by Jacob Ninan
Just think of what God means to us and what He has done for us! God created us in His image, with the ability to choose what we wanted to do. Adam and Eve misused that freedom and chose to become independent of God. All of us have been born from that family, and we too have misused our freedom from the time we were born and pleased ourselves even though it was sinning against God. But what God did was not to punish us for our sins but to come after us to redeem us and restore us to Him. Jesus had to suffer and die in our place so that now God could justly forgive us and make us our children. The Gospel of Jesus is the only message that proclaims acceptance by God through grace – undeserved favour, without having to earn it as different religions tell us. After God received us, adopted us as His children and began to transform our lives, He has appointed us as His ambassadors to share the Gospel with others and to tell them what God wants to do for them.
"You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house" (Matt.5:14,15). The world around us lies in darkness, without the light that comes from God that can expel the darkness. God has given us this light, not just for giving us salvation, but also giving us the responsibility to pass on the light to others around us. That is what can lead them also to experience salvation in their lives (Acts.26:18).
Just think of what would happen if we kept the light to ourselves, like hiding our lamps under a basket! We may talk about the understanding God has given us within the confines of our families or churches, and yet refrain from sharing it with those outside who have no idea at all about such things. Satan is the god of this world and he makes every effort to keep the world bound to darkness about the things of God (1Jn.5:19). He keeps creating new strategies and ideas, and spreads them through the media. Even though he is spreading falsehood and deceit, he does it in such a way that appeals to people as if it is the truth. He wants to give a wrong picture of God to the people as being arbitrary and cruel so that they will turn away from Him.
Within the church Satan turns the people to becoming liberal in their interpretation of the Bible so that they no longer believe in miracles, new birth, the virgin birth, resurrection, etc., but still continue to think that they are Christian. Going from there, it is but a small step to think that it does not matter which religion people follow because they imagine all of them will ultimately lead to God. Young people are getting confused because they do not see any certainty in the beliefs of their parents and many are falling away from God altogether.
Just think about what happens when people believe in the theory of evolution. There is no more any need to believe in the existence of God because they think they can explain everything in a natural way. If we think that we are the result of some accidental coming together of some chemicals, there is no place for any moral values and everyone is free to do whatever they like! Then we are just animals and we can live by our instincts of the moment (as long as we can manage to avoid getting caught!). We don't have to worry about any life after death because as a mere collection of chemicals there is nothing after death!
But aren't there many problems with this theory? How do we then explain the existence of our conscience right from our childhood? We can observe that even small children have a sense of right and wrong and they feel guilty when they do wrong even before their parents have the opportunity to train them! We find that we are not like animals because we have a spirit with which we can communicate with God. We have the ability to think, feel and make choices and our life is not based on mere instinct. Evolution is itself a theory even now that cannot be proved, and people keep discovering flaws in the theory which compel scientists to come up with new theories and assumptions. We can't find the missing links between species, and even though we see adaptations taking place, they are nothing like evolution!
Everything falls into place once we accept the presence of an almighty God. He alone can create things out of nothing and define laws under which everything should work. He is also able to override any law that He has made in order to do miracles. If we start from this point, we can find explanations for things in a way that can provide us with a cohesive picture. Man was a special creation of God and not an evolution from animals. We must remember that the whole universe was created to be suitable for man's life on earth. It is not difficult, for example, to think that just before God created man, He had created the ambience in such a way that light from the distant galaxies had already reached earth. Why don't we wait till we see Him face to face and then ask Him about how He did different things, instead of making wild assumptions from our very limited knowledge?
Another attack is on the authenticity of the Bible. Satan would like people to conclude that the Bible is like just one among the many religious books with some some nice teachings. The question is about the inspiration of the Bible that makes us to call it the word of God. What we see is that Jesus Himself referred to the Old Testament as the word and referred to it as the ultimate source of authority. When it came to the New Testament, we can see that the people in the recognised it also as scripture, as we can see from Peter referring to the writings of Paul as scripture (2Pet.3:15,16).
The proof for the Bible is not merely from its own claims, but the miraculous work it does in the lives of millions of people around the Bible even now. The Bible has 'spoken' to innumerable number of people over the years, leading people to faith, comforting, encouraging and guiding them in their practical situations. Many gross sinners have been transformed to become saints by believing the words of the Bible. Sometimes coming across even parts of verses by accident have led to miraculous conversions. The teachings of the Bible taken together give us a cohesive worldview that explains God, His ways, man, sin, its consequences, what God has prepared for salvation and what God is going to do in the future. Compared to this, other worldviews have self-contradictions, they do not agree among themselves and in general do not make overall sense.
Liberal teachers are attacking the truths of the Bible in different ways. They try to find natural explanations for the miracles of the Bible and insinuate that Bible writers have borrowed from mythological stories of their times. They try to find explanations for Adam and Eve as fictional characters in order to merge the Bible narration of creation with the theory of evolution. We who have been given light from God have the responsibility to stand as lights before the world so that people who live in darkness can come to the Light.
Everyone knew homosexuality was unnatural and sinful. But homosexual activists came to the scene and started even threatening those who disagreed with them. The American Psychiatric Association which produces a manual of mental disorder was forced to remove the mention of homosexuality as a mental disorder, and the judiciary was forced to declare that it was beyond the law to declare the morality of what two adults did consensually together. As a result, countries who used to have laws condemning homosexuality removed them from their system! This was followed by the transgenders who claimed that gender was in the mind and not decided by biology, and forced the world to accept them as normal. Then, of course, marriage was re-understood as a relationship between any two people irrespective of their sex.
This was not really a fight against classification of mental disorders or laws, but an annulling of moral values. What everyone knows instinctively and as facts of nature are now negated by rhetoric and threats of ostracisation. Some pseudo-scientific papers have been brought out and sensationalised by the media to make people think that there is a biological basis for this sexual revolution. But basically the goal is to remove the influence of the Bible and to replace it with a free-for-all approach. The sad thing is to see the church capitulating to this onslaught and becoming ready to appear progressive and open-minded. The backlash to this 'revolution' can be already seen in society, creating confusion and chaos, many children getting affected almost beyond repair, sex change surgeries showing in the end that they do not change the XX or XY chromosomes that are built into every cell in the body, and that the heaven people looked for in these surgeries has actually resulted in hell, etc. People need to go back to the truths that God has revealed in His word.
Another trend that has caused a lot of confusion in the world is from feminism. This movement which started with a desire to ensure equal rights in society and especially in voting, has gone far away into seeking to obliterate all differences between men and women. God has created both men and women in His image, without making any difference between them there (Gen.1:27). In His mind He makes no difference in value between men and women (Gal.3:28). Jesus has also pointed out that marriage relationships are only for this earth and that we will all be like angels, without gender,once we get into eternity (Matt.22:30). Yet it is very clear, from observing our anatomy, physiology and psychology that men and women have been made for different roles in the world. The hierarchy that God has intended for this world is God the Father first, then Christ, then man and then woman (1Cor.11:3). Within the home, a wife is to subject herself to her husband (Eph.5:22). If we look at Eph.5:21 that talks of all of us submitting to one another, it should be understood from the examples that follow about children obeying their parents and servants obeying their masters, that submission is context based, according to the different roles people have in different settings, and not reflective of any inherent differences in value.
For example, even though everyone in the church submits to the pastor in spiritual direction, the pastor himself submits to the choir leader when it comes to the choice and arrangement of songs, both of them submit to the accounts manager when it comes to expenses, etc.
But feminism has caused a lot of damage in families, with constant fights for authority, with the children getting confused about what is required of them and what to expect, and without each one recognising their own roles within the setup. It is now delicate to talk about this publicly, but it is still the responsibility of the church and Christians to shine the light into the darkness that is in the world.
In a world created by God, people want to behave as if they were gods themselves, becoming independent of God and doing whatever they wish. They are quick to demand their rights and unwilling to bow to anyone else. It is up to us to proclaim to the world that we can find our happiness only by submitting to God and following the ways He has laid out for us.
Generally speaking, there are two approaches we can take to deal with understanding life and the things of this world. The first way is to start with God as our Creator and submitting to His ways, and then looking at everything else from that starting point. The second way is to start from what the experts in the world have to say, and then try to see how to accommodate the things we see in the Bible. Even many Christians are following the second approach. They have the advantage of appearing to be intellectual, pragmatic, politically and socially acceptable, etc. But they are at odds with the truths God has revealed. In effect, they are hiding God's light under baskets and not allowing it to expel the darkness that is in the world. Instead of shining as a lighthouse and guiding the people caught in the storms of life, they are making the church a subsidiary to the world. As long as Christians run schools, colleges, hospitals, orphanages, etc., everyone is happy. But when someone shines the light of God into the world, he is immediately classified as a bigot, fanatic, fundamentalist, hate monger, without love, thinking only he is right, etc.
But God's call for us is to stand as lights to the darkness in the world as the world is going deeper into chaos and heading towards destruction (1Jn.2:17). We ourselves need to endure holding on to the truth as many are being deceived and falling away (Matt.24:10-13). We ourselves should not end up becoming useless for the kingdom of God, not having made use of the grace which God had extended to us (Matt.5:13). Let us not give in to the pressure, but remember that God is standing with us. Even if people turn against us, let us stand faithful to the truth. Let us continue to proclaim the truth of God to the world as lights that shine out in the midst of darkness.