Monday, June 5, 2017

Can you tell the difference?

One Sunday following church, while driving to my parent's house for lunch, my youngest son made one of those comments that just left us laughing and shaking our heads. As often as he does this you would think we would be accustomed to it by now, but he always seems to amaze us. My wife made a comment about stopping by the grocery store to pick up something for supper for the upcoming week. Only hearing part of the conversation, our son said "Don't buy hamburger at the store. It's disgusting! We need some 'homemade' Black Angus beef." Raising beef cattle does have it's advantages when it comes to knowing where your meat comes from and having a regular supply of "homemade" meat as he put it. As for his comment, I have a feeling that if we fixed store bought hamburger he would never know the difference.

How are you when it comes to biblical teachings? Can you tell the difference between the good stuff and the imitations? Do you take a smiley televangelist at his word or can you discern when someone isn't teaching the truths of God's Word? The only way to know whether what you're being taught is wrong or not is to have a firm grounding in what is right. It's a matter of growing in your faith and developing your faith outside of the corporate worship setting at church.

Here's an example of how this works. If I were to stand before my congregation and quote that the bible says "God helps those who help themselves" or teach that "Cleanliness is next to godliness" then I am sure some would assume that I had pulled it out of the Bible. Why not? He's the pastor. He has to be teaching from the Bible, right? Not exactly. Those two phrases are often quoted lines, but they aren't in the Bible. One is from a 17th century discourse on government and the other is a Babylonian proverb, respectfully. 

The problem is biblical illiteracy forces us to accept false teachings as the truth. The Apostle Paul regularly warned his churches to watch out for those that taught anything other than the truth. He even went so far as to call some who taught a false gospel dogs and mutilators of the flesh (Philippians 3). The point is that if we don't have a good working knowledge of what the truth is, then we will easily be sold a false truth that isn't what we want or need. My encouragement to you is to grow in your own walk with Christ so that when you hear something or read something that isn't quite kosher, you can easily pick it out.


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