised earlier that I’d have something more helpful to say about the different reading recommendations you’d get from conservative and progressives Christians. So I’ll do that in this post. [...]