Pitfalls

While the postmodern world is telling us that doctrine is divisive and ought to be avoided, the Bible presents a very different picture. I remain firmly convinced that what we believe is just as important and the fact that we believe. Have you considered the pitfalls of believing error?

Most errors begin with a loss of right attitude or with underdeveloped skills. Approaching God we must come with the attitudes of love and of humility. We must also believe that we will find what we seek. Without the right attitude, we can never come to know the truth.

All too often people approach the Bible looking for what God will accept or allow rather than for what God desires from us. They believe in loophole religion and justify in their own minds what they themselves desire. I remain amazed at the lengths people will go in order to justify their beliefs and practices. Whenever a person has to use fanciful hermeneutics and imaginative exegesis to perhaps permit his practice, he isn't listening to God. Listening to God with honesty is in God's eyes a precious thing.

Some are not saved because they do not love the truth (2 Thessalonians 2:10). They allow themselves to believe a lie.
Some are blinded by tradition (Matt. 15:1-14), teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. God does not accept their worship.
Some are blinded by the god of this world. They have fallen for a perverted gospel, where disgraceful people have tampered with the word of God to make it their own thinking (2 Cor. 4:1-4). Verse 2 says:

But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.

Some have exploited the brethren with sensuality and false words (2 Peter 2:1-3). Such men are daring, self-willed, and rebellious. They are enslaved to their own lusts and captivate others in their evil. (2:10-19).
Some have listened to the people of their day and have created myths rather than preach the truth. Worldly people who are unconverted sometimes come into the church. Such people cannot endure healthy teaching; they have to have their ears tickled, and they are able to find just the teachers they desire (2 Tim. 4:1-5).
Some fall to the philosophies of their day. Some people will always lose sight of what Christ says and follow the "scholarship" and the trendy thinking of the time (Col. 2:6-10).
Some have left the faith and perverted the grace of Christ into sensuality. They try to creep in unnoticed by private meetings with unstable souls (Jude 3-4, 8-13).

So many people are "ever learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth." (2 Timothy 3:7) Why? They read the Bible to find what they wish rather than read the Bible for what it has to say. They do not know how to listen.

Now these, my friends, are all salvation matters. When people err from the truth and listen to the prevalent thinking of the time, they are not walking in the Word. They have left the teaching of the Lord for the thinking of man. So much of what I see today in "religion" is not Christianity as God wills. It is a hybrid faith, an impure mixture of a little Scripture with a lot of culture. This is a pitfall. If the blind man leads the blind, they both will fall into a pit.

Phil