Accepting Truth

Jeremiah 38:6
(6) So they took Jeremiah and cast him into the cistern of Malchiah, the king's son, which was in the court of the guard, letting Jeremiah down by ropes. And there was no water in the cistern, but only mud, and Jeremiah sank in the mud.

These folks didn't like what Jeremiah had to say about the upcoming fall of Jerusalem. Their solution was to put him in a cistern. To me, this is the equivalent of a child sticking his fingers in his ears and singing so he can't hear what someone is telling him.

We live in a time where people do not care much for propositional truth. Frankly, I don't like it much either when it convicts me. Yet there are some things that are simply true. No matter how much we may rail against it, if we jump off a tall building we are going to have to deal with gravity. If we have $100 in the bank and make a purchase for $200 we are going to have $100 of debt. You just can't argue with that.

What gets me is when we try to make these same kinds of arguments against God. I don't expect the unbelieving world to submit to the truth of God's Word, but I certainly expect that from those who claim to follow Christ. What do we say about our faith when we pick and choose what we are going to believe? Who are we to put ourselves in authority over Scripture? We say that we like the grace parts, but we don't like the parts that convict us so much.

It seems awfully arrogant to claim to know Jesus and then dismiss the parts we don't like. How did we come to know about Jesus in the first place? We used the Bible. How can we say that those parts are true and useful, but the others aren't? How can we say that the message of the gospel is appropriate for all times, and then say that we are in a different time so others don't apply?