Real Christian Faith and Worship is
Best Discovered at Home
God is Spirit, Jesus said, and those
who will worship Him must worship in Spirit and in truth.
It strikes me as ironic that we live
in a world consumed and and devoted to religion and to religious
ideas while we almost universally evade and ignore the truth of
God so freely offered us all. There should be no doubt in
anyone's mind that, if religion was
the way to God, then the whole world would know Him by now.
The primary error of our generation
is not that people are turning away from religion, it's that
they are shifting their religious devotion to an idea that they
call science. During the last century science began to
gain great favor as the new religion of the a large percentage
of the pseudo intelligent population.
Real science, of course, is neither
good or bad, it is simply human knowledge. The honest
practice of science has developed over the centuries into an
exercise in logic. Certain kinds of information about the
physical world can be reasonably assured by following specific
rules of experimentation and observation. Such work has
proven worthwhile in many fields of research, helping to protect
against false ideas and silly claims. Science fails when
human beings fail, either through error or when our ignorance of
a subject of study is just too great.
Faith in Jesus Christ leans no more
on faith itself than the devotion to any other kind of religion,
ideology or philosophy. So while we may consider our
belief system and lifestyle "faith-based" in today's
terminology, we should realize that everyone is practicing faith
in whatever it is that they believe. What makes the
Christian unique is the object of our faith. To put it in
the words of Jesus Christ, we determine to "have faith in God"
(Mark 11:22).
Having a living and effective faith
in God does not put us at odds with science. It does,
however, lead us to confront the ridiculous claims of
pseudo-science when it tries to use secular reasoning to refute
the existence of God. We live in a age of unbelief, pure
and simple. Every generation since the fall has been
largely an age of unbelief, and that unbelief has taken on many
different forms — almost always religious and false in every
way.
The root of all unbelief is sin and
the desire to preserve the "right to sin as I want." In
our generation, people are closer to actually admitting that
desire than the world has been in a long time. Science,
then, is not the real aim for those who strive to push God out
of our society, any more than an attitude of tolerance or
equality. The real aim is the desire to obliterate
anything that might expose sin for what it really is in human
nature and in human society.
Children can only begin to
understand these things and to know what is right and what is
wrong as they are lead by their parents in the home.
Children do not need another set of ideas or rules. What
all children respond to most naturally is example. The
ability to speak is learned, in large part, by hearing and
observing others. A child can learn any language in the
world — or several of them — if the people in the household
speak that language. Children learn to value reading,
nature, and just about anything, as they observe the same in
parents and siblings.
Genuine faith in Jesus Christ, the
spiritual and true worship of God, and a love for all things
genuinely spiritual, moral and good, is best learned by
observation and participation in the home. In this way
parents can help young ones to avoid many of the ugly pitfalls
of any society. Live the life of a sincere Christian
believer. Engage the children in all genuinely spiritual
activities of prayer, worship and devotion toward God.
Show by example how to be generous
in helping others, how to be active in sharing the light and
love of God at home, at church, in the community and around the
world. As you set the example, your children will "absorb"
the truth of real faith in God, and they will be better prepared
in avoiding the deceptions and delusions of false religion in
all its forms.
©2008 GospelGifs |
