The Relationship between Truth and Unity pt. 4

In my last post on the relationship between Truth and Unity, we discussed divine inspiration and how the world sees us if they do not perceive that we are trying our best to follow the Scriptures. Also, this is a shortened version of a longer post, so if you get the chance, feel free to check it out!

            In this post, let’s tie the power of our influence together with divine inspiration. Let’s take a brief look at what the divine inspiration of the Scriptures means for us as professing Christians. If we believe that an almighty, all-powerful deity created the Bible (which we do), and we claim that it is absolute truth (which we do), and we claim to follow it (which we do)…

Follow it. We must follow it as close to “perfectly” as we can. Christ will intercede for us with the Father when we mess up but the pressure is on, brothers and sisters! We must follow Christianity as it is written in the Bible or all of the claims we make regarding the truth and benefit of Christianity are worthless.

To illustrate my point: nobody’s going to listen to you if you say “do not be drunk with wine, which is dissipation, but be filled with the Holy Spirit” as you stumble by, slurring your speech, with a beer can in your hand. Nobody’s going to listen to me if I say “in marriage the bed is undefiled, but adulterers and fornicators God will judge,” and then go stay the night with my girlfriend.

That’s just not how it works.

We can sum this whole thing up by saying that if God says something is good, whether directly (“And Jesus said…”) or through divinely inspired writers (i.e. letters from Paul), we definitely need to do it. If He says something is bad, we definitely don’t need to do it. Whenever I have difficulty with something in my life, especially with sin, I always come back to this:

If God says it is:
Good = yes I should do it
Bad = no I should not

 Basically, I’m just stating the obvious: we must back up every claim we make. We must be united in truth and in spirit. Practice what you preach. Be genuine. However you want to word it – we must step it up. The world and even the current state of "Christianity" is a wreck. For example, there are thousands of different and contradicting teachings about the Bible practiced by thousands of denominations. We have a lot of work to do.

It is at this point in a discussion on truth that some people may ask “speaking of the world, why is the world such a wreck?” What they are asking, presumably, is why the world is so full of bad things: sin, starvation, disease, death, discrimination and hate, etc.

Well, it’s our fault.

In the Garden of Eden, everything was perfect. Read the beginning of Genesis and see what kind of a place God had originally created for humans: there was unlimited free food (sounds great to a college student like me), freedom from sin, and freedom to choose whether or not we wanted that perfect life. The only responsibility humans had was to take care of the garden. Imagine if that were our only purpose in life – be with the people we love, live forever, and preserve the place where we lived. That sounds amazing.

Seriously, stop and imagine how your life would be.

The best thing is, we can return to a place of perfection after we die. As we know, Adam and Eve ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and brought sin and death into the world. You see, before Adam and Eve ate from that tree, the world was perfect. Every problem you see now in the world is a result of their choice to eat from it. Bad things happen in the world because people choose to make them happen. Natural disasters happen because we no longer live in the Garden.

Thank God that we have the solution to this problem. God, the loving Father who created us in a perfect world and who created a perfect world for us to go to after we die also gave us a way to make this world better. He gave us the Bible.

We can make this world a better place too. God has provided, in all stages of our existence, ways for us to be happy and at peace within ourselves. Our current lives here on this Earth are no exception; by spreading the love of God and by living our lives based on his love, we can reform the world and bring Christianity into the majority. Imagine if 80% of the people in the world were loving, caring, and compassionate Christians who tried their best to be sinless.

What a beautiful world that would be.

Everybody has the potential to be saved and be a part of God’s beautiful kingdom, both in this life and in the next – all we have to do is spread the word. It’s up to us to make that happen.

Thanks for reading!
With Christian love,
- Ethan