Nate Keller (a.k.a. theotherside or countrytech) is a graphics designer who describes himself as a high-tech redneck. He blogs at The Fine Coffee Aficionado. He is one of the leading members of MennoDiscuss. Some of his interests are graphics, computers, anything related to Cabela’s, racing, Jeff Foxworthy, truck & tractor pulling, deep sea fishing, boating, and hosting LAN parties.
There is a perplexing problem facing our society today, it is the problem created when facts collide with what we believe. This problem is far-reaching from the Ivy-League lawyers at Harvard and Yale, and extends into the very fabric and core of many of today’s “Christian” churches. Hardly a week goes by that I haven’t heard the phrase, “Well, I don’t believe that, so it doesn’t pertain to me”. Wrong.
Let’s use our universe as an example. Suppose a giant meteor is hurdling towards earth at 85,000 miles per hour. Now, if it was still several million miles away, maybe NASA overlooked it, or it was dark and nobody could see it, neither do they believe anything like that could happen to earth, does that change the fact? Just because someone says “I don’t believe that” does that mean we are safe? Obviously not.
Now you might ask, “What kind of ignorant person would say that?” I know that may be a bit stretched example, but think abut it, millions of people play that very same “I don’t believe” card every day in relation to their eternal destiny. How many people have you heard say “You believe what you want to, and I will believe what I want to.” Even in Christianity many people use that excuse to do what they want to. “I don’t believe…. because my pastor says it doesn’t mean that.”
Now, please do not misunderstand me and think that I have a problem with pastors. I have a high regard for the office of pastor, and feel strongly that a pastor should be one of the first people we consult with a difficult or serious question. I believe that they hold a wealth of often untapped wisdom simply because of the many hours they have spent studying God’s Word. I do however, have a problem when what a pastor says, does not line up with what the Bible says.
I John 4:1-3 says: “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.
Now the question is, how then, are we to know (or test) these spirits or doctrines? Just as we study in college or to obtain some kind of certification for our job, we need to study God’s Word to learn what doctrines are true, so we can spiritually succeed in life. In Acts 17, the Bereans were highly commended because they searched the scriptures to see if what the Apostle Paul was saying was true. They wanted to be sure that their beliefs were grounded in God’s unchanging and never-failing word.
We need to genuinely search the scriptures to see if what we are being told is true. The temptation is to go through life just listening to what others are saying, and then pick and choose what we want to believe. But if you stop to think about it, just like the meteor illustration, this type of belief system is fatal, and the pick-and-choose method of beliefs can have eternal ramifications.
So many people today, try to water down what the Bible is saying and by distorting part of a single verse they can make the Bible say just about anything they want it to. What God calls sin, they try to tone down so that they don’t offend anyone. Folks, what God calls sin is sin, whether or not we want to believe it. To the person who is not committed to serving God, or is knowingly violating one of his commandments, the truth is going to hurt. Until we are willing to submit to God’s authority, and correct anything that we know isn’t right in our lives, it is going to be offensive. God’s Word is truth and it reproves the world of sin.
It can really hurt. It can feel like a torch burning into steel to remove the dross in our lives that is not God-honoring. And until we are honest with ourselves, and face the facts, its going to keep hurting, at least until our conscience is seared, and we are no longer sensitive to God’s leading in our lives, and then, it can be too late. We don’t want to face the struggle. We tend to avoid having to change things in our lives that we have grown accustomed to and maybe even begin to rely on. But when we cross the point of knowing fact, and not accepting or believing it, we begin down a very dangerous and slippery slope, because no more, do we have a foundation for the rest of our beliefs.
Psalm 11 says, “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” Think about it, if we throw out part of God’s Word and say we don’t believe it, then we can no longer base our beliefs on the Bible because we have just rendered our own arguments untenable and baseless. You can see a real life example in the American Public School System. When prayer was banned, and the courts ruled that schools could no longer teach the true creation account and made the Bible illegal in schools, chaos ensued. No longer was there a moral system for right or wrong. Teenage pregnancies, robberies, swearing, violence, and yes, murder rates soared to astounding levels, and the rate increases every year. What happened? We lost our belief system. There was no longer a moral compass to follow, and if someone wants to do something, they do it, and no one can tell them why it is right or wrong, because there is no foundation on which to base their belief.
The same is true in our churches today. When a church decides to throw out a principle because they say it was only practical or applied to people back in the Bible times, they have taken the same step. Because if one part of the Bible is outdated, who is to say that the next part isn’t? Who knows, If I say “Well, maybe the whole bit about the creation account is not really how the earth came about,” then I might as well say, “Hey, I don’t really think God would send anyone to hell.”" I can try to distort, and find a way to merge the creation account with Darwinism so that I don’t offend anyone who may believe in evolution. But does that change the fact? I should then be able to reason that since God is so loving, he can’t send anyone to hell, and then I may as well reason that since I already discarded half of the Scripture, I might as well dump the rest and just say I don’t really believe in a God, or a life after death, I think man is basically good and can determine his own destiny. See my point? It is very critical that we grasp this concept, and be sure that we are not discarding God’s Word, and then lose our own sense of direction and purpose in life.
Like it or not, everyone of us from the President of the USA to the bum on the street, to the pastor in a church is going to stand before and almighty God who knows everything, knows what we said, even our most private thoughts that we never said. What are we going to say? This time the “I don’t believe it” line isn’t going to work, and we better be sure that we know what we believed and that it was firmly based on the word of God, and not just what some guy’s blog on the internet said. Don’t take my word for it, search the scriptures, work out what you believe, and remember this: Just because you don’t believe, doesn’t change the fact, simply believing something does not make it fact.
