Five Things I Know Aren't True

Well, as my last blog post was about things that I know are true, I turn my attention now to things that I know aren't true. The world is full of lies; some are obvious (such as "there is no God"), others are not so obvious. I want to focus on some of the most pernicious and sneaky lies out there.

1.) Follow your heart and you won't go wrong.
As much as I love Disney movies, some of those movies (and other Hollywood studios) are responsible for the myth of "follow your heart." This has led to the kind of unthinking, ignorant state of affairs we have now. People are so busy following their hearts that they are not thinking about other people. How many marriages have been broken up because one person decided they were not in love with their spouse anymore?  The result of their decision to follow their heart is like a tornado leaving destruction and desolation in its wake.  Not to mention the heart can be a big liar. People are really good at lying to themselves.

The human heart is most deceitful and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is? But I know! I, the Lord, search all hearts and examine secret motives. I give all people their due rewards, according to what their actions deserve. (Jeremiah 17:9-10)

Something tells me the Lord is not going to ask people when He returns to judge the earth whether or not they followed their hearts. He's going to ask if we followed His Son with all our hearts.
2.)God won't give us more than we can handle.
This is one of those lies that I desperately want to be true, because I'd like to think that there isn't much I can't handle. It's one of those illusions we all have that we're in control of events. We're not. The truth is that God gives us far more than we can handle to teach us to trust Him. I saw a quote that I liked not long ago: "Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God." This implies, of course, that we are spending time with God and His Word. If God only gave us what we could handle, we would have no need of Him, and He would cease to be God. No, when I get overwhelmed with emotion, I like to be reminded that God has it under His control.

3.)  Only people trained for the ministry can minister to others.
This isn't true at all. I think we have a responsibility to take much of the pressure off our pastors and church leaders to reach out to people who need us. It's a fault of the modern church that we think only certain people can do certain things, and in  correlation with that we don't ask our young people to be more involved with the church and then wonder why they don't stay in the faith. Everybody in the church has a role to play and no one ever becomes useless. The older can teach the younger how to live, and the younger can help the older to see things from a different perspective.

4.) The church needs to update it's doctrine to keep up with the changes in society.
At work on the weekends, we have our tvs set to MSNBC, and this past weekend they had a show on that claimed that the Catholic church was taking over all the hospitals in the country. (Good grief! I thought to myself). The host, of course, wants the Church to change it's teachings on birth control and on when life begins.  I was ready to scream. The Church needs to be salt and light for the world. This is directly commanded by Jesus.

You are the salt of the earth. But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor? Can you make it useful again? It will be thrown out and trampled underfoot as useless. You are the light of the world--like a city on a mountain, glowing in the night for all to see. Don't hide your light under a basket! Instead, put it on a stand and let it shine for all. In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father. (Matthew 5:13-16)

 So when the MSNBC host is asking for the church to change it's doctrine, she's really asking for the church to be like the rest of the world--flavorless, and useless, and without hope. We, as a church, need to make sure we don't lose our flavor so that the gospel will be made attractive.

5.) God Helps Those Who Help Themselves.
 This is sort of like the second lie on the list. If we could help ourselves, we wouldn't need God. No one can save themselves. We need to let Christ cleanse us from our unrighteousness and accept the sacrifice that He made on our behalf. We need to come to Him as children and let His love change us and make us into the Church He wants us to be.

There are far more lies that I could get into, but if I did this post would never end. I just pray that the more I read God's Word, the more I will be able to pick the lies out when they come up. As Jesus said, "Beware of false prophets who come disguised as harmless sheep, but are really wolves that will tear you apart.You can detect them by the way they act, just as you can identify a tree by its fruit....A good tree can't produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can't produce good fruit. (Matthew 7:15-16, 17b)