Baby out with the Bathwater
Mark 7:6-8 Jesus answered, “You are all hypocrites. Isaiah was right when he wrote these words from God about you: ‘These people honour me with their words, but I am not really important to them. Their worship of me is worthless. The things they teach are only human rules.’ You have stopped following God’s commands, preferring instead the man-made rules you got from others.”
For anyone with a heart set on following Jesus, there’s a tension between the direction that our culture calls us in, and the direction that Christ calls us in. The two are very rarely the same. What do you do with that? Well, here’s what I think most of us do.
Have you ever looked back at old photos of yourself – you know, when you were growing up – and thought, “Surely, surely I never dressed like that!” Women, those cork platform shoes or the white boots that went up to your knees or that burnt orange mini skirt. And come on guys, the purple flairs, those long sideburns, or maybe it was that big droopy moustache. It’s funny how times move on. Fashions and ideas change. It’s out with the old, in with the new. In fact, that’s what makes our economy go round:
Record players. Cassette recorders. CD players. DVD Players. MP3 players. That old notion of sitting down to dinner as a family. Going to church. Old style religion – yeah, old style religion! I remember how hard those pews were – definitely turf them out.
But have we perhaps thrown the baby out with the bathwater? Have we become so immersed in the ways of the world – in what our culture tells us is “true” – that we’ve lost our ability to discern the truth; to live our lives counter-culturally for Christ?
Mark 7:6-8 Jesus answered, “You are all hypocrites. Isaiah was right when he wrote these words from God about you: ‘These people honour me with their words, but I am not really important to them. Their worship of me is worthless. The things they teach are only human rules.’ You have stopped following God’s commands, preferring instead the man-made rules you got from others.”
If you believe in Jesus, you’re not called to follow the culture. You’re called to follow Christ.
That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.
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