Cafeteria Benefits?

Cafeteria Benefits are offered to allow employees to pick the benefits that best provide for their needs.

How does religion fit into the subject of cafeteria benefits?  That’s the way some people make choices regarding their religion – fitting portions into their lives, opting out of what they dislike.  Sort of the same way Thomas Jefferson edited his dislikes out of the New Testament. He described his efforts to John Adams in a 1813 letter:

We must reduce our volume to the simple evangelists, select, even from them, the very words only of Jesus, paring off the amphibologisms into which they have been led, by forgetting often, or not understanding, what had fallen from him, by giving their own misconceptions as his dicta, and expressing unintelligibly for others what they had not understood themselves.

I don’t know about you, but I had to look up ‘amphibologisms’: ambiguous grammatical construction.  Basically, Jefferson took out what he didn’t like, didn’t understand or was subject to controversy.  He looked upon the New Testament as a cafeteria’s buffet and made his own choices.

Should we do that in our own religious beliefs?  Or do we study the whole -- what is written, what is taught, what is stated by our religious leaders?

I believe the scriptures are to be studied -- in depth.  Paul thought so, too, when writing to teach Timothy their importance:

All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: (2 Timothy 3:16 KJV)

For Christians, the Jewish scriptures led toward the Messiah. Jesus told us they lead to His death:

But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be? (Matthew 26:54 KJV)

It is from scripture that we obtain doctrine, our set of beliefs.  A young man told me once that he took pride in having no doctrine, but he was wrong. Simply by professing a set of religious beliefs, he had doctrine.  What he didn’t have was dogma, he had no authority that supported an absolute truth.

Dogmatic has become a pejorative, though, for people who believe truth is simply relative, subject to change with the flow of history or societal changes. Yet I believe the Bible to be an authority containing absolute truth.  I believe that if we accept the truth of:

For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. (John 3:17 KJV)

… we must also accept the truth of:

He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. (John 3:18 KJV)

Otherwise, we’re simply selecting cafeteria benefits.