I was talking to a good friend of mine just recently, and he showed me how he'd whited out some parts of the New Testament. I thought this was a quite interesting concept. Before you get too worried, let me explain. What he had done was white out all the headings of the passages in the New Testament. His reason for it was that he wanted to understand the text with an unbiased point of view.
Although I will probably not follow in his footsteps, it does raise an interesting point. When do we follow other peoples assumptions about Scripture and force the Holy Word to match what they say, instead of taking what Scripture says and applying it as it is? Often times we will actually see something that we had not seen beforehand without realizing it.
Often times in our lives we just assume that the Bible says something and even base our teaching or preaching of off what we think it says. For years I actually thought that the list of seven deadly sins was written in the Bible somewhere. Although that list is not inaccurate, it is not Scripture, therefore it carries less weight.
How many things in your life are like that? Things we believe, defend, and debate about, that we are completely convinced are in the Bible, or at the very least, are completely Biblical. I heartily agree with my friend that we do indeed take too much of our Theology from other people and do not check the Scriptures for their truth.
Conclusion
In the end, let us make sure that what we believe has a Scriptural backing. If we do not, we are just teaching doctrines from the commands of men. And that, my friend, is damning.
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