by Dennis Holmes

Created on: April 24, 2008

Disconnect between Truth and Life

There is a growing pattern among evangelicals to consciously or subconsciously disassociate the truths of Scripture from the implications of those truths to real life. If you were one of C.S. Lewis' Screwtape helpers, you would no doubt find this to be an excellent way to spiritually dismantle the church. We have somehow found a way to compartmentalize the principles and teachings of the Word of God to such an extent that we can become extremely enthusiastic about what we are learning without having a clue what those truths would mean to us personally if we applied them to the way we think and live.

The ultimate goal of the Christian life is to learn the Scriptures in such a way that, under the inward working of God's Spirit, the very truths we are learning are fleshed out in our own liveswe become what we have learned. Just as the Word of God became flesh in Christ, it must also become flesh in us, so that as we grow we become the visible, tangible representation on earth of the indwelling, invisible nature and character of God. This intention of God for our lives is short-circuited if we fall into the trap of loving the truth but ignoring the implications.
One example of this problem is found in James 1:22; "But be doers of the Word and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves." It appears that when we hinder the Word moving from the "learning" to the "living" stage we are in full-blown self-deception. In other words, if we don't accept, understand, and jump with both feet into the implication part of learning the truth, we will end up thinking we did jump when we didn't.
This is one of the mind-blowers of deception.
People actually believe they are living a life they aren't living. Other people can see it, God can see it, the angels can see it; but the people themselves can't see it at all.
In James 2:20 James points out the inconsistency of claiming to believe the Bible while not obeying it; ". . . faith without works is dead". Why would anyone have to write that to anyone? Isn't that obvious? If we say we believe a news report that a massive earthquake is going to hit our city in the next few days, wouldn't we leave town? If we stayed, what would that indicate? That we didn't believe the warning. Pretty simple. But this is where deception comes in. If an earthquake really was coming, and everyone was warned, and proof was given to convince even the most skeptical, but still people found ways to disbelieve, we would

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