bob gets bloggy

Eating the pizza box

Yesterday it was announced on the news that the cardboard used for pizza boxes could cause obesity.
This naturally raises the question, who eats the box?
If we apply this question figuratively to the issue of having faith, I regret to report that a lot of sincere people are eating the box.  And an equally large number are throwing away the pizza to keep from eating the box.
I know this, not only because I see it in my Bible school students in Africa and in my travels in America, but because at different times in my life I have made both mistakes myself.  From childhood, I was in a Pentecostal church service at least four times a week.  I encountered manifestations claiming to be supernatural nearly every week.  If I had uncritically invested my faith in everything that claimed to be a miracle from God, it would have been like eating the box along with the pizza.  I would have become a fool, cut off from reality, and some of the things I swallowed could have led me to hell.  On the other hand, if I had rejected everything, it would have been like throwing away the pizza to keep from eating the box.  Again, I would have been a fool, throwing away what was valuable because I couldn’t tell the difference between food and wrapping.  I would have been spiritually starved, without nourishment for my faith.  I didn’t always get it right: I know the taste of the box.  And I know the shame of rejecting what I later recognized as truth.
Faith is possibly the most critical issue in the life of any believer.  Without faith it is impossible to please God.  We are saved by grace through faith.  All my Bible school students have known at least that much about faith.  But many of them did not know, or did not practice, this important aspect: faith is partly discernment.  It is not enough to sincerely believe.  True biblical faith can only come about when we sincerely believe the right things about the right Person.