WE CANT JUST MAKE IT UP
14/01/25 09:23
The Melbourne Age recently posted, “Zuckerberg axes fact-checkers; don’t blame him, we can’t handle the truth. Humans have always been ambivalent about the truth. The tech giants Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk understand this shortcoming of humanity better than most. It’s become their business model, and now it is playing out in real time as they opportunistically navigate the incoming Donald Trump presidency.” In the important work, ‘The Road Less Travelled,’ M Scott Peck explained the importance of embracing the inconvenient truth over the option of rationalisation, denial and accommodation to falsehood.
A key premise of meaningful enquiry is that any conclusion we reach must be able to be falsified. If an assertion cannot be shown to be wrong, it cannot be shown to be right and we cannot be said to have engaged in meaningful enquiry or debate. It cannot be relied on as a foundation of anything. Thus, when we say that all belong to the Body of Christ, we need to be certain about what we have defined as the Body of Christ.
A safe sign of belonging to the Body would be our embrace of Galatians 2.21 and our living out Paul’s dictum, that Christ is our life.
WHAT KIND OF BELONGING?
Does an atheistic Christian belong to the Body? Does a Believer who has a different gospel of the kind described by Paul belong to the Body? If we are a tare, do we belong to the Body? If we live ‘another gospel that is no gospel at all’ to use Paul’s words, do we belong to the body?
If we are married to a wife but live as an independent person do we really have a marriage? If we live in Melbourne, do we live in Sydney? If we are flying to Los Angeles are we flying to London. Not to be clear about things like this is to live our Christianity as an ‘opiate of the people’.
WHAT KIND OF BELONGING?
There is reason to believe that all who take the name of Christ belong to the Body. But this does not mean that we can believe what we like and be in a good state of spiritual health. It may mean that we belong as a tumour. It may be that our soul is sick and our spirit is dead because some of what we believe is a lie. To shut ourselves off from truth on purpose or in ignorance is to shut ourselves off from life without limit. We can belong to a family as a son/daughter yet be a delinquent.
BELIEVE THE TRUTH
In this season people are believing nonsense because they want to. Ignore reality and reality will eventually consume you like a Californian or Australian Bushfire.
In any field of effort, efficiency is not gained by believing nonsense, while everything is gained by following best practice. In the Kingdom sphere we progress the best as sons/daughters, when what we believe is an accurate understanding of the gospel of Jesus and the apostles.
KNOW GOD ACCORDING TO GOD
It does not pay to make stuff up. Thomas Torrance, perhaps the leading Christian theologian of the twentieth century spoke of “A scientific method of knowing God in accordance with God’s nature. The pursuit of a scientific investigation into reality is not exclusive to theology. In fact, there are parallels between the ways natural scientists investigate the created universe and the ways theological “scientists” (theologians) investigate the reality of God known through the incarnate life of Jesus Christ. Thus, in plain terms, Torrance defines science as “nothing more or less than clear, precise knowledge” (ibid., 114). (1).
In other words, we are not free to market humbug as religion. We cannot have our own ‘brand’ and be Kingdom. This is offensive to God and destructive to us. If we purport to multiply life and light, life and light is what it should be. ‘In Christ is life and that life is the light of all.’
‘He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant--not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life’ 2 COR 3.6 NIV.
(1) Morrison, Stephen D.. T. F. Torrance in Plain English (Plain English Series Book 2) (pp. 10-11). Beloved Publishing, LLC. Kindle Edition.