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We are Christians. We are to be disciples of Christ -- learners of Christ, students of Christ. We are to be constantly "transformed by the renewal of your mind" (Romans 12:2). We are to be drawing reality from the source of reality -- God Himself -- which He offers in His Word. It is God-breathed, so by the help of the Holy Spirit, we should be able to see truth there that a world blinded by the god of this world will certainly miss. With that truth we ought to be correcting our own fallen views by replacing them with God's position on things.

The process itself is fairly straightforward. Pray. Read your Bible. What does it say? What does it mean? What should I do? There are certainly important considerations. What is the content? What is the context? How does it fit with the rest of Scripture? What does the bulk of Christianity have to say about it? (That last one gets missed a lot, but Scripture says that we are to "contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints." (Jude 1:3) If it's new, it's questionable.) It doesn't take a super genius or a seminary degree. It takes a Christ-disciple who wants to know Him.

It can be complicated at times, to be sure, but I'd suggest that the largest part isn't that hard. It is simply our failure to do it that causes the problem. It is our failure to aim to find out what God's position is on the subject and then take it. Take, for instance, the whole debate about homosexual behavior. What does it say? What is the context? What has the Church always held? We're being swayed by emotion and compassion and normalization and the arguments of the world, but Scripture is not unclear. All references to homosexual behavior call it sin. No hint in Scripture ever gives any other option. And the Church has always taken that position. So we wrangle about it and pick up new things and question, "Only 6 references?", as if these objections are reasonable (let alone truthful). Take any subject you want where Scripture and the world stand in opposition. Where Scripture is clear and clearly opposes our society's view, which position do we hold? How many Christians stand firmly on the world's view over Scripture's clear presentation? Far too many.

The truth is that we can get it wrong. The truth is that each of us does. But that's not the question. The question is whether or not we're intending to make God's position our own, or plan to make His whatever ours is. Will we let His Word define truth, or do we allow whatever we might think to define God and His truth? Is it our aim to take His position whatever that might be or is it our intent to allow our preferences, our feelings, our diseased hearts and minds to sway His view to ours? Especially in those cases where the Bible is consistent, the Word is clear, and even Church history has spoken in agreement, do we choose God's position or do we choose our own? I think that the answer to that will go a long way to determining whose disciple you really are. "If God says it, I believe it" or "I don't like that, nor does most of our world, so I won't believe it." One is submission; one is defiance.

"Word from Scotland" from Sandy Shaw

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