Relevance, and authority

Scriptural use of language has nothing to do with relevance but is about authority and dominance.

When folks talk about scripture needing to be relevant to the masses, they have already admitted that the message has no authority and must use tricks to fool people into believing it contains truth.

[As to] the authorities wanting to arrest Jesus for his speech: It was not because He spoke messages that were relevant to them. It was because he spoke with a royal authority and imposing wisdom that they had not encountered before.

The words of the scriptures make the reader’s opinions irrelevant on the basis of their authority. This is a very hard pill for many faithful to swallow. We can understand every word in a sentence—or not—understand what a passage means—or not—and still have it affect our lives in ways that show us how powerless we really are.

Authority has no need for relevance. On the contrary, if a policeman tells you that you have broken a law and must pay a fine or go to jail, you don't turn around and tell the officer, ‘What?! That law isn't relevant to me.’

You search the legal code to understand it and change your life as a result, so you don't have to pay the fine again, which raises, to my mind, the real issue: If a person does not believe in the authority God has over their world, the scriptures will never be relevant to them, regardless of how contextualized they might be.

— Jacob Gorny