The first to present his case seems right, till another comes forward and questions him.

Proverbs 18:17, NIV (1978)

 

Understanding this particular truth will help you in just about every important avenue of life, but in none more important than your salvation.

 

It is a fact that the first thing you learn on a matter is probably the way you will believe all of your life. If you have a teacher who insists that you use your right hand when learning to write, you will most likely write with your right hand all of your life. If your parents tell you that one political party is good and the other bad, you will likely follow their lead. And if you are raised in a certain religion or denomination, it is likely you will remain in that religion or denomination until you die.

 

Of course, these things are natural and can be quite useful when the information is used properly. For example, I didn't have to set my hand directly on top of a stove to discover it was on, because I was taught to feel for heat without touching first. I never ate rat poison, because I believed my parents when they first told me it was bad. Most people would agree that these things are good and that trust in these types of instruction are vital to our safety and well-being.

 

However, as we grow older, it is important that we see the critical need of going back and questioning the things we have learned if we are to ever have a hope of coming to a knowledge of the truth. For example, when I left home for college, I essentially left with my parent's faith instead of my own. Because my faith was weak, it didn't take too much to shake that faith. Before you knew it, I was questioning everything - a good thing, but I was also rejecting some of the good information for no other reason than I had discovered that a portion of my understanding was flawed. And while it is true that it helped me to "cull" my life of the things that were incorrect, I also rejected some very important truths.

 

I was like the cat that Mark Twain spoke of: It is true that, once having sat on a hot stove, a cat will not sit on a hot stove again. It is also true that it will never sit on a cold one!

 

This is the way that a lot of people go through life: They either accept everything as first learned and no amount of facts will ever convince them even when they are wrong, or they will question everything to the point that they become so cynical that they will never accept the truth no matter how obvious that truth is.

 

There is perhaps no area in life that this is more dangerous than in our faith!

 

Far too many people have rejected a proper faith simply because they ran into hypocrites that mishandled the truth. On the other side, there are just as many people who cannot ever learn anything new (including in areas that their training has been flat out wrong) for the simple reason that it is "faith" and that they believe what they believe because they believe it, and nothing will ever change that. These people may be mistaking their superstition and pre-conceived ideas for faith, but good luck convincing those who refuse to use reason when it comes to matters of faith.

 

Because of these two things, many people are literally hell-bound but are absolutely convinced of the exact opposite!

 

So, what is the solution? If we are in danger of being misled, some will conclude that they shouldn't even bother. After all, if people "smarter" than us disagree on religion, who are we to try and figure it out? However, this is a fatal philosophy because if they don't even try, then they are doomed. So, do we just live in fear and wait for that doom? The answer to that is clearly "no" for two reasons. First, if the Bible is correct then heaven and hell are both very real places, and we are going to be in one or the other whether we believe it or not. Since our eternities are resting on our getting this knowledge, we better do all we can to make sure that we have all the information that we possibly can obtain.

 

As important as this first point is, it pales in comparison to the truth of the second: God and Christ are worth our finding out for sure. God created us and gave us this choice of being in hell (which we all deserved) or by His grace living with Him forever in Paradise. Because of this (and His great love for us) He gave His only begotten Son to die on the cross for our sins! And because Jesus loved us so much, He was willing to go to that cross on our behalf. Such love demands that we get it right, and that means that we put the effort into finding out His truth from His word so that we can get it right. 

 

The fact is that heaven is too beautiful to miss. It is further true that this life can also be beautiful if we will just live it in the way that His word (the Bible) reveals that it is to be lived. And while we are very grateful to our parents and our preachers and our Bible class teachers for first introducing us to the Bible, we must build upon the knowledge that we have gained from other good people and read the Bible for ourselves. To do anything else is to risk our very eternities. More pertinent than even that is if we do not make certain of the truths that God has revealed to us in His word, we would effectively be minimizing and dishonoring these great things that He and Christ have done for us.

 

It is true that our parents and Bible teachers love us and would have never intentionally misled us when it came to our education on God... but it is also true that many, many people have made fatal mistakes in these very areas down through the years because they had a fatal misunderstanding of the truth themselves. They may not have known they were wrong; in fact, they were convinced that they were right, but they were just as in danger in the end of being lost if they were mistakenly wrong, as they would have been if they were intentionally wrong.

 

It is important to understand that the first to present their case seems right, but that they are sometimes wrong. Part of our responsibility in life is to "correctly handle the word of truth" (II Timothy 2:15). One of the ways that we can do this is to trust those who have first introduced us to God and His word, but then to go to the effort of studying that very word for ourselves to make sure that both their understanding and ours is correct. 

 

One last thing: If we do find that there has been a mistake in the way we were taught. why not go to the person who taught you and talk about it? It's true that they might be offended, for some people would rather be perceived as being right than actually admitting a mistake. However, for those who have a heart for serving God in the right way, they will be eternally grateful that you have showed them where you both might have been wrong. You can then investigate it together in order to find out the truth. I believe that you will find that those who love God will desire nothing less than acquiring and understanding the whole truth in order that they might live the most pleasing and fruitful life that they can in their service to God and Christ.