I took my youth ministry seriously. I took my time to teach and challenge my kids seriously and indeed it paid off. For the most part my kids, hundreds of them, were into the Bible. They were believers, young believers, but believers indeed. Upon their conversion, each was given a Bible.
I wanted to protect them somehow from a growing heresy that has caught many of us "Bible believers". So I figured out a good object lesson that would shake them up.
Baptist churches seem to collect old abandoned Bibles and we had our share of old and beat-up Bibles in our library.
I took one of these old Bibles with me to our big Bible study on Wednesday nights. I started talking about the Word of God, the Bible, and mentioned that there were verses I didn't particularly like. Verses that made me uncomfortable. I turned in the bible to a verse I didn't particularly like, read the verse, and then tore the verse out of the Bible, crumpled it up and threw it on the floor. You could hear the kids gasp! I continued on reading hard verses, uncomfortable verses and tore them from the bible and threw them on the floor. The kids were silent! Von, their Pastor, desecrating God's Word! I asked the kids ... what's the difference? If we aren't going to obey certain verses or believe certain verses or do what the Word asks us to do? It's the same thing! Are we allowed to pick and choose what we want from God's Word? The kids picked up on that, they got the point. That lesson won't be forgotten.
Many of us aren't aware that we are doing just that ... and that is heresy.
The Bible must be one of three things! (1) A book of Jewish myths and stories, or (2) a book that contains truth but is not necessarily truth itself, or (3) a book that is truth.
If the Bible is a book that simply contains truth, then I am allowed to pick and choose what I want to believe. A dangerous virus ... a very subtle heresy!
Many Christians don't realize they are doing just that! Think it over.
