Fact-Checking

Let's be honest. We all do it at some point or another. We look at something in Scripture and ask, "How can that be true?" when it doesn't align with what we "know to be true." We fact-check God's Word against our own beliefs. I'm not talking about the obscure. I'm not talking about the dubious or unclear. If the Bible says X without equivocation and we know it should be Y, we choose to assume that X is wrong and Y is right.

Now, there is no small number of people who reply, "Well, yes! That's what we should ... nay, must do!" But in order to do that, we have to make an assumption. We have to assume that our own beliefs are superior to those of Scripture.

I am often castigated for "conflating your opinion with God's view." How do I typically do that? I read my Bible and it says, for instance, we "are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood, to be received by faith" (Rom 3:24-25) and I jump to the conclusion that we are justified by His grace through the price Christ paid ("redemption") in His blood that appeased the wrath ("propitiation") of God. Silly me. That's just a leap. Everyone knows that God just forgives. No tricks, no steps, no requirements. He's just a nice God. He can forgive as easily as Nike does. You know, "just do it." I read that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Rom 3:23) and conclude that all have sinned and that, in doing so, we've all fallen short of the glory of God. "What nonsense! Sin is not that bad."

It gets worse. I read, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen 1:1) and believe that God created the heavens and the earth. "Come on! You know that's wrong. Science tells us the Big Bang did it ... billions of years ago. Genesis is myth." I read "no one does good, not even one" (Rom 3:12) and conclude that actual "good" is rare among humans. "That's ridiculous!" they tell me. "People are basically good. Everyone knows that." Oh, here's a good one. I read, "Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality¹, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Cor 6:9-10) and I conclude that the unrighteous, including those on that list, will not inherit the kingdom of God. "Now you're just being silly," they assure me.

So what do I do when what I believe is challenged by what Scripture says? I suspend my belief ... in what I believe. I allow the Bible to fact-check me. When the world -- science, the media, my coworkers, whatever -- say "X is true" and the Bible says, "No, it's Y," I choose Y ... even if X was my original belief. You see, I obviously suffer from pride -- all of us do -- but I don't have sufficient pride to assume that my information is better than God's information. I don't have sufficient arrogance to see myself as ultimate arbitrator of truth. And for that I am accused of "opinion" whereas those who are of the opinion that their opinion is superior to not only mine but to the Word of God are not operating on opinion. Why would I come to that conclusion? Because they're telling me I'm wrong. If it is opinion, it is neither right nor wrong, and your opinion is as good as mine.

I think we need fact-checking. I think we all suffer from mental erosion (Rom 1:21-22), from deceived hearts (Jer 17:9). I think we all need renewed minds (Rom 12:2). And I think we live in a world hostile to the truth (Rom 8:7), so I would expect the world to produce information hostile to the truth. In the end, I suppose, I'm just a skeptic. I'm skeptical about the reliability of the world system. I'm skeptical about the reliability of our beliefs, especially my own. If that makes me arrogant, so be it. I suspect it's actually the opposite, but, hey, that's just my opinion, you know?
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¹ Interesting side note. Current "scholars" argue that that "practice homosexuality" thing in this text doesn't mean what we think it means. They argue that Paul actually made that term up and it didn't mean that at all. The word that is stuck together there and translated as "homosexual" in some sense in all translations is ἀρσενοκοίτης -- arsenokoitēs. It is a combination of arsenos for "man" and koitēs for "bed" (which, by the way, is the origin of our word, "coitus"). Paul "made that word up" they tell us. But, as it turns out, in the Septuagint -- the Greek translation of the Old Testament available in Paul's day -- uses the exact term "arsenos koiten" in Leviticus -- "If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death. Their bloodguiltiness is upon them" (Lev 20:13). Paul didn't make it up. It is the exact term used in the Old Testament in Greek.