Gut: Is it all one big paradox or is there a purpose?
Spill: There is a gray area surrounding everything. One can go off on a philosophical tangent regarding almost anything, especially theology. Someone can say one thing and it can be immediately twisted in a way contradictory to its original meaning. There are opinions and truths that are all wrong and all right. There are answers for everything, and there are questions that cannot be answered. Sometimes dwelling on these things can further our understanding of something, but doing so can also obscure it. We can become distracted by all the historical and chronological errors etc. in a text that we fail to see the author's purpose in writing it. It's possible to dig too deep, and get yourself stuck in a hole full of mindless details and miss the message. But inevitably once you find the message, there will be someone who found a different message or someone who believes there is no message at all. Are you all right? Are you all wrong? It's madness to carry on this way. If we could all grasp the same message from the same perspective why are there 4 different accounts of Jesus' life in the Bible?
Nice. So, here's my "Gut": How many perspectives are worth having? And now for the "Spill": If all perspectives were worth having, why did the NT stop with only 4? We may still all grasp different messages, but we can't grasp a message that isn't there? Right? And if we do, is that a perspective worth having (at least as far as the Gospels are concerned)? That still leaves wide open your question; afterall, how does one determine what messages aren't in the text?
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