Bible contains more light than some realize

Howard Chilton of Fayetteville writes in his April 27 letter to the editor of being one of those “who honor the Scriptures, actually read them and study them.” He implies that the Rev. Leslie Belden in writing for this paper the column “We are Family” did not. Belden is a Presbyterian minister. As a Presbyterian minister myself, I can tell you Presbyterians are widely known as loving books and especially honoring The Good Book — ALL of it.

We know in beginning God created a richly diverse and intimately integrated garden and invited human beings to be partners in creating. We know that God gave the rainbow covenant of protection “for all future generations” and to “every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” We know that “father Abraham” was blessed to be a blessing to “all the nations of the earth” and that his son Ishmael — considered an ancestor of our Muslim brothers and sisters — was also part of the circumcision covenant and received a special blessing. We know that “all things came into being through the Word and without him not one thing came into being” — his life is “the light of all people.” We know in Christ God was reconciling the world and those following Christ are to be partners in this great diplomatic work of bringing water to all who thirst and wiping every tear until the leaves of the tree of life have healed every nation and death itself is overcome.

Presbyterians know the great work of the body of Christ is reconciling life and death, good and evil. Mr. Chilton poses an important question about evil. If only the answer was so simple as separating the evil people from the rest of us and destroying them. “But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn). We trust that our all-powerful God who is Love and who again and again professes heart-love of us will make good what we intend for evil. It is beyond our imagining how. But we give the glory to the One who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.

What about those Scriptures which seem to limit God to only those heaven-or-hell choices within human reason and human imagination? Presbyterians read those, too. Praying for God’s Spirit to attend our reading, we wrestle with them and wonder about them in the context of the big story of God’s beyond-big love. All of The Story surely informed Belden’s imagining of “the Father’s table” at which sits “all of the people … one family.” May we all be so inspired. Amen and amen. BECKY PURCELL

Fayetteville Pastor, First Presbyterian Church,

Prairie Grove