Yesterday I got notice of some new research from the guys at Lifeway’s Research Department regarding opinions about the Bible among Southern Baptist pastors and church members. The article portrays a sharp disconnection between the views held between these two groups.

Upon reading said research, I skyped my friend Todd who allowed me to vent about this.  Today he writes a post that just knocks it out of the park. Todd states:

We can battle those in the pews all day long. We can overwhelm them with our theologizing and well-crafted arguments. The problem may lie in how we fought our battle. It may be those in the pews simply reflect what we has been portrayed to them. Talk of an inerrant, infallible Bible followed by pragmatic tactics to win the war of Scriptural fidelity may have left them, and some of us not surveyed, thinking we are all talk.

The issue is that saying “I believe in inerrancy” is not enough.  As I quoted in my review of The Blue Parakeet, Scot McKnight noted:

those who have a proper relationship to the Bible never need to speak of the Bible as their authority nor do they speak of the submission to the Bible.  They are so in tune with God, so in love with him, that the word “authority” is swallowed up in loving God.  Even more, the word “submission” is engulfed in the disposition of listening to God speak through the Bible and in the practice of doing what God calls us to do. (93)

In other words, if my life is wrapped up in God and living the Bible, I don’t have to go around telling people I believe the Bible is inerrant.  It becomes evident in my life that it is.

The problem in Southern Baptist circles is that it’s leadership has for years forced people to say they believe the Bible while living an pragmatic ethic in order to achieve victory.  Thus our “belief” in inerrancy may reflect nothing more than an intellectual assent, not a life-changing transformation.

Saying we believe in the inerrancy of the Bible is not enough. Living the Bible, with its ethical implications as well as theological is what matters.  It wasn’t the people who cried “Lord, Lord” that Jesus said would be in his kingdom.  It was the people who loved the unlovely, cared for the poor, and treated people as if they were ministering to the Christ himself that would enter into the kingdom.