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AGW – Belief without reason  |
Why Skeptical Matters
Before I say anything else, let me get this out in the open: I’m an openly curmudgeon skeptic. I challenge just about everything, very little gets by me without some questioning, it can honestly get problematic at times. I loathe people who make blanket statements, and I don’t do well with people who are inclined to impart trust without checking. In fact where I work they have a philosophy of ‘imparting trust’, but for me trust is earned, you don’t get a free ride no matter who you are.
I have a very hard time trusting people who don’t take the time to explain statements or can’t explain why they believe certain things, this is especially true for Christians. And that puts me into an odd situation, you can have the best intentions in the world and still be totally wrong, and if you don’t have time or care to understand what and why you believe something it quite frankly scares me. I do my best to avoid people like that, because in my experience it’s the people with the best intentions that do the most damage.
Not too long ago I heard this statement: ‘It’s not your money, it’s God’s’.
Now right up front this is not a major theological issue, but it does have implications if ones actually sits and thinks it through:
1. No where, not any place can I find, does the bible make this claim. Money is certainly a big topic, but the issue about how we manage it, but this idea is not presented anywhere that I find.
2. Even if I’m earning it, do I have to ask permission before I spend it? Obviously there are common sense limits but this is still a valid question.
3. If I don’t own it, then it changes the how and why I give it for His work. It’s an important point, am I giving out of the love of him or because ownership defines that I have no right to it anyway?
4. How does this actually work when we are supposed to view the God as a father figure?, I would never do that my sons who earn a living. Even living under my roof I don’t make claims like that, it would remove any desire they have to keep working since any they earned would not technically be theres.
Again this may be a small issue but it has implications, the person who made the claim was trying to drive a point home, while I appreciate his desire and drive. I certainly question if making such statements is actually wise, proverbs is full of warnings about thinking before you speak.
Here’s another one I heard on the radio: ‘You cannot worship God, without being at church’
What!!, where in the world is that written? The point being made was that we should be in church worshipping with other beleivers, ok *that’s* in the bible, but there are lots of places where people worship God on their own, there’s no formula for this and certainly you don’t *have* to be in church to do it.
Here’s a really good one I heard in a sermon: ‘They have developed small rice sized implants that they can use to track your location use satellites’.
Ok that’s pretty amazing, because if you do *any* and I mean *any* research into ID Implants you find that they *ONLY WORK WHEN SCANNED WITH A SPECIAL WAND*, they don’t broadcast at all. In fact they have a small coil that when a magnetic field is passed over them they broadcast an extremely weak signal that the wand picks up. If they could say broadcast far enough for satellite to pick up, you would at the least burn marks where they where implanted.
The implication being made was that this was the ‘Mark Of The Beast’, and a gullible flock ate it up, the whole thing. I actually challenged the Pastor on the statement and he admitted he had not done much research and would check before saying something like that again.
The bigger question is why would you even say anything unless you had researched it first? I think this is where the real danger lies, sometimes in our zeal to serve and to help others we turn our minds off and let our emotions and traditions talk for us. Remember in Acts where the Bereans after hearing Paul preach would go home and look up *everything he said to make sure it was true* (see Acts 17), and he praised them for being so thorough. But today people are like sheep, they don’t question anything, and anyone who questions, who pokes gets excluded. It’s just too much trouble to deal with, or it might hurt someones feelings!, I’m often astounded at how much ‘rumor’ gets reported as fact.
So what’s the answer? well to start with Proverbs 14:15 states: ‘The simple believes everything, but the prudent gives thought to his steps.’
Solomon all through proverbs calls for wisdom, and wisdom is ‘understanding’ God.
2 Timothy 2:15 says this:
‘Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.’
This means that before you make statements especially as a christian you should fully understand with authority what your saying, the second part is more pointed and means that you need to understand the Gospel before presenting it.
If we are going to make a statement we should validate it against Gods word, we need to be fully trustworthy ambassadors of his message. I will take that much farther and say that in *all* things we need to do this, proverbs 19:9 states ‘A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who breathes out lies will perish.’
I’m not sure it gets anymore clear than that, simply put we need to guard our words carefully (proverbs 13:3) and before making statements (especially blanket ones) we should be validating them against scripture, but even further as believers we need to take the time to as honest as we can in everything we say.
But even more than this we should be incredibly careful about what we believe, it’s our responsibility to question, to be like the Bereans. Where the real danger lies is in other believers, people in churches have a tendency to follow like sheep. It’s very rare that I run into people who are willing to question what’s being said, everyone is so afraid of being labeled as critical that they fall into anything. It’s a disease that’s hurting the church today and it’s the single biggest desire of my heart, that God will raise up and army of Bereans who will start to call it as it stands and no longer allow ‘Folk Theology’ and bad information to rule our belief system.
-Paul-
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