When Your Mind Isn't Enough...

Was having a great conversation on the forums here about a very fine point of scripture that many have competing views on and it made me think of a question that I can't remember if we've looked at here before, but that is central to anyone's "Search For Truth".

How do you decide what to believe when your ability to fact-check falls short?

For example, I don't understand Greek and Hebrew at all. When I look into Greek or Hebrew in a passage of scripture, I have to rely on lexicons, dictionaries, reference books, commentaries or those I know who ARE fluent in Greek and Hebrew, (like my freaky nerdy Bible study mentor, the Hebrew-Greek Bible Geek).

Plug- spiritblade.net/biblegeek

But in using any of these resources, I'm making an assumption that the author(s) or person I'm speaking to is reliable. I can only hang on to that skeptic hat for so long before I have to decide what I believe, whether that belief is something I'm adamantly confident about, or just something I "currently lean toward".

I think we are all in this position, whether we acknowledge it or not. (Except for those of you who actually DO know everything there ever is, was or will be to know.)

So my question is this: How do YOU decide what people in your life or books on your shelf to trust as reliable information resources?

Wow, Paeter. That's a really good question.

I hadn't thought about what and whom I considered an authority other than my father. I knew he went to seminary, had been a pastor for the first 16 years of my life, read and studied the bible and other resrouces daily. He was always my first "go to" guy on biblical questions. Sadly, I don't think I "went to" him often enough. And sadly, that resource for me is now gone.

In the mean time, I would say that I tend to trust my own church's Middle School pastor Mark 99% of the time as a spiritual and biblical authority. Mark's been in ministry for more years than I can remember, and works very closely with the entire pastoral staff at our church. I tend to trust that when he recommends a book or resource for biblical knowledge, that the chruch staff has done it's research and is recommending only something they trust is God inspired and "God approved".

As for why I trust Mark and his recommendations, I think it's just a matter of the interaction I have with Mark and the relationship we developed as both brothers in Christ and as a mentor/student (he's my Master Jedi). I'm not sure if I'd trust just any other person's recommendation on a book or any online critic's "you should read this" statements. I don't know them. But I have a relationship with Mark, and so him I trust.

Pretty much what Drew said, except the people I trust are our music minister and our pastor. I have a open enough relationship with both of them and I ask them and trust the resources they recommend. They are very particular about who/what they recommend for resources and trust the research they have done.