Articles
Where Do You Get Your Religion?
In the newspaper this past week, I noticed three different articles from the Associated Press concerning religion in America. The first was an article reporting on a new religion section being carried in Seventeen magazine -- which is a magazine focusing on pop culture for teenage girls. According to the article, "Seventeen has added a faith section that includes inspirational messages, personal stories of spiritual struggle and testimonials on issues ranging from prayer to gay teens who attend church." The second AP article told the story of John Vakulkskas, a Catholic priest who has devoted himself to ministering to traveling carnival workers (regardless of their faith). The third AP article was about a new book written by a Jewish scholar entitled "Life after Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion." The headline of the article pretty well caught the gist of the story. It read, "Leading Jewish scholar offers the latest on the afterlife."
If the Associated Press had the desire and manpower, it could probably provide us with a hundred similar stories everyday. America is a land where thousands upon thousands of different religious viewpoints are freely expressed, and Americans are a people who are free to pick and choose the viewpoints that suit them. The result of all of this freedom of religious expression, to put it bluntly, is that our nation is awash in a flood religious error.
Those who are writing and publishing the vast majority of religious material in our culture couldn't tell the truth of God from the menu at Shoney's. As it was in ancient Israel, so it is today. "Look, the false pen of the scribe certainly works falsehood; Behold, they have rejected the word of the LORD; So what wisdom do they have?" (Jeremiah 8:8-9).
The danger for the people of God who live in such a culture is that, unless we keep constant guard, we might find ourselves accepting smooth sounding falsehood because we "read it in a magazine," "got it in an e-mail," or "saw it on TV". As practical means of confronting this danger, may I offer the following suggestions:
1. Limit exposure to the religious influence of pop-culture. Frankly, we should all probably try to limit our exposure to a lot of pop-culture period, but especially to its expressions of religious ideas, whether in print, film or music. In other words, it's probably not a positive thing for a teenage girl who is a Christian to take Seventeen magazine, but if she does, she certainly does not need to be religiously reading its religion section. In essence, this is the same advice Paul gave Timothy in 1 Timothy 6:20 -- "O Timothy! Guard what was committed to your trust, avoiding the profane and idle babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge."
2. Spend more time in Bible study. God's word is the only completely trustworthy source of religious truth. It "is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work" (2 Timothy 3:16-17). Spending more time with it, can't help but benefit us.
3. Spend more time in conversation about spiritual things with those who believe and know the truth. If we're going to allow other humans to influence our religious thinking, we should choose men and women who share our love and respect for God. Jude encourages his readers to be involved in "building yourselves up on your most holy faith" (Jude 20). Paul wanted desperately to visit with the Christians in Rome, "that I may be encouraged together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me" (Romans 1:12). The thoughts and words of a fellow Christian whom we know and love should mean much more to us than the confused and confusing messages of those who do not stand for "the faith once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3).
