Is That Really True?

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash. Matthew 7:24-27

We receive news of our world in a number of ways: newspapers, other print media, TV, radio, internet, speeches, and conversation. Is that really true? Do you believe what you read, hear, and see? And if your response is “sometimes, then how do you discern what you believe and what you discount as a lie? C.S. Lewis, one of the most brilliant Christian writers and scholars of the twentieth century, once shared his opinion of newspapers: “I never read the papers. Why does anyone? They’re nearly all lies, and one has to wade through such reams of verbiage to find out even what they are saying. That was 1955. I can only imagine what he would think today. He also wrote, “To abstain from reading—and…from buying—a paper which you have once caught telling lies seems a very moderate form of asceticism. Yet how few practice it. The most prominent newspaper in America today is constantly caught telling lies, yet people still buy and read it…and most unfortunately, in too many cases, believe what they read.
Every day in our technologically advanced world we receive (it might be more accurate to say we are flooded with) information which we will accept, filter, or reject. There doesn’t even have to be an immediate decision about what you do with it; information purposefully sifted and tucked away or not even dealt with when heard can still influence your thinking somewhere down the road, framing your perceptions rightly or wrongly. This is especially true of the person who is not constantly sharpening and maturing his or her worldview, empowering a capacity to discern good from evil. Being a professing Christian is obviously in itself not enough to guard you from wrongly discerning the truth or lie of information, since the author of Hebrews bluntly said to an audience of Christians that some of them had become dull of hearing, needed to learn the basics all over again, and in regards to the knowledge and discernment of truth, were still “babes in the woods who could not handle a diet of “meat. This evaluation had nothing to do with how long they had been Christians; it had to do with how skilled they were in the Word of righteousness. This skill will not be gained or improved by spending more time in the newspaper or before the TV than you do in the Word. It’s fairly simple logic. Lewis wasn’t dumb.
Living as we do in an information world, more so than all of our predecessors, a trained and practiced worldview is absolutely essential to every Christian who desires, in Christ’s words, to overcome the world instead of being overcome by it. Jesus said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear. Hear what? “What the Spirit says to the churches. And where does the Spirit speak to the churches, to individual Christians, and to the world that has an ear to hear? God’s Word. The message of the Word is not politically correct, nor inoffensive or tolerant. In fact, it is an offensive stumbling block to those who are dying. It declares a worldview (a God-view) concerning matters of controversy contrary to the now-accepted norm of the culture no longer condemned. Rather, those who hold to the teaching of God’s Word are themselves condemned in the public square, becoming the prey of those who call evil good (Isaiah 59:15). Numerous attempts to acculturate the Scriptures to allegedly “bring them into the modern age fulfill the prophetic warnings of Paul, Peter, Jude, John, and the Lord Himself.
Will your Christian worldview meet the test? Because the waters are rising fast, the winds are blowing into a gale, and your foundation is being exposed.

“Out of all the voices calling out to me, I will choose to listen and believe the Voice of Truth.”
(“Voice of Truth”, Casting Crowns)