I have been struggling through the past week with putting together the second part of my bio, and realizing that the reason I has for starting this blog was not to make it something about me, I decided that more could be stated at a later time. Suffice to say that I came to Christ in October of 1961, which does not seem that long ago to me, but may seem like ancient times to some of of the high and pre-high schooler readers who may come upon this blog. Since then I have been on an adventure of faith that has brought me through times that could be described as good and bad, the latter outnumbering the former, if you presume that the principle thing that faith should be about is "getting mine." But as Romans 5 states "tribulation (hard times) work patience, patience works experience, experience creates hope that overcomes our sense of shame at our inadequacies becasue through them the love of God in Christ Jesus spreads throughout our hearts.
Of course the reader may not even believe that there is a God or that my experience has any real validity, but that does not bother me in the least. No event that takes place in time is effected by opinion and if someone insists on giving their interpretation of the events that have happened in my life, that opinion in no way informs what has happened. Opinions are only valid until the truth is manifest. Opinions can be righ or wrong or partly so, but the one who has the least information has the least reason to believe that he is right. To think otherwise is to be vain and arrogant. And while popular books by atheists have increased in the last several years, the proponderance of scientific evidence is going against the naturalistic hypothesis. Backs to the wall, atheists ahve been proposing solutions to their dilemma with untestable hyypotheses such as multiverse theory. In the end they must accept something on what they have disparaginly called "blind faith."
But let's put the science off to another blog, not because it is unimportant, but it is not germaine to today's blog. Rather, I want to point out that opinions can be very limiting. Sometimes they remove from discussion the things that we see as hopelessly wrong, but on other occasions, when we are wrong or partly wrong, they prevent us from getting at what is ultimately true. And it is the things that we believe are ultimately true that rule our lives. Wisdom, more often than not, is learning to place your opinions on the altar and allowing God to burn away that which is well-intentioned but wrong or actually wrong-headed or misinformed.
Much of the debate that has occured in the church over the years has been about defending my group's or my own opinions. That is why our churches ar of so many different opinions. We all say that we are defending God's word, or reason or some other alleged good thing. Yet Jesus prayed that we all might be one even as He and the Father are one. I seriously doubt that knock-down drag-out debates are part of their unity.
Sometimes I think we are much like those blind Indian men who each grabbed a different part of an elephant and then argued about the true nature of the elephant and all were partly wrong and totally wrong about what the other was saying. Other times I think that when we debate we are each like a fly trying to defend an elephant from another fly. People may deny Him or His word. He is not moved.
The problem is that we think that defending the faith once delivered to the saints is the same as defending our opinions. Believe me, I have done a lot of that and now do my best to leave that behind. Separating our opinions from God's truth is very difficult because we believe if we are wrong at any instant we are either heretical or apostate, instead of still being in the learning process. I can tell you with surety that God is too great for us not to be living with some misconceptions, for He exceeds our our conceptions.
Some things are certain, We have a book whose revelation cannot be contradicted by anyone's personal beliefs without that person paying consequences in this life and, if his or her beliefs deny the atonement - that Jesus died to save men and women from the eternal consequences of their sin - their end will be tragic.
The real question that confronts us every day is whether we are willing to be wrong that God may be right. It is easy to give assent to this with our lips, much more difficult in practice, We will need not our strength alone, but the power of the Holy Spirit, for the self-life is a powerful stronghold in each person's life and apart from the Spirit we are asking ourselves to give up the very thing that we tend to hold onto the most desperately. On our own we become a tangle of contradictions and defeat. But "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me," so Paul tells us (Phillipians 4:13) and I have found that this is so.
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