August 20, 2015
Continuing Education
My interviewee, a very intelligent
and well-read man, told me his two favorite people of all time were Thomas Jefferson
and St. Paul. He said, “Do you know what is written on Jefferson’s tomb?” I
admitted that I didn’t and before he could share the famous quote I said, “But,
I can tell you what the Apostle Paul wrote!” He was somewhat startled, but recovered
and we both laughed. I have to admit the confidence boost I received from that brief
exchange was neat. Most of us do not give ourselves enough credit for our
continuing education in the Word of God. “Do your best to present yourself to
God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly
handles the word of truth” (2 Tim 2:15 NIV).
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Gail;
-----It isn’t enough to merely search. At a time of great distress in my life, a dear friend told me, “Steve, if you’ve lost your pocket-knife, where do you first go to find it?” The answer was simple: where you remember last using it. It may not be there, but a clue might be. And usually that clue comes to light as your mind reloads many of the things in it when you had been there using the knife. It is the old thing of going into another room to get something but forgetting what it was you went for when you got there. You go back to the room you came from. What you were doing then in those surroundings almost always yanks what you went to get right back into your mind. We get few epiphanies from nowhere. They usually arise by the stimulation of something in our presence. So, when you’re searching for something, especially for answers to complicated questions, you must keep mentally returning to what has been tested and found true.
-----When the search is for the Lord, the necessity of being led by found truths increases. The only time I would look for my knife in a refrigerator is if I remembered being in a mindless state, knife in hand, when I got the hankering for that cold beer I just enjoyed. Why would I want to search for religious truth outside the Bible? Nothing in this cold world of human bantering even resembles that ancient, carefully delivered Word of God. Reason is great. And reason stands one rung below God’s Word as an utility for finding truth. But next to it on the ladder is not in the place of it. Therefore, the Bible remains the master of reason. And with mastery it leads the minds of those whose search for the Lord is to find Him rather than to invent Him. Those whose search for their religion is unconstrained by God’s Word merely rummage through some refrigerator of colder human musing.
-----Unfortunately, Thomas Jefferson found a couple roles of bad bologna in his search for religious truth, since the Bible was good enough for him to cut up and paste together, but not good enough to read as it is written. “…no one sees with greater pleasure than myself the progress of reason in it’s advances towards rational Christianity. when we shall have done away the incomprehensible jargon of the Trinitarian arithmetic, that three are one, and one is three; when we shall have knocked down the artificial scaffolding, reared to mask from view the simple structure of Jesus, when, in short, we shall have unlearned every thing which has been taught since his day, and got back to the pure and simple doctrines he inculcated, we shall then be truly and worthily his disciples: and my opinion is that if nothing had ever been added to what flowed purely from his lips, the whole world would at this day have been Christian.” (Feb 27, 1821 Jefferson by letter to T. Pickering, https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/jeffersons-religious-beliefs) “I and the Father are one.” (c. AD32, Jesus, John 10:30) “For to us…a son is given…and his name will be called…Mighty God, Everlasting Father…” (c. 740BC, Isaiah, Isaiah 9:6)
------America too enamored itself with Jefferson’s foolish wisdom. For the praise of his religious freedom most American Christians swallowed his disdain for the constraint of Scripture. Now we’re being forced to our knees in worship of gays, breaking open the faces of our fellow Americans drug out of the womb to extract and sell their brains, fully seeing and knowing our government has become the greatest purveyor of perilous lies, yet accepting its authority while trashing God’s Word. Thank you, Thomas, for showing us how to search like the fool you were.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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