Calibrated

In technical fields there is a necessary function called "calibration." For various measurement devices you need to be sure that they are measuring correctly, whether it is time or distance or weight or whatever. So, for instance, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has an atomic clock on hand that gives to the microsecond (or better) the current time. They are the standard of "correct" that all clocks in the U.S. must compare themselves to be "correct." That's the idea. You have to have a known good with which to compare things to see if they're good or to be able to adjust them to "good."

For me, the "known good" in life is God. He is always right and never wrong. Thus, when He provides a written structure with which to compare truth claims, coming from God it must be good, right -- calibrated. It would be that atomic clock against which we compare other clocks.

Of course, that's not how the Bible is generally viewed today. Even among self-professed believers. Among so-called Christians, there is a range of perceptions, beginning with generally disregarding it all the way to the other side in which the Bible itself is worshiped. The most liberal of Christians consider it a book of myths, some interesting stories, some helpful ideas, perhaps, but not "God's Word" by any stretch of the imagination. The King James Only cult considers the KJV the only God-inspired Bible. "If it was good enough for John the Baptist, it's good enough for me."

The traditional view is that the Bible is God's breathed Word. Since God is infallible, His Word must be, too. Our job, then, is not to come up with the truth, but to see what it is in the pages of His Word. Instead, we have self-professed Christians declaring, "[Biblical] inerrancy and infallibility are orthodoxies of white-supremacist thought." (Rev. Dr. Angela N. Parker) What then? Well, we have to compare Scripture against something else to "calibrate" it -- to see if it's correct. What would that be? We have a host of things. There is "my own logic." There is "my own set of values." There is culture, custom, current thought. There is science and public opinion. There is modern ethics, modern psychology, modern philosophy. Lots of places we can turn.

Here's the problem. When you compare something against unknowns, you end up with an unknown. If you don't have a "good," a "correct" -- something absolute and certain -- then you can't arrive at a reasonable conclusion about the thing you are comparing against it. That is, where Scripture and your standard -- your logic, your science, your opinion, your preference, your ethics, whatever -- don't agree, which one is right? You can't say. And that's because your "standard" is not a standard. If you don't start with a known good, you can't conclude anything about the nature of the thing you're comparing with it. Is it any wonder, then, that there is such discrepancy between the Word and the world? If our calibration tool is "me," whatever that happens to be in any given case, then we will arrive at roughly the same number of errors as there are people.

Brothers and sisters, these things ought not be. If we start with a good and right God and accept the claim that He breathed the Bible (2 Tim 3:16-17), then our go-to position would need to be, "What does it say and what does it mean?" followed by "I will go with that." Not the current, "I reject that, so what else can I make of it?" The problem, you see, is not that we come to different conclusions about what it means. The problem in the vast majority of cases is that we start with a different premise. On one hand it is, "I'm right and anything that disagrees with me is wrong." On the other it is, "Scripture is right and whatever it says is right, so I'll need to align myself with that, whatever that is." Otherwise you'll find that in much of life your truth is not calibrated.