Say what? For a majority of Christians, that statement seems "incorrect," but hear me out. Perhaps this change of theme represents something about what the bible as a book is, a changing understanding of God. This is what theologian Brian McLaren thinks anyway. While most conservatives would shoot down McLaren in cold blood, the man has a point. It's not that God is changing, but it is our understanding of who he is that changes. I mean, do you really think that the Hebrews would really have a better understanding of God than those who spent time with Jesus? As we grow as a people, we learn more and more, and thus our understanding evolves.

So what does that mean for us now? It means that our understanding of God needs to evolve to a modern day setting. The new testament as we know it took over 200 years to be formulated and decided upon. The reason it took so long was the early church fathers argued about what was canonical and what wasn't. Their main argumentation was that an author of a piece of "scripture" needed to have personal ties to Jesus. But what happens to us now?

None of us have personal ties to Jesus today. That is to say, one may "know" him through prayer and worship, but you did not really live life with Jesus. So now we're stuck in this awkward place where all of us are trying to figure out what it means to be a Christian in the modern age. Some argue that the best way to do this is to make the bible translate for situation to situation to today. This is certainly one way to do it. But then you run into problems like "cultural significance" and "literal significance." For example, a lot of the passages about women in the bible are often referred to as culturally significant because we would never treat women like that in our modern society.

So the big question is, who gets to decide what is culturally significant? The whole book is steeped in culture and to read it without a cultural lens would be foolish. The only way that "Christian truth" can be understood today is subjective as best. The reason is because nobody has spiritual authority. If someone claims that "God told them the truth," will we believe them? Most people are going to say no. And rightfully so, because the logic of "God told me to" has been misused and abused throughout all of history.

The best that we can do today is compare notes with one another and see what others think. Those that are prone to having everything wrapped up in a black and white box do not like this, but to force spirituality and Christianity into this absolute box is a disservice and manipulative. To say that discussions cannot occur because your understanding is "right" and an abuse of power. Think about the traditional Christian system. In order to have a legitimate voice in Christendom, you must got to school and then seminary. The power structure is explicit and clear.

The biggest challenge for us today is to figure out how Christianity works in today's society. We can only do that by living life together and having open discourse about the process. In the process of the discussion, I think we find the freedom so often proclaimed by Christianity and the bible. But what do you think? Does this make sense to you, or have I now branded myself as a heretic? Sound off below!

I can think of two major examples that made me think of this, one serious and one not so serious. I recently watched Food, Inc. which is a great documentary that discusses the problems with the modern food industry. As they talked more and more about the way that the government and corporations have control over the way we work with and produce food, I couldn't help but think how oppressive and tight that grip of control actually is. I mean seriously, these guys are producing food that can harm American people while being fully aware of it so that they can make a quick buck. I was moved after watching that movie, but what can one person do against billion dollar corporations? The documentary even depicts farmers who are trying to fight against "the man," and end up getting beaten down. It's a major problem that needs fixing, but what can I do besides tell other people?

The second issue that makes me think of this is all of the copyright issues happening with the Olympics. If you've been following any coverage of how locked down Olympics coverage is, then you know it is absolutely ludicrous. For a quick primer, I suggest reading this post by Molly Wood of CNET. But in essence, the IOC is threatening legal action against people who use their copyrighted names during the Olympics. This includes the names of any Olympic athlete competing in the games. How nuts is that? It's completely crazy, but what can we do about it? There's nothing that one person can do in the fight for rights against the IOC. It feels like the only thing I can do is rant and rave about it to people who will listen.

And maybe that's the very action that we are expected to take. One person alone can't take down giant monolithic organizations. But one person can let other people know about the ridiculous things happening across the world everyday. And perhaps when enough people care, it will hit a critical mass that can cause true and lasting change.

If you've been listening to Top 3cast, we've been talking about the power of Twitter to spread the word about social movements and causes. While it may seem like one person can't do a whole lot, they can do their part to spread the news to others so that as a group, we can do something about it. Change is in the power of the mob, we've just got to learn how to mobilize.