Being a sniper is one of the most challenging jobs in the military. It takes nerves of steal and a very sharp mind. The calculations involved in making shot are incredible. Distance, wind speed, temperature, sunlight, altitude, angle of descent and probably some more. They now have small computers to help make the calculations. It only takes a slight error in any of those to make the shot miss its mark.
When cooking, especially baking, you have to get the proportions of the ingredients just right if you want your masterpiece to be masterful. And you want fresh ingredients. Meal worms are no fun! If one ingredient is bad, say an egg, then the whole recipe will be ruined, inedible. Once it is mixed in, there isn’t much you can do to fix it.
It only takes a little error in your belief system to get you completely off track in your faith. The closer the error is to the center of the Gospel, the further off course you will end up. If you believe that Jesus only died for some people, then you must twist and turn to apply the Gospel to the world. You have to qualify all the all’s and everyone’s of Scriptures. You put the mental filter on every time you read or hear the Word. You have to constantly adjust the Word so that it will fit your belief system.
If you don’t believe that God is able to communicate to the world in a manner that enables people across time and culture to hear His Truth, then you will constantly be placing your own cultural filter on what your read. Or you will place your carefully constructed theology over Scripture and correct the Scriptures every time they contradict your theology. In the process you become the ultimate source of truth. You become god.
Certain teachers today introduced very small error into their teaching which in the end leaves what they teach very much short of the Gospel. They leave out punishment for the wicked, for instance. They talk about money all the time. They take an eraser to Scripture and eliminate the politically incorrect sins, and with a swoop of their pen make every behavior they choose acceptable in God’s eyes. Or at least they think that it is acceptable. Or they want you to believe it is acceptable.
This is not a new problem. Our text talks about how Jesus warned His disciples about the corrupting influence of the teaching of the religious and political leaders. The religious teachers hadn’t taken away from Scripture but added to it, and in the process had invalidated some of God’s most basic principles about our relationship with Him. The political climate had taken away the uniqueness of the LORD, and made the Jews and their beliefs just one of many acceptable belief systems. Sounds like political correctness at its worst.
The Arnold Journey 