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THROWING THE BABY OUT WITH THE BATHWATER
A young college student had been assigned to do a study on “fleas”. In an effort to gather information for his paper the student spent weeks training a flea to jump over his finger. Each time he gave the command “Hupp!”, the flea would obediently jump over his finger. One day he pulled off two of the fleas six legs. “Hupp!” he ordered. Immediately the flea jumped over his finger. A few days later he decided to experiment further, so once again he pulled off two more legs. “Hupp!” said the student, and once again the flea jumped over his finger. A week went by and the student had almost completed his study. Taking the flea in hand, he pulled off the last two legs. “Hupp” the student commanded. Nothing happened. Again the student said loudly, “Hupp!” The flea never so much as twitched. Nodding wisely, the student picked up his pen and wrote in his report: “When a flea loses all six of its legs, it becomes as deaf as a post. The facts were all there. The problem was … he reached the wrong conclusion.
Like the student and the flea, many a person has reached some very erroneous ideas about God, the Bible and Christianity because they have jumped to the wrong conclusion.
Usually it’s due to a lack of solid facts about the subject at hand. Oftentimes a judgment is formed based on hearsay alone, or on the general consensus of opinion held by their peer group. Consequently, positions of belief are adopted without any intelligent basis for acceptance. Yet, once a position is assumed to be correct, human nature is indeed reluctant to change.
Just because the Bible often describes events that are of an extraordinary nature is no reason to reject it without a fair hearing. After all, sending motion pictures through the air no doubt sounded impossible at one time, but since the introduction of television, it’s now accepted without question.
Is believing in God out of the question? Is the reliability of the Bible out of the question? Is the sonship of Jesus Christ out of the question? We need to be careful that we aren’t throwing the baby out with the bathwater when we hastily deny the possibility of all or part of these questions being true.
They have a saying in the Far East: “HE WHO SITS IN A WELL TO OBSERVE THE STARS DOES NOT SEE VERY MUCH.”
Posted by cdrnorth at April 25, 2006 10:49 AM