Your Ideology, True or False, Part One

Jesus said, For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to My voice.” Pilate said to Him, ‘What is truth?’”  (John 18:37-38)  Pilate asked the question that is often asked today, “What is truth?” So many, proclaiming what they perceive as truth. All driven by the familiar phrases, “I think,” “I believe,” or the real truth, “My two cents.” No organization, group, or belief system can proclaim a life guiding truth made up from their own point of view. Here is why. No motorcycle club can race through a 65 mph speed zone running 90 mph, thinking it’s ok, because it is hard to detected them on the radar.  That is a false-hood, an idea some bikers would like to believe. No inmate in a correctional facility can decide what is contraband, the overseers of the facility decide what is contraband.  No one can choose to live a lifestyle based on personal opinion, preference, or self-delusion and expect their Creator (Psalm 24:1; 1 Corinthians 10:16)  to be pleased with them.  That is the heart if idolatry, the very ideology of Satan, which got him cast out of heaven.

For example: Let us consider an extreme lifestyle that led to barbaric acts that all us would agree would anger God, Human Sacrifices.  The Bible and world history records a very sad fact, human sacrifices offered for some reason or another.  The Rev. Samuel Burder (Oriental Literature) listed thirteen nationalities that offered human sacrifices, Egyptians, Arabians, Romans, and ten others. In the Bible you read of several occasions were the idolatrous Israelite’s offered up human sacrifices.  God says this about His people who followed the examples of the Phoenician, who sacrificed their own children, “They [His people] have built the high places of Baal to burn their children in the fire as offerings to Baal – something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter My mind.” (Jeremiah 19:5)     That sad fact is, the thirteen nationalities written about by Rev. Burder and idolatrous Israel felt they were in the right and were doing a good thing for the people in their nation they lived in.  The people of God in the Bible did a barbaric act, sacrificing their children because they did not think it worthwhile to seek the whole counsel of God’s Word, nor obey His commands.

There a people today who proclaim opinions, they desire their own preferences and love to serve the god of self-delusion rather than seek the whole counsel of God’s Word.  Paul writes about these people in 2 Timothy, “….[people who] are lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. (2 Timothy 3:4) They are “…always learning but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” “…They are men of depraved minds…” (2 Timothy 3:7-8)  God surrender’s these people over to the desires of their own hearts, they are overcome with different kids of sin which are listed in Romans 1:18-32, Galatians 5:19-20, and 1 Corinthians 6:9-10.  Just as the Israelite’s, in the Old Testament rejected the truths of God, people today reject the truths in the Word of God. Being influenced by false teachers who delude the minds of those who do not love the Lord, nor live for the Christ who died for them.

Are you like Pilate, drawing question about truth?