I sat on a student panel tasked with investigating the morality of abortion. It was the 1970s, and I was in high school and had not yet made up my mind on the issue. As the panel discussed the various arguments flying around the culture, one student asked a question that hit me like a bucket of water.
“What does the Bible say?”
I was just beginning my Christian life, and I didn’t know what the Bible said, but somehow I knew that if the Bible addressed abortion, that student’s question was the key to this issue. Not everyone on the panel may have ascribed authority to the Bible, but I knew that as a Christian I had to.
Authority comes in many varieties, and people give different levels of authority to different types of authorities. Appeals to science, to reason, to freedom, to economics, to emotion, to culture, to government, to Scripture are like sergeants, captains, colonels, and generals in an army. They all have a measure of authority at times, but they cannot all have the same level of authority. Some authorities must outrank others.
Now I knew that if I was to follow Jesus, the Bible had to be commander in chief when it spoke. I knew that if the entire culture lined up on one side and the Bible lined up on the other, I would have to fall where the Bible was.
This principle – the pre-eminence of Scripture – is a hallmark of Christian thinking and flows from the nature of Scripture. If the Bible is God’s Word, it must be pre-eminent. If it is not pre-eminent to you, you do not treat it as God’s Word.
Unfortunately, for most people of every culture the Bible is not pre-eminent. When it comes to thinking about God, human nature, sin, faith, heaven, hell, spiritual matters or moral issues, most people give priority to something other than the Bible. It may be their upbringing, their culture, their friends, social media, a professor or popular teacher, Hollywood, a political party, or their own desires. Many people say they honor the Bible as an authority, and they may give it a measure of credence, but they still dishonor it when they fail to give it priority. They may honor it as a soldier honors a sergeant. The problem is that Scripture is commander in chief and not a mere sergeant. You dishonor the commander in chief when you treat him as a sergeant.
The church in the West thinks more like the West than it does like the New Testament. We have let the culture define love and followed it. We have let the culture define equality and believed it. We have let the culture tell us that it is arrogant to think God has provided only one way. We have adopted cultural ways of thinking about sexuality. We have adopted cultural thinking about human identity. Many of us do not believe we are fallen, or if we confess that we are, we often think that our sin is not that egregious. We wonder why God would condemn us for such “minor” transgressions as lust or anger, especially when the anger is justified.
Some of us speak, as the culture does, as if political activism is the ultimate answer to our problems. Others speak, as the culture does, as if racism is the sin above all sins. We can forgive an adulterer perhaps, but we can’t forgive a racist. Some follow the culture by saying that the husband is not the head of the wife. Others follow the culture by saying that a person’s sexual identity defines him or her. Others follow the culture by thinking they can be independent from the body of Christ. They don’t need to commit to a church. Or so they think. Many follow the culture by adopting a consumer mindset when it comes to their local church. They think the church exists to feed them and not that they exist to serve the church. We are good at meeting our needs. That’s the culture. But we won’t die to self. That’s Scripture.
We have bought into what social media tells us. We have bought into what our friends say. We have bought into what we see on Netflix. We have bought into what our favorite political party says. We have bought into the culture, and in doing so, we have abandoned Scripture. We have ignored the commander in chief and listened to a sergeant.
One of the marks of a thriving faith is that the Bible trumps the culture. Your culture (whatever it is) is hostile to what Scripture says, and it wants to draw you away. Different cultures do this in different ways, but all cultures do this. If you give priority to your culture, you lose spiritual authority and power, your faith grows limp, and you begin to live like everyone else.
One of the keys to living a Christian life is listening to the right authority. When you listen to Scripture above all other authorities, you thrive. When you listen to other authorities above Scripture, you wither.
If you want to know what you listen to most, look at your free time. How much of your time do you spend in the Scriptures, in prayer and in seeking God, versus how much do you spend on social media, watching movies, listening to music, or otherwise absorbing your culture? Where you most engage your mind is where your highest authority is. If you spend 10 minutes of your free time each day reading Scripture and two hours absorbing your culture, then you are giving your culture priority, and your faith will suffer. If you want to make God’s Word a priority in your life, make it priority in your time. You are always feeding your mind. The question is – what are you feeding it?
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