Another Call for Discernment

I've written before about the sad lack of discernment in the church today.  Too many people take their theology cues from novels and movies and the latest Christian best seller rather than from the Bible.  

I saw the movie trailer the other day for the book about the four year old who goes to heaven and comes back with "amazing" messages.  And people are eating this stuff up. Like we should believe a four year old's dreams more than God's written word.  His isn't the only "back from heaven" story, just the most recent/popular. 

It did my heart good to walk into a used book store the other day and see that this completely secular store had a better grasp on where such books should be categorized.

Then there is this example from the world at large.  A friend recently posted a fake/satirical article about an athlete "coming out" as gay.  It was obviously written as a joke, even though it was in poor taste on so many levels.  And yet, by posting it online, and then having dozens of folks post it on social media, the story takes on a life of itself because after all, if we read it on the internet it must be true, right?

It's that mentality that has so infected the church in recent years as to become extremely dangerous.  So often stories are spread as hoaxes, about this or that legal challenge, about this or that political issue, about this or that star who said this or that; and Christians run to their facebook and email to pass it along at lightening speed without ever checking the veracity of it.

When did we become a Church full of people who are so taken in by emotional books, and knee jerk emails and all the rest; instead of a people of the Book?  When did we start basing our theology and our practical daily lives on trendy books and movies instead of the revealed Word of God? 

Things have gotten so bad that any time some book or movie comes out claiming to be Christian, whether it's the back from the dead story or the latest movie about Jesus, Christians go crazy in support of it without once stopping to really examine if the things being taught here are Biblical.   Obviously no book or movie or person is going to be perfect, but can't we at least have a little discernment?

I'm begging you: stop and think!  Open your Bible once in awhile. We ought to be striving for the maturity Paul writes to the Ephesians about "so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes." (Ephesians 4:14)

I know I've said most of this before.  I know it will probably fall on deaf ears.  But please, Church, can we exercise a little discernment!