Is Everyone's Biblical Understanding Tainted by Preconceptions?
In looking over the news, I came across an article concerning dueling Joels: Bible Scholar and author Joel Hoffman disagreed with Lakewood mega-church Pastor and author Joel Osteen. While there is probably more that Joel Osteen and I agree upon than disagree upon, I do not believe that he is a good Bible expositor. (What I have heard strongly suggests that he is a proponent of the prosperity Gospel - a teaching that I find not only not Biblically supportable but contrary to the Biblical teaching in many respects.) Thus, initially I did not expect the article to be particularly interesting -- after all, there is a lot disagreeable in Osteen's teachings. But when I read the reasons for the disagreement, I became more interested. It essentially boiled down to this: Hoffman was calling Osteen a coward for hiding behind the Bible for being against homosexual marriage when Hoffman was stating the the Bible did not condemn homosexuality. Since I think that the Bible is rather clear in its