Knowing What Is True

Renee Descartes is probably most famous for his saying, "I think, therefore I am."

Reducing what he says in that statement, basically he postulates that one can know nothing beyond the idea that knowing means you must exist in some way.  Everything else, any other knowledge has the flaw of perception and possible deception.

Being Christian, I express an affirmation of scripture as truth.

So, assuming you can put away a Cartesian reduction of what it might mean to know truth, how do you share the truth of the gospel in a way people can understand?

Perhaps my problem is that I like intellectualizing my faith.

I like explaining how my faith can fit current worldly scientific models. I like showing logical grounds for how a modern mind might interpret an ancient doctrine.

The problem is, you can't prove God.

You hear Christian cliche like, "You can't see the wind, you can only feel the effects of the wind."
That's warm and fuzzy, but I can build or buy an instrument to measure the wind. I can predict patterns of wind and weather, and I can test these metrics scientifically.

But for whatever reason, God wants us to have faith. Our faith is a virtue, and while it might be enhanced by the knowledge that the Bible isn't able to be disproved any better than is can be proven... the reality is that an intellectual faith is a pretty sad and unattractive idea.

People probably get just as excited about fossil tables matching days of creation as they do learning calculus.  Granted, if I can't solve the derivative of the velocity of a ball as it approaches but never quite reaches a terminal velocity, I won't burn in Hell.... but Hell is far away for many of us, and most of us don't make good long term decisions. (Don't believe me, look at the debt crisis in America just over credit card use).

So How Do You Present the Gospel?

Dang good question. Matthew 7:16 says:  "You can identify them by their fruit, that is, by the way they act. Can you pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles?"

If I live in the world, love the world, and act as the world, I may claim to be a grapevine but really I'm just a thorn bush in denial.  People have to see the evidence of change in my life.

People need to see the fruit of the spirit (Galations 5) in my life. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self control. When people hear the name Paul Ross, they probably think "bald, goofy, Canadian". But on a deeper level, they should think that these words describe me. If they don't, I'm living wrong.

A Citizen of Heaven

There's a bluegrass band called Nickel Creek that has some profound lyrics:


     Where can a dead man go,
      The question with an answer only dead men know,
      But I'm gonna bet they never really feel at home,
      If they spent a lifetime learning,
      How to live in Rome.

Philippians 3:20 says, "But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. And we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our Savior."

While I eagerly await the return of Jesus Christ, I need to live like a citizen of heaven. That doesn't mean I need to try and prove that God is real, that the bible is accurate, or that Jesus Christ was the real deal. What I need to do is to actually just allow the Holy Spirit to work in my life.

If I do that, if I have genuine relationship with real people, and they see God at work IN me, then He can work THROUGH me.

My thought for the day; and my prayer is that I can do this in spite of my need to feel smart and be perceived as an intellectual... because let's face it, if I didn't have spell check, I couldn't even spell half the college level words I use to try and appear smarter than I really am.