Re: A profound disturbance found in Yak butter.

In a message dated 6/3/2006 1:35:28 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
glennmorton@entouch.net writes:
how do I know he isn't a god who would let me beleive false things about
theology? I simply don't see why God's willingness to prevaricate or to
prevaricate by omisson stops at theology's edge.
Glenn,

I'd say that God **does** let us believe false theology. Some of His
followers believe infant baptism is wrong, while others believe that NOT doing infant
baptism is wrong. So some of those Christians must be wrong -- I don't know
which group, but they can't both be right!

Consider this familiar passage:

John 3:19-21
19 "And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men
loved the darkness rather than the light; for their deeds were evil.
20 "For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the
light, lest his deeds should be exposed.
21 "But he who practices the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be
manifested as having been wrought in God."
(NASB)

The issue with God is whether we love Him and come to Him, or hate Him and
hide from Him. It seems He is willing to let us mess up all throughout our
lives in our theology, science, relationships, etc. God doesn't make a habit of
stopping our errors all the time, and He does not draw the line at false
theology.

We Christians have this belief that there are certain fundamental elements of
theology that are "touchstones", allowing us to tell whether someone isn't
really loving God. For example, if someone claims to follow God but at the same
time denies that God sent his Son Jesus to die on the cross for sins, then we
believe that is a touchstone indicator of someone who hasn't begun to love
God, yet. I'd not have the time to get into a full discussion of which beliefs
are the touchstones like this and which ones are not. (Plus I'm not educated
enough to do so). But I think this is a reasonable concept and one that the
Bible teaches, so I believe it. In fact, I think that Jesus in this passage in
John 3 is saying exactly this: that **He** is the primary touchstone and how
we respond to Him is the true indicator of whether we love God or not.

So when we see Buddhists burning yak butter but denying Jesus, it's not that
they weren't properly convinced by apologetics that is the problem. The
problem is that they don't love God -- and we can see the proof they don't love Him
by the way they respond to Jesus.

Anyhow, that's how i see it.

Thanks for the thoughtful response and discussion.

Phil Metzger ("Phil Till" as you say, at least that's better than "Dr. Phil")
Received on Sat Jun 3 14:50:18 2006