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Thoughts I am hoping that I can give you, some insight into my thought process. I am also hoping to tie together this part of my blog, although I might add to it later. I am going to throw out some ideas here. I am a deep thinker. So before I finally get to the Word studies I want to do, I need to give you an idea of how I think. It us quite a lot today. But that can't be helped at this point. I believe that a person's worldview is strongly dependant on a mixture of background, education and personality. I also think that a lot depends on how you build trust. One is especially inclined to trust your own eyes. And many people, quite correctly I think, initially trust their parents (unless your parents were abusive or absent). It is something I don't think we can prevent. We are so vulnerable that we can't ever entirely depend on ourselves, so we are forced to look for outside help in order to survive. And we are forced to belong to something or Somone or we will be alone. I have gone deep into existialist thinking, pondering why life is what it is. And whether what we see is really real. I did this all on my own. No one told me to ask these questions. They just came up as a result of my natural curiosity. I find that there is a lot of competing ideas in the world. Many with more merit than what we might want to admit. And it doesn't usually take us long, when growing up, to realise that there are choices to make. And the question I have often come to ask myself is: on what basis do I trust what I trust? I know the Holy Spirit leads us to truth. But at the time it happened I could not have known that it was the Holy Spirit. Unfortunately, we are far too easy to fool. Our knowledge is always limited, even when we do actually have a little knowledge. We walk around with biases which are based on experience and impressions. And both can mislead us. So can feelings. So can intelligence. I often find I need to try to take myself outside my biases and try to consider reality objectively. I don't often succeed . I have rarely been able to shake the feeling that my faith in God has a lot to do with the fact that it is the culture I grew up in. So I've always felt the need to be able to verify what I believe with what I see around me. I guess that's what Romans 1 is talking about. Therefore I have, in the past, done my best to check my assumptions. Down to the most basic assumptions. Even asking myself if there is truth. And the interesting thing is that once I was done with the process of examining my assumptions, I realised that I found the Christian faith the most consistent with the reality as I am able to see it. To me, this was an important breakthrough. So then I realised the Bible must be true. I suppose that was also the Holy Spirit guiding me in the right direction. So then I made the decision that I would make Scripture the basis for what I understand to be true. I would only believe something is true if it didn't clash with Scripture in any way. It would act like a filter for what I could accept. But there is a basic problem with this. The Bible requires interpretation. But I'm long jumping the gun. Before this realisation, after my initial childhood experience with children's Bibles, I started reading the Bible in my early teens. And at first I had very little input to tell me how to read it. So I generally accepted it as literal because I had no reason to see it otherwise. But as I grew older, got saved and started following the Holy Spirit's guidance, I came to realise that it isn't always that simple. There are some things that need further reading, there are translation issues, there are things that need to be inferred and also there are things that are true that aren't necessarily said in Scripture. I'll be quite honest that much of what I learned early on was a mix of considering my dad's position on things (he can be very persuasive, being a rhetorician) . Other influences on me are classical writtings, my grandmother, authors like C.s Lewis and G.k Chesterton, and the Charismatic church movement that I was part of. Also, of course, the friend who led me to the Lord and acted as my source of information for quite some time. More recently I find I like Tim Kelly, and Tim Mackie from the Bibleproject. On Facebook I know a guy called Objective Believe and he impresses me with his clever reasoning, although I am also convinced that one can make good arguments for things that are actually false (another result of experiences I've had) . On the one hand I find I am open to hearing from a wide variety of people because I'm going to filter what they say anyway. I often talk to God about what I hear long afterwards, in order to help understand things better. It helps if I can see that the person cares. It's easier to trust someone who shows true compassion and gentleness. On the other hand, I just don't do blind faith.. I don't put limits on where truth will come from, but I do still use my best understanding of the Scriptures to filter what I hear. At this stage, I am again in the process, of rethinking who and what I should believe. Not around the basics. More around hearing God, hearing the Holy Spirit, what choices to make and where to stand on important issues. I have some frustrations in my church due to these questions I have. They are not helping me at the moment. I am thinking about what my next moves should be, given my circumstances. And I want my decisions to be based on faith rightly applied. I feel that so much of what I have been taught could be wrong and it scares me. I try to push that away. Ignore my misgivings. But I can't anymore. When I get scared I withdraw. I'm especially weary of manipulation. If I'm going to believe, what someone claims is biblical, it should be able to stand on it's own. My way of reading and studying Scripture is pretty simple. I mean, unless something is obviously meant not to be literal, I accept the most obvious meaning of the text. Given what I've said here I have a few great needs at the moment. I have great need for healthy fellowship. I often feel alone. My friends are mostly living elsewhere, my church is filled with a lot of people I struggle to relate to (and I really have tried to relate to them) and my current occupation means I spend most of my time at home. My second need is to have some sort of direction for my life and for breakthroughs in terms of my career and financial position. A serious prayer need. But probably my biggest need is the need to seek God's overall direction for my life. And especially for how I use my time, since I have so much of it. I need to be dure I am the best I can be for Him. And that is why I've also had to rethink how to pproach my online presence. This includes how I spend time on Worthy and this then led me to the need to do this Bible study. Also I will be trying my best to broaden my involvement in more threads (but I can't promise anything yet) and to make the most of the fellowship side. I have some plans. They will soon be revealed. Comments and questions are welcome.