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THE SEARCHERS
As I sat in my office this morning, going over some old notes from my journal, I came across some entries I had made when living in the wilderness of British Columbia. The following is an excerpt from one of those pages.
In 1543 the theory of a heliocentric solar system was published by the great scientist priest Copernicus. His theory, of course, set forth the idea that the earth traveled around the sun. In other words, the cause of our days and nights was not due to the sun traveling across the sky, but was because our earth revolved in a circle, as it traveled in a journey around the sun. As a result, a tumultuous furor was raised by the Catholic Church and Copernicus was ordered to renounce his “heretical theory” or suffer dire consequences. Since he thought it better to be a live priest than a dead scientist, he repudiated his former claims.
In 1600 Giordano Bruno openly supported Copernicus’ theory and made the fatal mistake of saying so. He was burned alive at a stake in Rome by the Catholic Church.
In 1832 the people of Lancaster, Pennsylvania took a defiant stand and forbad that their school house be used to discuss that new fangled thing called a “railroad”! In their judgment the very idea of a railroad was clearly an impossibility! And besides that they stated in no uncertain terms “if God had intended that his intelligent created beings should travel at the frightful speed of 17 miles per hour He would surely have foretold it in the Holy prophets. Such things as railroads are devices of Satan to lead immortal souls down to Hell.”
Which all goes to show that, sometimes, good, well meaning people do things that show they are dumber than a sack full of hammers!
Why don’t we use the commonsense that God has given us to garner the facts, intelligently weigh them, and think before reaching a conclusion. All too often we Christians are just as guilty as the world around us of not using our heads. We need to make sure that we do not exercise ignorance and call it faith. There is a vast difference. God never told us to put blinders on when we run into problems that challenge what we believe. Why can’t we follow the Biblical command to “test all things” before taking a solid position on an issue?
Nor are those who so critically oppose the Bible any less guilty of the same error. The attitudes of far too many Christians as well as skeptics of the Bible are a lot like the nervous captain of a ship lowering the anchor down to twenty feet, and then assuming that it must have reached bottom because that’s all the chain left on the anchor. Perhaps we would all do well to ponder the following prayer that someone composed:
“From the cowardice that shrinks from new truth,
From the laziness that is content with half truths,
From the arrogance that thinks that it knows all truth,
O GOD OF TRUTH DELIVER US."
Posted by cdrnorth at July 10, 2008 11:18 AM