Brainwaves

Wednesday’s midweek service was the beginning of a Josh McDowell series to be taught by our pastor. Its focus is on helping our children to maintain a solid foundation in the faith; and I approached it with hesitancy, not trusting anything anymore that resembles in any way that which television evangelism has brought to us during the past few decades. The initial class, though, dealing with our fears about what the future holds for our prodigy (I kept my tongue about the Church, itself, being my own greatest concern) was interesting. The author fed us “facts”, gained (I suppose) from surveys he, himself had taken. I’m not all that impressed by such investigative procedure, but do admit the idea of asking people to define just what it is they believe has always appealed to me. Too many out there, in my opinion, don’t take time to ponder their religiosity, finding it easier to simply “follow the herd”…………

Don’t get me wrong. It’s just as true, no doubt, that there’s a lot of “mental theologians who have gone to the opposite extreme. Give a man a Book and he’s quite capable of building his own kingdom out of chapter and verse. They did it with the Law in the Old Testament. Who are we that we should be any different? We are not; and, such being the case, the point I’m trying to make, here, is not whether we do or do not use our God-given ability to think. It’s a safe bet we all walk by our own reasoning. The question is: By what do we steer? In the video we watched, self-professing “born-again” teenagers were asked their greatest source for truth; and Mr. McDowell thought it sad that the majority simply replied: “Myself!” I would suggest, however, that none of us, if we are honest, would answer otherwise. It’s not about making the Bible our compass, but a matter of who is our magnetic “true north”…………

Christianity isn’t about “circling our wagons” around our individual slants on Scripture. The devil is not afraid of our doctrinal stance. What he fears is a manifestation of that which was restored unto us via Calvary! The Rock upon which Jesus established the Body was not given unto Peter via “flesh and blood”, but by the same vehicle the Father would soon make available unto all of humanity on a permanent basis! I, too, therefore, grieve over the response given the author by these same young men and women when asked: “Who or what is the Holy Ghost?” No one recognized the third member of the Trinity as a reality. No one spoke of Him in terms of possessing divinity at all. “He” was merely an internal ethics code learned along the way by their perusal of the Bible and their attachment to an ecclesiastical assembly. Church: Seems to me I already expressed my greatest fear a bit earlier in this post…………..