How does sin affect the human mind?

•A brief answer to a friend of this blog.

In May of this year, widely-respected New York Times columnist, David Brooks (a cultural Jew), told Christianity Today, “We need to start talking about sin and righteousness.” In his study of American culture, he noted, “in the late 1940s . . . There were tons of best-selling books, and some movies, arguing that the notion of human sinfulness was outdated, and that we should embrace the idea that we’re really wonderful.” [1]

Along those lines, a friend of this blog has engaged in a quest to gain a better knowledge of sin and how it affects our thinking.  She is theologically astute and framed her question to me in technical terms. She asked, “How does ‘deprivation’ (original sin) affect the ‘sensus divinitatis’ (people’s awareness of God)?” Here is my answer and the answer will end up broadening the question. [2]

• How does sin affect the human mind?

“Deprivation” refers to the change in nature that Adam and Eve experienced when they, our first parents, sinned against God. This “deprivation” involves (1) loss of original holiness and justice and (2) a corruption of nature whereby they became slaves of sin. However, they retained their created-ness in the image of God. They were still thinking, feeling, perceiving, moral, esthetic beings. And to their posterity they passed on both created-ness (characterized by human nobleness) and corruption (characterized by human cruelty).

Romans 1:19-20 teaches that, from God’s creation, humans know God and understand his existence and eternal power – they have “sensus divinitatis,” an awareness of the Deity. The question arises, how does this corruption of nature by sin affect the human mind in its awareness of God? Scripture gives a brief answer without the nuances that a theological or philosophical discussion would have.

Romans 1:21 “For although they [humans] knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” This verse summarizes several key teachings. (1) The choice to dishonor God and not give him thanks (i.e. to love self or created things more than or rather than God) is the root cause of foolish thinking, knowing, and believing. Worship drives worldview and one’s basic life creed. (2) Sin causes futility in thinking: you really think you know the truth about reality and especially about Cosmic Reality. But actually you became stymied and come to false conclusions, not because you are human (made in the image of God) but because you are sinful (the descendent of Adam and Eve). And (3) moral darkness clouds the thinking so that a person thinks, feels, and does things that dishonor God. You think your thoughts and engage in your reasonings. But you rebel against God as supreme ruler and judge and instead make yourself as the measure of all things. As a result, your thoughts become subtly distorted.

Titus 1:15-16 “To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their minds and their consciences are defiled. They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work.” (4) Moral darkness can not only cloud the mind, but when wickedness becomes a pattern of life, the human mind can produce things are just plain detestable and unfit for other people to hear or read. Your pompousness produces impurity of thought.

Elsewhere, the Bible further describes the condition of our minds under sin [3]. Corrupted by sin, the human mind can be:

confused (Deuteronomy 28:20)

anxious, closed (Job 17:3–4)

evil, restless (Ecclesiastes 2:21–23)

rash, deluded (Leviticus 5:4; Isaiah 32:4 NIV)

troubled (2 Kings 6:11)

depraved (1 Timothy 6:5)

sinful (Romans 8:7 NIV)

dull (2 Corinthians 3:14 NIV)

blinded (2 Corinthians 4:4)

corrupt (2 Timothy 3:8)

• How may I overcome the effect of sin on the human mind?

How can we escape the powerful darkening effect of sin on the human mind? In John 12:46 Jesus Christ proclaimed, “I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.” It is important to see that when Christ spoke of “darkness,” he was including the ideas of falseness and moral evil. Earlier in the discourse between Christ and a deeply religious man, it says:

The light [Jesus Christ, the only Son of God] has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God. (John 3:19-21, emphasis added)

When you come to Christ – the Light of the world – you come to one who is the embodiment of truth and righteousness. You are not driven to come to Christ out of ignorance and you are not seeking to find education or spiritual enlightenment. Rather you are a thinking person concerned about the darkening effects of sin on your life – on mind, emotions, will, conscience, relationships – and you seek a proper object of love as well as seeking truth, right living, healed relationships, and a renewed mind. You are a human being with an awareness of God (unless it has been repressed), descended from the first human parents, and have the corruption of nature passed on from them.

The invitation from Christ has two parts: come to the light and continue in the light.

• Come to the Light for a renewed mind

There is one source to investigate and come to Christ: the eye-witness era documents of the New Testament from the first century AD. In the second century after Christ, many alternatives arose such as the gnostic library discovered in 1945 at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, or the apocryphal gospels and epistles, of the second through fourth centuries. In our day skeptics and others bombard us with books to discredit Jesus Christ and the New Testament documents of his apostles and their associates. Yes, the marketplace of idea is filled with the thoughts of contrarians. But consider the spiritual journey of Michael F. Bird. He writes:

I grew up in a secular home in suburban Australia, where religion was categorically rejected—it was seen as a crutch, and people of faith were derided as morally deviant hypocrites. . . . As a teenager, I wrote poetry mocking belief in God. My mother threw enough profanity at religious door knockers to make even a sailor blush.

Many years later, however, I read the New Testament for myself. The Jesus I encountered was far different from the deluded radical, even mythical character described to me. This Jesus—the Jesus of history—was real. He touched upon things that cut close to my heart, especially as I pondered the meaning of human existence. I was struck by the early church's testimony to Jesus: In Christ's death God has vanquished evil, and by his resurrection he has brought life and hope to all.

When I crossed from unbelief to belief, all the pieces suddenly began to fit together. I had always felt a strange unease about my disbelief. I had an acute suspicion that there might be something more, something transcendent, but I also knew that I was told not to think that. I “knew” that ethics were nothing more than aesthetics, a mere word game for things I liked and disliked. I felt conflicted when my heart ached over the injustice and cruelty in the world.

Faith grew from seeds of doubt, and I came upon a whole new world that, for the first time, actually made sense to me. To this day, I do not find faith stifling or constricting. Rather, faith has been liberating and transformative for me. It has opened a constellation of meaning, beauty, hope, and life that I had been indoctrinated to deny. And so began a lifelong quest to know, study, and teach about the one whom Christians called Lord. [4]

The first step is to come to the documents that faithfully witness to Christ – the New Testament. You may read these, hear these read, or hear them taught. The New Testament writer John speaks for his colleagues: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:30-31). But it is not enough to read and study the documents. You must personally believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Otherwise, all your reading and study is in vain. And, in your reading and study, it is vital to remember that the New Testament is incomplete without the Old Testament. You need the whole Bible.

Come, read, hear, believe in Jesus Christ, follow him, and join the community of the faithful. Hopefully, in that vein, you will be able to find a church or a Bible study committed to the faith taught by Christ and his apostles and embodied in the Nicene Creed of AD 325 – the statement of beliefs that summarize the message of the New Testament. This creed takes the confession of faith passed on in apostolic churches and then uses technical language to contrast the faith from error. Christ commanded his disciples to baptize in the name (one name = one nature and being) of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). If the group doesn’t profess one God in three co-equal, co-eternal persons, they follow some other ideology, not the New Testament.

• Continue in the Light to renew your mind

How do people renew their mind through Christ from the darkening effects of sin? To Jewish leaders in Jerusalem, Jesus Christ said:

37 And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me. His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen, 38 and you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe the one whom he has sent. 39 You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. (John 5:37-40)

Just as the New Testament Scriptures are the word of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, through his apostles and their associates, so the Old Testament Scriptures (verse 39) are the word of God the Father (verse 38). And the way of eternal life and renewal of your whole being – including your mind – is by studying the Scriptures. They are a history centered on Jesus Christ. This history teaches doctrine, a worldview, and a lifestyle. And it offers plenty of examples of what to do and not to do.

In his second letter to Timothy, the apostle Paul, imprisoned in Rome and on trial for his life, makes a request, “When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, also the books, and above all the parchments” (2 Tim 4:13). He wanted a winter coat (a tent-like garment stretching from shoulders to feet), papyrus rolls (“books”) and expensive documents written on animal skins (“parchments”). Being a Scripture scholar and a preacher, the books could easily be early gospel records as well as scholarly writings. The parchments undoubtedly included Old Testament scriptures. Thus, even at the end of his life facing a possible death sentence, Paul wanted – most of all – the word of Jesus and the word of God. [5]

How do you make use of books and parchments? A very bright, thoughtful woman tells her story [6]:

I don’t know when I first became a skeptic. It must have been around age 4, when my mother found me arguing with another child at a birthday party: “But how do you know what the Bible says is true?” By age 11, my atheism was so widely known in my middle school that a Christian boy threatened to come to my house and “shoot all the atheists.” My Christian friends in high school avoided talking to me about religion because they anticipated that I would tear down their poorly constructed arguments. And I did.

Attending Harvard to study government, during her freshman year she encountered a fellow student, Joseph, who was a Christian. He defended with reason and sensibleness Christianity’s answers to the most fundamental philosophical questions as well as to the veracity of the Bible and ethical conundrums. For instance, what about the Euthyphro dilemma: Is something good because God declared it so, or does God merely identify the good? She continues:

And he did something else: He prodded me on how inconsistent I was as an atheist who nonetheless believed in right and wrong as objective, universal categories. Defenseless, I decided to take a seminar on meta-ethics. After all, atheists had been developing ethical systems for 200-some years. In what I now see as providential, my atheist professor assigned a paper by C. S. Lewis that resolved the Euthyphro dilemma, declaring, “God is not merely good, but goodness; goodness is not merely divine, but God.” Joseph also pushed me on the origins of the universe.

She came to accept the idea of a First Cause. What shame could there be in being a Deist like Founding Father Thomas Jefferson? Later she was given a copy of J. Budziszewski’s book Ask Me Anything. She encountered the Christian teaching that “love is a commitment of the will to the true good of the other person.” This theme—of love as sacrifice for true good—changed her thinking. The Cross no longer seemed to be a grotesque symbol of divine sadism, but a remarkable act of love. And now Christianity began to look less strangely mythical and more cosmically beautiful. She notes:

At the same time, I had begun to read through the Bible and was confronted by my sin. I was painfully arrogant and prone to fits of rage. I was unforgiving and unwaveringly selfish. I passed sexual boundaries that I’d promised I wouldn’t. The fact that I had failed to adhere to my own ethical standards filled me with deep regret. Yet I could do nothing to right these wrongs. The Cross no longer looked merely like a symbol of love, but like the answer to an incurable need. When I read the Crucifixion scene in the Book of John for the first time, I wept.

But, of course, the Cross as the beauty of Christ’s love and as the answer to human sinfulness – these do not make it true. So she plunged into alternative views: the Qur’an and the books of leading skeptics. And she read contemporary Christian answers to the objections. But nothing compared, she said, to the rich tradition of Christian intellect: Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Descartes, Kant, Pascal, and Lewis. When she finally read the masters, the only reasonable course of action was to believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

But then a problem arose. Her head full of convincing evidence for the Scriptures started to make her feel distant from the story that had brought her to tears a month prior. When reading through the Passion narrative on retreat on Cape Cod in the spring, she remained utterly unmoved. So she went out to pray and took a long walk through the woods. Reflection on Scripture caused her to realize that the will is the driver of the intellect. Who or what you worship is the root cause of thinking, knowing, and believing. In her own words:

If I wanted to continue forward in this investigation, I couldn’t let it be just an intellectual journey. Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31-32). I could know the truth only if I pursued obedience first.

She committed her life to Christ by being baptized on Easter Sunday, 2009.

At age 66, when comedian and actor W.C. Fields was dying in a hospital, one of his friends came to see him and found him reading the Bible. The friend was shocked because Fields was anything but a religious man. He said, “W.C., what are you doing?” Fields replied, “I’m looking for a loophole.”

Friend, are willing to give the Scriptures an honest reading and hearing?

[1] Jeff Haanen, “Interview of David Brooks,” posted May 13, 2015 and printed as Jeff Haanen, “Greatness and Grace,” Christianity Today June 2015, Vol. 59, No. 5, Pg 60. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2015/june/david-brooks-we-need-to-start-talking-about-sin-and-righteo.html

[2] For an excellent theological-philosophical discussion, please read the article Stephen K. Moroney, “How Sin Affects Scholarship: A New Model,” Christian Scholar’s Review, XXVIII, pg 432-451, Spring 1999. http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/ethics/CSRSpring-1999Moroney.html

[3] Rick Warren, “The Battle for Your Mind (2 Corinthians 10:3-5)” address at the Desiring God 2010 National Conference, October 1, 2010. http://www.desiringgod.org/messages/the-battle-for-your-mind

[4] Michael F. Bird, “How God Became Jesus—and How I Came to Faith in Him,” Christianity Today (web only), April 15, 2014.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/april-web-only/how-god-became-jesus-and-how-i-came-to-faith-in-him.html

[5] William Barclay, Timothy and Titus (Edinburgh: Saint Andrew Press, 2^nd edition, 1960), commentary on 2 Timothy 4:13, online version http://www.studylight.org/commentaries/dsb/view.cgi?bk=54&ch=4

[6] Jordan Monge, “The Atheist’s Dilemma,” Christianity Today, March 2013, Vol. 57, No. 2, Pg 88. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2013/march/atheists-dilemma.html

Pics:

(1) Kelsey Bishop, “Attitude Adjustment,” a charcoal on public display at the Gallery, Lakeland Community College, Kirtland, Ohio from January 25 to February 22, 2015.

(2) Scene at Fowler’s Mill Golf Course, Chesterland, Ohio on 9/16/2015 taken by the author.

The Power of the Book

• Take up and read

On the West Coast in the late 1950s, when she was just 8 years old, a girl named Storm began picking fruit as a full-time farm laborer for less than $1 per hour. Storm and her family moved often, living in Native American migrant worker camps without electricity or running water. She wasn’t allowed to have books because they are too heavy to carry around when you keep moving from place to place. She recalled:

The conditions were pretty terrible. I once told someone that I learned to fight with a knife long before I learned how to ride a bicycle. And when you were grinding day after day after day, there’s no room in you for hope. There just isn’t. You don’t even know it exists. There’s nothing to aspire to, except filling your hungry belly.

When she was 12, something arrived in camp that changed her life: a bookmobile came to the fields. She approached it but hesitated. A staff member waved her in and explained it was completely free to check out books for two weeks – no strings attached. She tells about the books:

And I took them home and I devoured them. I didn’t just read them, I devoured them. And I came back in two weeks and had more questions. And he [the staff member] gave me more books and that started it. That taught me that hope was not just a word, and it gave me the courage to leave the camps. That’s where the books made the difference. By the time I was 15, I knew there was a world outside of the camps. I believed I could find a place in it and I did.

She eventually went to night school and worked in a library for 30 years. [1]

There is a much more powerful book: the Scriptures. And it tells not just of a wider reality beyond the place where we live, but of unseen Reality. And it leads us to a hope not just of improved living conditions but of eternal life. The Gospel explains it in John chapter 5.

• What are the Scriptures?

In John 5, the Lord was in a lengthy discourse with the religious leaders in Jerusalem. During the talk he said he was the Son of God (equal with God, 5:19) and the Son of Man. And he gave three witnesses to the fact of his divine nature (having the same being and powers as God does) and divine authority (his role of judge in the Day of Judgment when he calls the dead out of the graves and some of the dead experience the resurrection for life and the others experience the resurrection for judgment), 5:19-29. These are the three witnesses. Witness one was John the Baptist (5:32-25). Witness two was the miracles Jesus was performing (5:36). And witness three was the Scriptures (5:37-47), the voice of God. Let’s look at number three in depth.

³⁷And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me. His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen, ³⁸and you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe the one whom he has sent. ³⁹You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, ⁴⁰yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. ⁴¹I do not receive glory from people. ⁴²But I know that you do not have the love of God within you. ⁴³I have come in my Father's name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him. ⁴⁴How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? ⁴⁵Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope. ⁴⁶For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. ⁴⁷But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?”

Behind everything we can see, feel, and touch, there is a personal, absolute, invisible Reality – present with us and yet utterly transcendent from us: God. He can be overlooked, he can be denied, but he cannot be willed away. He is there. In the fullness of God, there is the invisible Father. The invisible Father sent the second Person of the Deity, the Word into the world to be seen, heard, and touched. The Word – the Son of God – became a human being, the Son of Man.

However, the personal, absolute, invisible Reality has always had a voice. He is there and he is not silent. That voice has taken three notable forms. First, there is the creation itself:

The heavens declare the glory of God,

and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

Day to day pours out speech,

and night to night reveals knowledge….

Their voice goes out through all the earth,

and their words to the end of the world. (Psalm 19:1-2,4)

Historically, the third major voice has been the Word who became flesh, known to us as Jesus Christ:

For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known. (John 1:17-18)

There has been a critical second way: the Scriptures. Notice the words of the Lord from John 5. God the invisible Father does not have a form that you can see with your eyes, nor does he have a voice that you can hear with your ears (v 37). Nevertheless, he has a word (v 38) and that word is the Scriptures (v 38). You can hear him by reading and listening to this written word.

The Scriptures are the voice of God. Are we listening?

• Which are the Scriptures?

And how can I identify that written word, the Scriptures? In this section of our exploration, the reader becomes a gatherer of evidence. This requires the patience of a scientist in a laboratory.

First, the Scriptures had a contemporary portion, as Jesus was speaking. It consisted of the writings of the Hebrew law-giver, Moses (v 45-47). As passages in the Gospel show, it also consisted of the Hebrew prophets (both history and prophecy) and the Hebrew poetical writings (chiefly the Psalms). To marshal the data from the four-fold Gospel and from contemporary sources would require an article of significant length. We will need to be content with sampling. Here are three examples each from prophets and poets:

At that hour Jesus said to the crowds, “Have you come out as against a robber, with swords and clubs to capture me? Day after day I sat in the temple teaching, and you did not seize me. But all this has taken place that the Scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled.” (Matt 26:55-56)

And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:21 citing the prophet Isaiah 61:1-2)

He [Jesus] said to them [the disciples], “. . . . For I tell you that this Scripture must be fulfilled in me: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors.’ For what is written about me has its fulfillment.” (Luke 22:36-37 citing the prophet Isaiah 53:12)

Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes’?” (Matt 21:42 citing Psalm 118:22, 23)

Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken— . . .” (John 10:34-25 citing Psalm 82:6)

When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “. . . . I have guarded them [the disciples], and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.” (John 17:1,12 citing Psalm 109:8)

In Alexandria, Egypt, the Hebrew Scriptures (or Old Testament) were translated into Greek (3^rd to 1^st centuries BC) called the Septuagint. In Alexandria the codex (pages sewn together into a book) became popular. In the Septuagint the Old Testament ran from Genesis to Malachi. However, in Jerusalem, where scrolls continued to be used, the scrolls of the Hebrew Scriptures were typically stored in three bins and regarded as three categories: (1) the law, (2) the prophets and (3) “the rest of the books” (Prologue to Sirach 1:1). Sirach (also called Ecclesiasticus) dates to about 180 BC with the prologue by his grandson dating to about 132 BC). The broken fragments of 4QMMT (2^nd century BC) from the Dead Sea Scrolls seem to imply an arrangement similar to the threefold arrangement of Sirach (Moses, prophets, David & events):

      [And] we have [also written] to you so that you may have understanding in the book of Moses [and] in the book[s of the Pr]ophets and in Davi[id and in the events] of ages past . . . [2]

Regardless of the precise arrangement of the books among Jewry in the ancient world, the words of Jesus signify the contents of the Hebrew Scriptures/Old Testament. First:

Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” (Luke 24:44)

In the standard “scrolls” arrangement for the third division of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Book of Psalms was placed at the beginning and could therefore serve of the name of the whole division.

[Jesus said,] “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! . . . . Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. (Matt 23:29,24-25)

Zachariah was not the last martyr. But in the standard “scrolls” arrangement of the Hebrew Scriptures, Abel (the first martyr) was slain in the first book, Genesis (Gen 4:8), and Zacharias (the last martyr) was slain in the last book, Chronicles (2 Chronicles 24:20 -23).

Our brief survey shows that the Scriptures had an existing portion during the ministry of Jesus and that it comprised what Christians call the books of the Old Testament. Questions about precise composition cannot be answered here. (Examples: Were Esther and Ezekiel regarded as canonical by rabbis during the ministry of Jesus? What books did the Dead Sea Scrolls community regard as Scripture? What about the deutero-canonicals recognized at two church councils in North Africa?)

The Scriptures also have a future portion beyond when Jesus was speaking in Jerusalem. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). But he himself did not write any letters or books. Instead “he appointed twelve (whom he also named apostles) so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach . . .” (Mark 3:14). “Apostle” was a personal envoy, a special and exclusive representative. [3] Jesus told this group, “Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me” (Matt 10:40; cf. John 13:20).

For this purpose Jesus endowed the apostles with the Holy Spirit—the Spirit of truth—who will

teach them all things and recall to mind what Jesus had said, will guide them into fullness

of truth and will also explain the future (John 14:26; 15:26; 16:13-15). In Hebrews 2:1-4 the apostles are compared to the angels of the Old Testament as transmitters of God's revelation. Heb 2:3 asks us, “How shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard,” the apostles.

“Last of all, as to one untimely born, he [Christ] appeared also to me [Paul]” (1 Cor 15:8). This apostolic office gave Paul a peculiar authority shared by all the apostles: “So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter” (2 Thess 2:15). The apostles handed down sacred traditions from Jesus Christ explained and enlarged upon by the Holy Spirit. Their authoritative writings are also Scripture. As Peter says of Paul,

And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. (2 Peter 3:15-16)

At the time of the Lord’s earthly ministry, the Scriptures had a contemporary portion – the Old Testament – and they had a future portion – the New Testament, the writings directly sponsored by the apostles. But . . .

• So what?

Unfortunately, Jesus had to tell his listeners, as recorded in John chapter 5, “³⁹You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, ⁴⁰yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.” It is possible to never hear or read the Scriptures. It is possible to read and re-read the Scriptures but allow personal prejudice to miss the point. It is possible to give diligent attention to the Scriptures but miss the message by getting bogged down in the minutiae of detail. Where do you stand?

Journalist Marvin Olasky's grandfather was born in the Ukrainian town of Olyevsk, the Anglicization of which became their American surname. The grandfather, Louis Olasky, originally Lepke ben Yehoshua, escaped the Czarist army in 1912 and ended up in Malden, Massachusetts.

Raised Jewish, as a teenager, grandson Marvin Olasky read H.G. Wells’ History of the World and Sigmund Freud’s Future of an Illusion.” By age 14, he said, “I thought all this belief in God was just childish stuff.” While in college during the Vietnam War, his non-belief in God led to embracing communism.

However, as a doctoral candidate in American Culture at the University of Michigan, he needed to demonstrate foreign language mastery. So he chose Russian "in order to speak to my Soviet big brothers," he recalled. Along the way he picked up a New Testament in Russian and started reading — very slowly “puzzling out the words.”

“I started believing there was really something here. This is not just a book written by man, there’s something inspired by God in this,” he recalled. This is the power of the Book, the Scriptures. The Scriptures have self-authenticating power and life-changing power. But it is not enough to have a vague belief, “Hey, there’s really something here." You must find out what the Scriptures are all about and embrace that.

Then Marvin Olasky got an assignment to teach a course in early American literature — which largely consisted of the sermons of leading Puritan preachers Jonathan Edwards and Increase Mather, as well as authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne (dead men from 300 years ago). Wholesome books have uplifting power — and these books led the young Olasky to come to personal, repentant faith in Jesus Christ. Marvin’s worldview and life were transformed. He received the sure hope of eternal life in the age to come, and he received transforming, spiritual life now. [4]

Are you willing to search the Scriptures and come to Christ that you may have life?

[1] “Once Forbidden, Books Become A Lifeline For A Young Migrant Worker,” StoryCorps, NPR Morning Edition, May 30, 2014. A conversation of Storm Reyes with his son, Jeremy Hagquist. http://www.npr.org/2014/05/30/317035044/once-forbidden-books-become-a-lifeline-for-a-young-migrant-worker

[2] James VanderKam & Peter Flint, The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls (London: T&T Clark, 2002), pp 169-172.

[3] R. David Rightmire, “Apostle,” Baker’s Dictionary of Biblical Theology, (ed) Walter A. Elwell (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1996). http://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionaries/bakers-evangelical-dictionary/apostle.html

[4] Mark A. Kellner, “Marvin Olasky preaches journalism through the lens of scripture, faith,” Desert News, September 18, 2014. http://national.deseretnews.com/article/2371/marvin-olasky-preaches-journalism-through-the-lens-of-scripture-faith.html