Now I know that happiness and joy are two different states of mind, and I won’t get in to the literal or grammatical implications of either. For the sake of today’s post, let’s just treat them as very close cousins. When one becomes a Christian, God makes Himself available for a whole variety requests. Happiness and joy are two of the things that God offers us. I do not hold to the belief that once we’re saved everything will be happy. I actually dislike “Happy Jesus” theology, and I will definitely discuss that at a later time. I do believe that God wants us to be generally happy, but I also believe that God allows us to go through difficult times to allow us the ability to grow. And in these times, happiness and joy are choices that we have to make.

I have found in my personal life that pessimism is much stronger than optimism. That might not be true for everyone, but humans do share an attraction to pessimism. It’s in our nature. The choice to remain happy and joyful is a much harder one when things are going poorly. That’s where God’s availability becomes a true asset. He wants us to rely on His strength to get through the rough patches, not our own.

God’s power is greater than anything in this world. And if we are truly honest with ourselves, the reason most of us give up happiness and joy is because we try to use our lesser power to overcome these obstacles alone. It is very easy to come upon the proverbial mountain of trouble and become discouraged. We mire ourselves down with trying to find a way out of the situation. We try to tunnel under the mountain. We try to go around the mountain entirely. We even try to tackle the job of climbing over the top of our troubles sometimes. Occasionally we might find our way to the other side. But if we try to do it alone, we miss one of the easiest options. We could allow God to lead us.

God knows the best routes through our problems. He knows the easiest and least rocky paths. He has a whole array of gifts to give us that can help us through problems. And sometimes, God might simply remove the mountain altogether. He can do that. He’s God. This doesn’t mean that our trek will be perfectly easy every time. But with God it’s always easier. There is no way that we can change many things that happen to us. God, on the other hand, is bigger than any mountain, and His strength is limitless. And knowing that we’ve always got a Father that loves us is a great way to overcome the negative and choose to be happy and joyful.

Of course, there is the possibility that some of you all might not have God to fall back on. The good news is that He’s always open for business. He’s got a place for you already. The eternal love and support of God are easily accessible. Those of us that have already claimed a personal relationship with Christ have the same things available. We can be happy and joyful through everything. It’s just not always an easy thing to do.

Nehemiah 8:10- Do not be grieved, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.

Today’s topic is indeed “church hopping.” First off, this only deals with people that have conscientiously joined a church with the intent to stay. If you are not currently active in a church and need to find one, church hopping is perfectly acceptable. That, coupled with copious prayer, is how you find a church in the first place. I am not admonishing someone who is earnestly trying to find a church to fellowship with others in.

I want to say that there are situations when someone must legitimately leave the church they are attending to go to another one. This often comes when God physically moves you to another location. All three of us here at Theophonics can relate to that. Despite the fact that we all grew up in the same hometown, none of us currently live in that said town anymore. I am the closest to that town, and I live around 100 miles away. Not that drastic a change, given the scope of our world, but it’s hard to maintain fellowship with a church that is over an hour and a half away.

Another situation arises when God calls you to another church for reasons you might not understand. You could still live in the same exact place, but God has work for you in another congregation. Sometimes this is because there is a need at that second church that God wants you to fill. Sometimes it is to wreck the calm complacency that has held you back from true Kingdom service. Much less often, it could be because the pastor at that church has gone off the deep end and the majority of the people are lemming-ing after him. Regardless the reason, there are God-Willed reasons why someone should leave a church for another one.

However, there are plenty of reasons that someone should not leave a church. These all boil down to selfishness and pride. When someone says “I don’t like the music,” “This preacher isn’t Calvanistic enough,” or “This preacher is way too Calvanistic,” chances are they are looking at surface issues. If you don’t like the music, maybe you need to ask God to open your heart up to new expressions of worship. Worship has nothing to do with music; it has to do with giving God the glory and honor that He as God deserves. If the person’s theological stance, within reason, is not up to your snuff then maybe God is trying to teach you other aspects of Him. I add “with reason” because there are people who do preach unbiblical doctrines that need to be avoided, it falls under the “gone off the deep end” clause above.

Between the three of us in the car today, all serving at different churches, we have seen the same couples make the rounds between our churches. They get upset, offended, mad, and then storm off to the next church of our denomination on the road. They have managed to attend, for about a year and a half each, every major church within two nearby cities trying to find one that doesn’t offend them. It could be that our denomination is not theologically in tuned with what they want. If that is the case, I beg them to find one that is so they can become active in it. But I’m almost willing to put money on the notion that they are not going to be happy till they fully surrender their service in the church over to God. God will put us in circumstances that will not make us happy. Jesus sweated drops of blood before going to the Cross, He begged over and over to not have to die, but He fulfilled His duty anyway. The point is not our temporal happiness; it’s about us being faithful to God.

Hosea 6:6 For I delight in faithfulness, not simply in sacrifice; I delight in acknowledging God, not simply in whole burnt offerings.

Since the beginning of Christianity, there have been discussions held on what exactly Christians should or should not believe. Some people have come up with truly great ideas, others obviously wrong ideas, and others still ideas that fall in the grey of indecision. Despite these varying ideas, the Christian Church existed in a singular official body until 1054 AD. And those two bodies, the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church, existed for several hundred more years before substantive other Christian denominations emerged. I know that some of you might make the case that these churches were oppressive of new ideas at times, and I totally agree. I only mention the history of the church to show that multiple different accepted and theologically sound denominations of the faith have been around for less than half the time Christianity itself has existed.

The Christian Church today has dozens of different denominations across the world. These individual denominations all have their own way of doing things; otherwise, they would be part of some other denomination. The point I would like to make is a rather obvious one, but you may have never considered the full implications of it. Even though there are differences in the views of particular denominations, the belief in Christ is what makes them Christian. Baptists and Methodists go to the same heaven as Presbyterians and Episcopalians if the basic belief in Christ is present. The same God that answers prayers for Catholics works in the lives of the Pentecostals that worship down the road. According to the Bible, we are one church. We are the singular body of Christ. And He is the one savior for us all.

Why then is there such tension between these different denominations? We no longer have the political and legal pressures that Europeans had in the 1500’s. We no longer have wars fought over allegiance to a particular clergy member. And we no longer have to be a part of a particular church to get the right to vote in a colonial American city. We are completely free to choose whichever denomination, or religion to extend the point, that appeals to us. And therein lays the problem. It is subtle, and it is rarely spoken of, but it exists.

When we get to pick our own denomination, we as competitive beings see it as a chance to join a team. We want our team to be the best, and we want other teams to do badly. And now you are angry with me for implying that you want another church to fail. But let’s examine how true that statement really is. If a soul won for Christ is the same regardless of the denomination, shouldn’t we be down in the trenches of the world working shoulder to shoulder with all Christians? But we don’t.

We look at other churches, and all too frequently we don’t look for Christ. We look for the people that might not look the same. We look and see people of a different color. We see that that church doesn’t sing hymns any more, or they sing nothing but hymns. We see the errors of the members of the church. Those people lift their hands in worship. Those people kneel down and recite prayers. Those people use real wine in their communion services. But what we don’t see is the fact that Jesus is the savior of everyone. We don’t see that His love for those people is no different than His love for us.

I don’t want to come across in an accusatory manner. I also don’t want anyone reading this to interpret this post to mean “Aquinas hates denominations and thinks I’m going to Hell if I’m a member of one.” The beauty of the modern Christian church is that we do get a choice of how to worship God. If one church doesn’t suit you, there is probably one that will. But let us not forget that church is ultimately about serving God, and it is not about what we can get out of it. And once modern Christians realize that multiple Biblical and true approaches to worship exist, we can begin to work together. We’re all working towards the same goal anyway.

Romans 12: 4-5- For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.

I have overheard someone say that the reason that more modern translations don’t use red lettering is because they aren’t the actual words of Jesus, the KJV was. I wanted so bad to say that the publishers of those versions didn’t choose to put red ink on the pages of the Bibles in question, but I kept my mouth shut. Let’s face it, though, that is the reason the Gospels didn’t have red lettering. I said it last time and I’ll say it again. The Bible was not written in ANY form of English. It was written in Hebrew and Greek. The New Testament wasn’t even written to be a Bible, it was written as a series of letters to explain why Jesus was the Old Testament Messiah, what He did, what He expects His followers to do, and how they should go about doing it. The Old Testament wasn’t even canonized as the Old Testament till 70 years after Jesus’ death. It took another 200 years before the New Testament was recognized.

Back on topic, my main problem with the KJV is mostly practical. The version dates back to 1611, hence the name “1611 King James Authorized Version of the Holy Scriptures.” That is not the problem. The problem is in the intervening 400 years (minus 2) the English language has changed and evolved into something else entirely. When was the last time you greeted a buddy on the phone with, “Verily I saith unto thee, good sir, how hast thine day faired?” Case in point, Microsoft Word is trying to auto-correct words in the previous sentence. If you have EVER done that, congratulations, you are a nerd. (I say this knowing full well I have said something similar to my compatriots on the blog here.) The language doesn’t hold water today. Hence, I study the New King James Version. It keeps the original structure and translation, and only changes the grammar to fit in better with today’s English language.

Some try to argue that the KJV is a horrible translation of the Scriptures, as a Greek scholar I can say that is a bunch of bull. The KJV is all in all, the best translation of its Greek subtext I have seen to date. The original translation committee states in the introduction that they did the best they could with the resources on hand. They also encouraged future laborers to continue their work when better resources presented themselves. My problem with the Greek to English aspect is not the translation, it’s the Greek itself.

This is an area that Theophonic Polycarp and I disagree on, but I really dislike the Textus Receptus. I won’t get into all of the details, but it was compiled by a single person using only a handful of manuscripts because he was trying to beat a team of people who had been working for some time already to print. It’s kind of like the Playstation and the X-Box 360. They won a lot of support from fans because they were the first of their generation to reach the market. The TR was the first officially published Greek New Testament, and so it had already caught on when the other work was published. I’m not saying it’s a bad work, and for its day it was surprisingly accurate. But whereas Erasmus had only a hundred or so manuscripts, modern compilers have access to hundreds of thousands of manuscripts to find the most accurate version of the original letters that they can.

The bad mostly comes from the age of the text. There are better copies of the original Greek language out there today than there where 400 years ago. The TR is based mostly on texts that dated to within the last millennium, over 1000 years from the writing of the New Testament. There where no Hebrew texts that dated before 400 AD, also 1000 years after their writing. Archeology has turned up pieces of text that date to within 150-200 years of Jesus’ life. The English language itself has changed over the last 400 years. There are translations that use more modern English to convey the words of the Scripture writers to us.

The good about the King James Version comes from it being the first legitimate copy of the Bible in English. People like William Tyndale gave their lives to see the Bible made available in the language of the people. Up to that point you had to learn Latin or Greek to read Scriptures, and the general public could barely read their own native tongue. People where given the right and ability to study God’s Word on their own; they didn’t have to rely on preachers or scholars to tell them not only what the Word meant, but what it said in the first place. Regardless of how well it has conveyed itself into the modern era, the KJV is still a copy of God’s Word. As Holy Scripture, it contains power and authority, the power to change lives for eternity. It has its place in history, and it has its place today. It is not the best, nor is it the worst. If it impacts lives, then it still deserves the right to speak for itself.

I was watching a TV show the other day where a character was discussing how horrible his marriage had been. He started by commenting on how he and his ex-wife had never seen eye to eye, and he proceeded to list out a whole plethora of reasons why marriage itself was a trap made by the devil. This made me think about the state of marriage in America today. This isn’t a blog about same-sex marriage, so don’t get all flustered up quite yet. Several questions came to my mind that too me some fairly serious thinking to answer. I’d like to discuss this so-called “trap” today and explain why we as Christians are not doing our jobs as well as we should.

I’m sure everyone has heard the sad statistic that somewhere around fifty percent of current marriages end in divorce. It blows my mind that people might be looking at my, or their own, marriage and wondering which side of the fence it will end up on. I don’t want to get too deep into the Biblical stance on divorce, because I don’t think that’s the issue. I think that our focus as individuals is the problem.  Now before you people who aren’t married yet surf to another site, let me assure you that this issue extends beyond the marital unit.

I have distilled my original three or four questions down to one main question. If Christian couples are made with God’s will in mind and sustained under God’s will, why are so many failing? I would like to give two reasons. The first is that Christians make selfish decisions on who to marry. The second is that Christian couples leave behind God’s will once married.

When the bond of matrimony is entered, vows are made to each other in the sight of God. The reason God presides over this in a spiritual manner is because He came up with the idea to begin with. Marriage is a gift from God to us. And since He is the originator, He should also be the motivator. If we decide on our own behalf that we should marry someone, it is not a given fact that God agrees. God wants us to be generally pleased, but He does want us to act outside of His plan for our lives. It is no small wonder that so many people within the church fall prey to the same problems that non-Christians do.  If we make our own decisions on partners just like a non-Christian would, is it so strange that the outcome is the same?

So let us say that we have prayerfully sought God’s will, and He has lead us to the person He wants us to marry. His job doesn’t end there. God should not leave the picture just because you now have another person with whom to decide. Two heads are not always better than one. God should still have the final say in anything we do as a couple. If we leave Him behind, we also leave behind the wisdom, patience, strength, and fortitude that He offers to us. These things are essential to lasting marriage relationships. We as humans are incapable of making correct decisions all the time with no guidance. This leads down the same road mentioned before.

What then is my responsibility as a Christian married under God’s will and in a Godly relationship? The answer is simple. Live out loud. Loving, healthy, and Christ-centered homes should be the standard amongst married couples and not the exception. We have to work to be living examples of what God can do with the lives of two people joined in His presence.  This doesn’t mean that we should act as if nothing ever goes wrong, we never fight or disagree, and it is always easy. It does mean that we should be open with these things and show other people how God can fix any situation or heal any wound when both partners in a marriage are truly devoted to Him and each other.

I will leave you with a verse, as always, but I would like you to look at it in a way that you might not have before. Focus on the number of people mentioned at the beginning. Then think of the verse’s application to marriage.

Matthew 18:20- For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.

I will hold off until my next blog to bring up the KJV. There is a lot to say about the issue. I’m going to at least preface that entry by saying that while I am more for the KJV than against it, there are more readable translations out there for a modern audience.

So, let’s look at Bible translations. First off, let me point out that the term “translation” is completely accurate. I know this will come as a shock to most of you, but Jesus didn’t preach in 1611 British English, nor did Paul write in modern American English. Jesus would have preached in a Middle Eastern dialect called Aramaic, a language common in most of the Middle East during Christ’s time on Earth. Paul, along with the rest of the New Testament writers, wrote his letters in what is called koine (common) Greek. For the record, with the exception of parts of the book of Daniel, the Old Testament was written originally in Hebrew.

What a good Bible translation should be:
1) It should be based on the best available copies of the Greek or Hebrew base-text. This is usually more affected by the time of the translation than anything else. I put this first because I know Theophonic Polycarp and I disagree on what defines “Best base-text,” but we should both agree on this conceptually.
2) It should be translated by a committee of people, not just one or two people. This is simply because humans make mistakes, and no one knows everything. A group of people is more likely to have a broader knowledge base and be able to edit and correct for each other.
3) It should be readable to you, the person studying it. It doesn’t matter how “good” a translation is; if you can’t read Spanish, don’t buy a Spanish Bible.
4) Finally, it should have an impact on your life.

There are Bibles that are designed for beginners. The New Living Translation (NLT), and the New International Versions (NIV) are both great for new Christians trying to wrap their heads around the Scriptures. If you want something a little meatier, I recommend the New American Standard (NASB), the English Standard (ESV), the Holman Christian Standard (HCSB), and even the New King James Versions (NKJV). Once you really want to go hardcore, the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS) or the Novum Testamentum Graece (GNT) are the ways to go. But, they require a few years of advanced Hebrew and Greek study to actually get some use out of them. Finally, if you are trying to get a good, modern translation that is not expensive, I highly recommend the New English Translation (NET). The acronym NET is actually rather accurate, since it is available for free online at http://www.bible.org. You can either view it at will on the website, or download the complete version to your computer, and even buy a print copy for a small printing fee.

What I’m ultimately trying to say is this: the “Best” Bible translation for you is the one that you can sit down, read, understand, study, and apply to your life in a way that leads you closer and closer to being like Christ. No matter how good the translation is, if you can’t apply it to your life, you need to find a new one. Alternatively, you need to find a true relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

I was in a barbeque restaurant recently when I witnessed something that really disturbed me. My wife and I were sitting, we had already received our food from the waiter, and we were having a discussion about the Theophonics. A fairly large group of people, there were about nine, came in and sat at the booth behind my wife. They were followed by a gentleman that ordered something to-go. There weren’t tall backs on the booths so we were able to overhear everything the people were saying. The matriarch of the group became immediately flustered when the to-go gentleman received his food before her spread of family. She got up and stalked over to the area coming out of the kitchen with intent to way-lay the waiter. At that exact moment, he just happened to have a large tray containing most of her family’s food on it. She hassled him all the way back to the booth. After finding that he did not have her plate right that moment, she became visibly agitated. In a very loud and angry voice she demanded, “Where’s mine?” Before the words could even clear her mouth, a second waiter carrying the second half of her family’s food arrived.

Aren’t we that way with God? We picture Him as the provider of a service, and then we gripe at Him when he doesn’t get right to it. I’ve done it myself. I’d like to talk today about where that urge comes from.

We, as humans living in an age of rapid change, have grown accustomed to having things at our fingertips. When you looked up this blog, your computer interfaced with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of other computers spread across the world. And it did this in a few seconds. If we don’t feel like cooking, we can drive through the window of a restaurant and pick up food ready to go. And as we have become more and more conditioned to this immediate response, we expect that from everything we contact. God isn’t like the internet or a fast-food diner. God is God. That is a rather obvious and simple way to explain something that is beyond our ability to comprehend.

God’s time-table stretches from the beginning of creation to whenever he decides to come back to get His children. This is a difficult concept to understand, and it has several side effects that a world in a hurry will not always like to understand. When we pray asking God for something in particular, we are to expect an answer in God’s time, not our own. To Him, seconds are virtually nothing. Minutes are barely registered on a timeline that big. That means that we should not push our culturally acclimated timetable on a God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

I know that understanding these ideas is unsettling for some people. Let us remember though, God is not the one that is supposed to render the service in the relationship. We are his children, and we are to do the service towards Him. We are to use our lives to work and minister in His kingdom. The more we work for Him, and the closer we get to Him spiritually, the more we should realize what we need to ask for in prayer. This should also give us the patience to wait on God’s timing. We shouldn’t look at the blessings of others and demand God for our own. We should diligently work in His kingdom for His sake, not our own.

Instead of having a, “Where’s mine?” attitude, try to realize that the scope of the world is bigger than you or me. When combined with the understanding that God’s plan is perfect, and the understanding that His timing has to subsequently be perfect, we should be faced with overwhelming proof that we don’t know how things should turn out. This is not an excuse to become complacent with Christianity, but it is a healthy dose of reality that is intended to remove the anger, stress, and fear from our lives. We might demand an immediate response from a waiter or from a fast-food chain, but we cannot expect God to snap into action on every request we make. He’s got things in much better control than we do. So how should we expect our decisions to line up with His, especially when we want it in our time?

Psalms 46:10- Cease striving and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth

The other day, a co-worker and I got into a discussion. He begins by showing me a picture of this relatively cute girl that appears to be in her early teens. He asks me what I think, and respond with the idea that she is cute for her age. He proceeds to scroll up to the headline of the article which reads something like, “Twelve year-old undergoes youngest gender-change surgery.” That fairly cute girl was really a boy who had trans-gender surgeries. The significance was that he/she was the youngest known recipient of this in the world.

This sparked a discussion on the nature of man. He argued that people had to be born gay, because who would choose to, well I’m not going to repeat his exact words, but homosexual intercourse wasn’t that pleasant a concept to him. That particular topic is for another day, and one I will address in the future. What I want to discuss is the role of gender and the role of parents.

First, God created people the way they are. This is established back in Genesis when the author states, “Genesis 1:27 God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.” Of course this also leads to quoting from Jeremiah 1:5, “Before I formed you in your mother’s womb I chose you.” While some attempts to change the body are rather benign, such as getting braces to correct bad tooth alignment or wearing glasses or contacts to improve vision. Others are necessary; instances where the spinal cord is exposed, or other life threatening conditions can be surgically corrected are definitely worth undergoing. But the idea of changing one’s gender is beyond the level of what scripture considers appropriate. God created people to be who they are, not who they themselves want to be. God didn’t go through the trouble of making someone a man or a woman only to have them say to God, “I know better than you!” I’m sorry folks, God is God. He does know better.

The other topic I want to discuss is the role of parents. The child previously referenced had to have encouragement to undergo this surgery. For starters there are not many legitimate, Hippocratic Oath swearing doctors that will perform such major surgery on a pre-teen without mountains of parental consent paper-work. Even if the doctor wanted to perform the surgery, he has to follow legal protocol. I will not go into some of the arguments surrounding this case, such as the mother brain-washed the kid. That is not my call to make. But, I can say within reason that the mother had to have consented to this. I don’t know the religious background of the mother, but I doubt there is any strong faith.

We as Christians have to get out and spread the Gospel, because little boys and little girls are being allowed to make life-changing decisions before they are teenagers. There are so many hormones flowing through a child that age that they can’t reason that 2+2=4, let alone that they are supposed to be the opposite sex. In a world that more or less doesn’t care what someone’s sexual orientation is anymore, this article sparked a great deal of controversy. That means that C. S. Lewis’ idea of a Godly moral standard hasn’t been whittled away just yet. To change the world, we have to do something about it.

One of the most abused concepts in Christianity is the idea of blind faith.  Belief, we are told, should be without thinking and without critique.  The predominant story today seems to be that science and religion are at odds, so belief should be separate from reason.  

When did we pick this up?  It couldn’t have been when Israel survived without any government but a court system of educated judges.  It couldn’t have been in rise of rabbinic Judaism when religious practice was determined by reasoned debate.  It certainly couldn’t have been in the early Christian church–after all, the apostle Luke described the Bereans as noble for hitting the books instead of taking the apostle Paul at his word.  And it definitely couldn’t have been from the beginning, when God expected people to figure morality out on their own before he had to lay a few bits down in writing for the Hebrews!  

If you are made in God’s image, that includes the ability to think and to reason.  Why would you not exercise these abilities?  Is your faith really so weak that you’re afraid of the answers you would find if you asked some hard questions?  

If you believe that science and religion aren’t compatible, it likely because you took some one’s word for it.  If you took a religious leader’s word for it, you should study the greater names of the faith in order to realize that such a stance is directly at odds with their expectations.  If you took an atheist’s word for it, you have let the claim of an atheist determine your religion for you without any evaluation of the claim.  Wouldn’t it be better if you used your God-given abilities of logic and reason to sort the claims out for yourself than to blindly accept the testimony of some one you believe to be wrong?  

No, blind faith isn’t much good.  “Ah,” you say, “But what of people like Abraham who was willing to sacrifice his son, Isaac!  They had blind faith!”  No, in fact, they didn’t.  There is a better term:  Child-like faith.  At first glance they seem very similar, but loathe as I am to be mired in semantics, let me offer an explanation.  

Children do not have faith in their parents blindly.  No, while it is true that children trust their parents to keep them safe, choosing to put faith in their parents superior understanding and abilities in situations that would otherwise seem daunting or bleak, they do it with reason.  Children are able to do this because they have a relationship.  A child cannot prove that his mother loves him, but based on his relationship he can treat that he is loved as fact.  If he learns something contrary to what he believed about his parents, he does not suddenly doubt their love of him, but he reevaluates his understanding of them.  So it is with God.  

Though I take pride in the veracity of the Bible and the joy of miracles, they are not the bedrock of my faith.  They are important for corroboration and education, to be sure.  However, if they were all proven wrong tomorrow, my faith would stand on a relationship.  If you avoid science or reason for fear that it is a threat to your belief in God, perhaps you should take some time in developing your relationship with Him.  After all, how will you ever defend your faith against the accusations of the world if you are unwilling to use your faculties to discover the answers?

Most Christians today feel an incredible need to defend the Bible. This is not inherently an unhealthy thing, as the non-Christian world has been making quite a few attacks over the past few decades. I think it is perfectly acceptable, if not responsible, to defend the scriptures of your chosen faith to those who question you about it. The problem exists when we begin to defend our scriptures when we do not possess the knowledge to properly form a statement.

The teacher, much like many Christians today, felt the need to defend the sanctity of the scriptures that were in question. The problem was that the teacher did not know what to say. This eventually led to the statement about poisonous water. I would like to suggest two things that could have radically changed the outcome of the discussion.

The first way for the teacher to have avoided this situation was to properly study the Bible. We all know that alcohol is a volatile subject within Christian circles. That should be a tip off that the topic might come up frequently, especially in a Bible class. Learning the newest and catchiest versions of presenting the Gospel is a fine thing to study, but let us not forget that we as Christians are not simply called to witness, but also to disciple. Diligent and fervent study of issues pertaining to the world around you is never a waste.

The second possible way out of the situation was simply to say, “I don’t know, but I’ll find out.” It is better for us, as Christians, to admit that we do not know every single piece of data covered in the sixty-six books of the Bible than to attempt to answer without knowing. Giving an answer when you don’t know does several detrimental things. It gives a false, and possibly damaging, impression to the questioner. It makes you, and Christianity by proxy, look ignorant if the person finds out your answer is wrong through personal study. And it also might destroy any chance of future conversion for that person. Of course, if you take my first piece of advice and study, you will find yourself needing to use the second much less.

With Christianity growing less popular, more pressure is put on each individual Christian to respond with something other than ”I don’t know.” This should provoke you to get off your spiritual couch and do some studying. But remember, saying you don’t know is infinitely better than spinning a story out of nothing. The teacher in my story probably had the best intentions of defending the scripture. The second half of the story is the sad part. The student told my friend that he would never believe anything that teacher said about the Bible ever again. I leave you with one of my favorite verses.

2 Timothy 2:15- Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.