Christian Questioning
Christians are not to believe everything. With that agreed upon (and I hope we can agree upon it), the question then becomes what are we to believe? Thankfully, God has spoken and given us a way to know what is true and what is morally good. He has told us who He is, what He loves, what He hates, and how He has made us and the world around us. He has told us these things in His Bible. Therefore when anything, from a claim on the nightly news to the blustery opinion of a co-worker, from a Presidential statement down to our own personal convictions and even our own senses, conflict with what God has revealed in the Bible, we can know that that the thing on the wrong side of the conflict is false and should not be believed.
I bring this up because over the past decade or so of being an adult Christian trying to lead a fairly normal Christian life I have noticed a pervasive lack of healthy skepticism on the part of Christians towards commonly held cultural assumptions. From parenting to what is normal in educating children to birth control to employment to the nature of belonging to a church body to the roles of husband and wife to what human governments are for, I believe American Christians have found themselves assuming many worldly conventions that are either unwise or are in outright defiance of what God commands or commends. What does my Maker and King say about the teaching of children? About why He has ordained human government? About how I should eat and drink? About how I should talk to my spouse? As we’ve become a Christian culture that spends less hours of our day reading the Bible, praying, and being gathered in worship with a church than much of our forebears, we have adopted too many techniques and assumptions about living in God’s world from TV shows and social media and talk radio and worldly culture. Our marriages look less like Christ and the church, our children look less like a generation of righteousness, our day at work looks less like Christian service done in a Christian attitude, and our citizenship looks less like sons and daughters of the King living as lights in a darkened world.
What does God say in Genesis about bearing children? What does He say in Romans about citizenship and government? What does He say in Colossians about fatherhood? What does He say in Ephesians about being a husband or a wife? What does He say in 1 Peter about being a bondservant? What does He say in Revelation about how this world’s history will end?
From my little vantage point in southwest Ohio, 2022, it seems to me that the average American Christian’s attitudes and thoughts and feelings and behaviors have been far more shaped by America’s millions of non-Christian cultural voices than by God Himself in His Word. And I want to be a part of reversing that trend, both in my own life and in the lives of anyone with whom I have any influence. When a governor or a friend or an employer or a musician or a talk radio host or a doctor or a book author tells us something, makes some claim about the world our God has made, I want us to have a healthy, charitable skepticism about it. It may be true, it may not. But we cannot assume a claim made by a worldly authority is true just because he or she is on a stage, is wearing a lab coat, has a million Twitter followers, or is President or running for President. Our God has made the world He has placed us in, made the chests that hold our lungs and hearts, made our minds and our bodies and ordained the number of breaths we take and where we take them. His Word must be the lamp that identifies what roads we should take and how we should walk in them. Go to the Word, and test all the world’s claims and assumptions. Bathe your mind and your heart in good light from the Maker of all things in Heaven and earth, and you’ll be more ready to see what is true and what is false, what is wise and what is foolish, what is righteous and what is wicked.
I wonder how many of us are going to wake up in Heaven one day and think, “Why did I ever believe that? Didn’t I have His Word right there on my table?”
Put false ways far from me and graciously teach me your law! I have chosen the way of faithfulness; I set your rules before me. I cling to your testimonies, O Lord; let me not be put to shame! I will run in the way of your commandments when you enlarge my heart!
Psalm 119:29-32