At first glance it would seem that many people including Christians have rejected a lot of God’s truth these days, embracing instead a so called more enlightened ethic in areas of sexuality, marriage and morality. There is much debate about right and wrong in these areas that was not the case just a couple of decades ago. Our society that has for the most part embraced Judeo Christian values for over two centuries is moving in a different direction. It is hard to know for sure if we are seeing a big cultural shift or does media reporting just make it seem so. One thing is for sure though, a new generation is challenging the status quo and we Christians better be up to the challenge or we will lose what influence we have left in our culture.
This means we must be effective at handling questions and objections to our faith. Pat answers will not do anymore nor will the idea that people should blindly believe because their parents or grandparents do. Young people today have been indoctrinated to accept science as the indisputable guide to all of life. Many Christians have been lulled into accepting science as superseding biblical truth. For centuries Christian’s have believed that biblical truth stood above science. For science is nothing more than man’s study of God’s world. Since God created the world and authored the bible then an apparent contradiction in the two was due to a lack of understanding of science or of the bible. Also, Christians believed that the all-powerful Creator God is able to do things that to man appear to break all scientific laws. Such as have a fish swallow a man and then three days later spit him up on the shore and the man lives to tell the tale. Today, many believe that if it is scientifically impossible then it cannot happen so you must change your understanding of the bible. In this thinking, science determines biblical interpretation.
The failure in this type of view is to not take into account that if God is truly God, He is able to operate outside of the universal laws that he created. It also does not take into account the limits of man’s understanding that have caused science to be wrong time and time again. It wasn’t that long ago that the greatest scientific minds in the world thought the world was flat. More recently, many in
the scientific world have embraced the theory of evolution, even though it has never been scientifically proven. This theory is in the process of being rejected, just the same as the theory of a flat earth was as more and more evidence becomes available but both cases show just how wrong the mind of man can be without spiritual understanding.
One of the biggest hindrances I see to people finding truth is an unwillingness to be wrong. People usually find the answers they want to find. Even Christians do this in their interpretations of the bible. If you start with a preconceived idea, you can usually find a way to justify what you think either biblically or scientifically. The problem is that way does not lead to truth. Truth is often not what we want or expect. To find it, we have to be willing to accept it. We can’t have the don’t confuse me with the facts attitude. This is what the bible calls a sin nature. We want what we want. And that colors our openness to the truth. Many times this is what causes us to buy into a lie. Whether it’s who we can have sex with or marry or the origin of the world our understanding is clouded by our own agendas. And so we exchange the truth for untruth because our minds are darkened. Truth is hard to embrace because it will many times require a sacrifice and a willingness to change. Finding truth is always worth it though. Jesus said “You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free”