After writing my earlier post on hot tub religion, it occurred to me that I had more to say along those lines, so I thought that warranted a second post. While in the last one, it seemed the thoughts focused in on the idea of suffering/trials, my angle here is slightly different.
One of the other results of hot tub religion is overlooking some of the harder teachings of the Bible. For example, those who practice hot tub type religion seem to forget that the Bible says things like those who live in a lifestyle of sin have no place in the Kingdom, that our conduct needs to be above reproach, that serving God and anything else isn't possible, that divorce displeases God, that friendship with the world is hatred towards God, etc. There are tons of other examples of Biblical truth that a lot of Christians (and Christian teachers for that matter) tend to overlook.
In today's PC environment, we're told not to step on others' toes or say something that may be offensive. However, Christ told us that the gospel would divide even families (Mt 10:33-35). We have a responsibility to search out the Bible and accept what it says- we either accept God as He truly is or we end up making an idol out of how we think He should be. Choosing to selectively read and apply portions of the Bible doesn't work. He's given us the whole thing and expects that we read, study, live, practice and teach the whole thing- not just the parts that make us feel good or paint a picture of God as we'd like Him to be. That's where cults get their start- taking what they want out of the Bible (usually out of context) and ignoring the things that they don't like.
I heard Tommy Nelson say a while back (while talking about the importance of knowing the Bible), "What are you going to tell Habakkuk when you see him in Heaven? Good book... I skimmed it once." (or something to that effect; I don't remember the exact quote)
My challenge to myself is to really get serious about reading, studying and memorizing the Word... hard to think of a more worthwhile endeavor.
-JRO
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2 comments:
That's certainly a noble challenge. I'm not going to live up to all of it. We had discussed this earlier, but I'm not going to stay in an abusive marriage, I know my conduct won't always be above reproach, and I can't guarantee I'll ever completely stop loving the world. What I can do is lessen the strikes against me. One way is to be wise in how I make decisions (which I'm going to learn about this Friday ;). In the example of selecting a spouse, I want to make sure I get to know that person as well as I can before marriage and observe how they handle a variety of emotions (anger, especially) and situations. I'm also going to trust that God will deliver me from the evil of an abusive spouse (and deliver such spouse from the evil that will be me if he tries to hit me :)
There are other ways to stay accountable as well; Spending time daily reading the Bible and staying tightly plugged into a group of believers my age really helps keep me on the straight and narrow.
You bring up a lot of goals that we should certainly strive for. I'm just really thankful that God knows we won't achieve perfection, and that's why He gave us Jesus.
Perhaps I need to clarify what I meant a little better... I didn't mean to imply that any of us are able to perfectly obey all of God's commands for us- only Christ can do that. And thankfully, He did do that and we are counted righteous because of what He has already done (hmm I think that's another topic for later this week).
My issue is that if we're going to be serious about our faith, that means making a genuine committment to being holy and to worshiping God as He is- not how we want Him to be.
For sure, we will never perfectly attain it on this side of heaven, but we can do as Paul did and forget what is behind and press on. There is grace for our failures, but grace should never be an excuse to sin or to stop trying to be holy. That marks a gross misunderstanding of grace and how it produces a changed life in us.
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