2 Cents

For those who claim the Bible is our sole authority for life we have to be aware of a temptation Satan constantly sends our way:  believing something because we feel it to be true instead of because we read it to be true.

It's very common to hear things like:

"I just don't think God would do something like that."

OR...

"I feel like God is blessing my choice."

The problem with statements like this is they are totally subjective and if we're honest with ourselves, we have a proclivity to do whatever we can to justify our own desires.  In other words, we're extremely biased.

Part of the genius and beauty and perfection in the plan of God to reveal himself to us through a book is that we would have something outside of ourselves to tell us how to live and what we can know about God - not a voice, not a dream, not a vision, not a feeling, but a book that everyone can read for themselves.

How many times have your feelings betrayed you?  How many times have you been wrong?  If I'm going off my personal track record, I certainly wouldn't trust myself.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about.

When I was in college I made friends with many different guys from many different church backgrounds.  God used that time to strengthen my faith because I started to question many of the things I had been taught growing up by my parents and my home church.  It caused me to get back to the Bible and see whether or not I had been accepting things blindly without having a biblical warrant for what I believed.

One way this affected me was my view on baptism.  I grew up in a Church of Christ that taught that baptism was a part of the salvation process and the time God chose to forgive us of our sins and give us the gift of the Holy Spirit.  But I had zero friends in college who shared this belief.

Coming out of college I had it in my head that we are saved by "faith alone" so baptism couldn't be part of salvation.  Surely something physical like being dunked under water could never produce spiritual results.  Surely God wouldn't require we do something as rigid as being baptized to gain something as important as salvation.

The problem with all of these arguments was that there was no Scripture in them whatsoever.  It was just my own human logic with no reference to the Bible at all.

By the grace of God I had a lunch meeting one day with the minister of our local church.

He sat me down and showed me actual verses in the Bible regarding baptism and a few other things.  His arguments weren't his own, they were God's.  His logic was based completely on what God's word had to say.

He showed me that the words "faith alone" actually weren't in any of the places I thought they were (and coincidently they were in James 2:24).

He showed me Acts 2:38... and 1 Peter 3:21... and Romans 6:3-4... and John 3:3-5.

The evidence was overwhelming.

And all I had to respond with was... I just don't feel like that's the case.

Through that minister, showing me what God's word actually had to say, in a loving and humble manner, I changed my views on baptism.

So the moral of the story is this... don't base your beliefs on what you feel to be true.  Read for yourself and base them on what the Bible actually says.