Taking Charge of Our Faith
In today’s world we have information literally at our fingertips, we are presented with new facts and new ideas on a daily basis. Despite this information overload, we are less informed then before. I believe that it is part of the human condition, we tend to be too trusting sometimes when we are presented with information. We automatically assume that what is being told to us is the truth without taking time to fact check it ourselves. This is dangerous in today’s world in and of itself, however, it is even more so when you are to consider Biblical ideals.
We are in a time where I do not believe many born-again believers take ownership of their faith. They simply follow blindly with what they have been taught by family, with what is being taught in church or their favorite Bible podcast. This is dangerous logic because then the individual can be swept away by unbiblical teachings. This is not to say that everything that we have been taught by family or pastors was presented to us in a malicious manner with the intent to steer the individual into false teachings, often times we fall into a sense of “Christianese” in which we believe something simply because that is how it has always been done. This train of thought oddly enough proves my point however. As born-again Christians we should not be relying on mankind to be the sole teacher of the Word of God. We must step up and dive into the Word ourselves so we can identify false teachings.
Proverbs 20:25 makes this very clear, “It is a trap for a person to say carelessly, “It is holy!” And after the vows to make inquiry.” We need to take everything that is presented to us back to the Bible to deem if it is true or not. We must not simply say that it is Biblical without checking first. When we automatically assume that something is truth simply because of who is presenting the information to us, we are not taking ownership of our faith. We are allowing others to steer us, which can be dangerous since there are those who would wish to cloud the truth of God’s Word.
We see Proverbs 20:25 acted out for us in Acts 17. “10 The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews. 11 Now these people were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.” Acts 17:10-11. Here are men and women who were being told of the Word by Paul. The same Paul who wrote a large portion of the New Testament, and yet they still took what he was teaching them back to the Word of God to ensure that it was accurate. This is the attitude that we as believers need to have, this is how we take charge of our faith! We must always be taking what is being taught to us back to the holy and unchanged word of God! If there is anything that was taught to us that is not scripturally based, it needs to be removed. We must lean on the Word of God as our strength!
Seek the truth and encourage one another,
Alex