The Church of
the Nazarene has a presence in my area, but to my knowledge I have never known
anyone that goes there. So, my first contact with the Nazarenes happened
remotely.
In the past,
I would occasionally pick up an issue of Christian Research Journal at the
local LifeWay store. This is a magazine published by the Christian Research Institute. CRI is headed up
by author and radio personality Hank Hanegraaff, also known as the Bible Answer
Man. Back in early 2000, I read an article in an issue of the CRJ by Rachel
Ramer. It was questioning the credentials of the translators of the Watchtower
Bible published by the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I wrote a letter to the editor
about several of the articles in that issue including Rachel’s. I received
responses from several of the authors, including Rachel. Her response led to me
responding which led to her responding. The original topic of discussion
morphed into something else which morphed in something else and so on. Our
Email exchanges ended up lasting for over a year. I saved our entire
conversation into a text file on my computer. When loaded into Microsoft Word
it is 645 pages long. That’s a lot of typing and Emailing. It was during this
exchange of Emails that I found out Rachel was a member of the Church of the
Nazarene.
I mentioned
Rachel in a previous “First Contact” post. She is the person who sent me a copy
of Brian McLaren’s book “Finding Faith” for Christmas while I sent her a copy
of Dan Barker’s “Losing Faith in Faith”. An interesting exchange me thinks. As
fate would have it, I was traveling frequently to Terre Haute, Indiana, with my
job in those days. Terre Haute is west of Indianapolis. I found out that Rachel
lived in a small town to the east of Indianapolis. So, during one of my trips
we agreed to meet at a restaurant in Indianapolis one evening for a face to
face. Rachel’s husband couldn’t make it, so she brought a friend with her. You
know, just in case I happened to be a psychotic serial killer. I certainly didn’t
blame her. You can’t be too careful about such things.
Fortunately,
I was able to find a reprint online of Rachel’s
article that I mentioned earlier. And just so you can get an idea of how
our multi-month long conversation started, here’s my letter to the editor about
her article.
“Rachel D.
Ramer states in the first paragraph of her article "Examining Translations
with Jehovah's Witnesses" that it is very important to know, for any given
translation of the books of the Bible, the translators and their credentials.
This sounds reasonable to me. But wouldn't this be even more true concerning
the authors of the books of the Bible? Take for instance the book of Hebrews.
It is my understanding that nobody knows for sure who wrote this book and thus
do not know that person's credentials. Also, since the four gospels were
unsigned, no one knows for certain if Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were
actually the authors. These supposed authors' names came through early church
tradition. Although this tradition may be accurate, it may not be. If not
knowing the translators and their credentials is grounds for rejecting a
translation, is not an unknown author grounds for rejecting certain books of
the Bible?”
I very much
enjoyed the exchange of ideas Rachel and I engaged in, but it did take a lot of
time. However, lengthy exchanges of ideas were not new to me. Back in the 1990’s
before the Internet became widely available, people had to use online services
such as CompuServe, AOL, BIX, and others. I was a member of AOL. There were a
number of message boards on this service where people discussed Ayn Rand’s
philosophy of Objectivism. I spent a lot of time bartering ideas there also. In
addition, I was frequently writing articles for computer magazines in those
days. I guess I was and am just a writing fool.
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