"The Irony is Exquisite."

"Disobeying Christ out of faithfulness to Christ! The irony is exquisite." This is a quote from Os Guinness. Why am I sharing this quote. Well let me give you some background for this quote.

You see Os Guinness said this about how many evangelicals live out their faith in today's world. He was specifically talking about family and divorce within Christendom in which people say they must divorce or leave their spouse because they want to be closer to God under the guise of "love."

I think that this is actually a far more reaching problem than just divorce within Christendom. It is often how we as evangelicals view all of life. We say that we are being faithful to Christ while at the same time we are being disobedient to Christ. And I am not simply talking about knowing not to commit a certain sin and then doing it anyway, though that is part of it. We have in effect divorced our practice of faith from the truth of Scripture or to put in in another way we have changed the way we view Scripture whether intentional or unintentional. We have made it less than the inerrant word that God has given us. We have a tendency to look at the Scriptures through the lens of our world when in actuality we need to view our world through the lens of the Scriptures.

Let me also say that is very easy to put our world on the Scriptures to reshape Who God is and what He has said in His word because it is a very hard thing to let go of comfort. Whether it be personal, corporate, or ecclesiastical comfort. I am guilty of this false faith practice as I am sure many of us are if we are truly willing to look at our lives.

We must sacrifice this practice at the feet of Christ. This is part of what Christ meant when when He said, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me (Luke 9:23)." We must replace our worldview with a world that is viewed through the truth of the Scriptures. Listen to Romans 12:2. It says, "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." God truth in His Word, the bible is how this is done.


Remember what Christ said in John 14:15. He said, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." And also in Matthew 5:17 He said, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them." What an awesome promise from Christ. The truth of the Bible does not go away because Christ came. It is fulfilled through the person of Christ. Christ embodies everything we see in the Scriptures. He is our ultimate model and guide. After all He is God. What better model to have than God, Himself. That is grace in that the God of the universe came to our level of existence to so that He could model and teach what it means to be His follower.

This is why God gave us the Bible so that we would know what He wants and expects. He has not left us to wonder Who He is and how we are to do to be obedient to our Creator. This is why we must not read the Bible through our world lens but read the world through the lens of the Bible. This is how real life transformation occurs.

We are all guilty of reading into the Bible what we want it to say. I am learning more and more that the Bible is very black and white, after all it is truth. I am not afraid to say it is absolute truth. For this reason as Francis Schaeffer puts it, "The Bible is a strong and down-to-earth book." It can and does address all areas of life not just the spiritual ones. God and His Word cannot be compartmentalized to just one sphere of society. Instead it has been given graciously by God to all of humanity to address every sphere of society.

Therefore we must be extremely careful not to read our own presuppositions into the Scriptures. We must instead understand them in the context in which God had it penned. This will take work and many do not want to do the work, but let me tell you if you are truly seeking God and His truth He will guide you through the Holy Spirit. Come to His Word humbly, through prayer. Not just seeking head knowledge, but seeking to be transformed into the image of Christ.

Understanding our presuppositions is crucial in keeping us from minimizing the Word of God in our lives and the world around us. It is crucial in keeping us from having an accommodating spirit in an age where truth is relative and in which, with great heart break and heartache, we must acknowledge that the church has given into this relative truth.

Let me close with with this thought from Francis Schaeffer from his book "The Great Evangelical Disaster."

"Accommodation, accommodation. How the mindset of accommodation grows and expands. The last sixty years have given birth to a moral disaster, and what have we done? Sadly we must say that the evangelical world has been part of the disaster. Where is the clear voice speaking to the crucial issues of the day with distinctively biblical, Christian answers? With tears we must say largely that it is not there an that a large segment of the evangelical world has become seduced by the world spirit of this age. And more than this, we can expect the future to be a further disaster if the evangelical world does not take a stand for biblical truth and morality in the full spectrum of life. For the evangelical accommodation to the world of our age represents the removal of the last barrier against the breakdown of our culture."

Seeking His supremacy in my life.