Truth is a wonderful strategic God-word. Not surprisingly, Satan has transformed this holy word from lovely to a cringe-base for some. It has surely become a dagger or a club for the mean-spirited. Truth, itself, will always remain as God intended; powerful, directional, and freeing. The warped perception of it, though, prowls about setting snares to take a good heart captive.
Truth matters. Jesus declared himself as the way, the truth, and the life. We are to carefully separate truth from error. We have a problem in that we have blindly accepted error as truth. Upon this shaky platform, straw doctrines have arisen and strong stances upon them have been taken.
The Church of Christ has walked into many falsehoods just as it has also championed truths. We are correct in treasuring truth. We are errant to assume we are never mistaken.
What might cause such instability? I cannot help but notice, from my multiple decades of being us, that we have a dominant fear of learning. Those most obstinate seem to follow such a pattern that they are also quite fearful.
Truth doesn't come in a packet studied over a weekend. It comes in a Book pondered and dissected and searched and then re-searched over a lifetime. Several claiming to be in God's will have frozen about ten special texts and refuse to discover more truth about those ten and the remaining thousands. Fear keeps truth at bay.
We go by the Bible is parroted. Yet, that isn't the truth. We really go by what some told us about a few passages and are closed to finding deeper and additional meaning even in those.
The Word is a glory of God. It contains the Truth. We are to hunger for it; search for it. Its buried content will not be unheavened by repeating a familiar few verses; but by digging and digging and digging. This makes the non-student extremely uneasy. These aren't for the Word as much as against upsetting tradition. Such a posture is exactly how tradition gets its foot in the door and eventually sets up camp.
Truth is a remarkable wonder of God. It is not Truth because anyone says it is. The Word boldly holds to this Divine element. We will do well, regardless of how long we have been students, to open ourselves to the Bible with great abandon. His ways will not match ours....any of ours. It is a wonderful and terrifying thing to behold the revelation of God. May we dig deeply and drink lavishly....and very unafraid.
2 comments:
Amen. This is so "true." Some people want to be experts in their understanding (pride and ego creeps in) which was satan's fall and many others in their pride, instead of remaining humble. It is a double-edged sword, like the truth which is Christ.
Deeper study is fascinating because God is fascinating, as long as we don't forsake the other things the word tells us to do. j
Amen!!!! What are we so afraid of? Our God has given us His diary - a chance to see Him for who He truly and truthfully is, not to be memorized as a list of proofs. He invites us to plunge ourselves into His Truth, to swim freely in it and marvel at the glory of it. So often we simply stick our toes in, sitting on the edge, or we may have taken the initial plunge, only to surface and tread water in the same passages over and over.
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