Last night I attended a Bible Study by video with about 100 women. The video was a little dated (circa mid-90s) and the speaker was a “personality” with a style of her own. One of the women in my seating group–let’s call her Tasha–was emphatic in her disapproval.
We didn’t discusss the content of the Bible study (which was substantial); we talked about the speaker. Tasha said, “That woman turned me off completely. I really couldn’t listen to anything she had to say.” There was agreement and disagreement about the speaker’s presentational style. There were critiques of the speaker’s choice of background music, about the session location, about her hair and clothing, about her over-the-top gestures.
Tasha and the rest of us didn’t discuss two important points:
- If I allow myself to be “turned off” by someone’s appearance, actions, words, I have allowed a being other than God to control my attitude.
- When I am “turned off”, my antennae are down, my receivers are not functioning, and nothing gets through. Being turned off shuts down my senses–makes me blind, deaf, and unable to evaluate sensory input.
Jesus died and rose to make us free, to give us sight, to make us wise as serpents, yet harmless as doves. We are not digital Christians, either ON or OFF. We don’t have to throw out the baby with the bathwater. We are fully-functioning thinking beings, free to evaluate, filter, and process what is presented to us, in submission to God and His Word. We can be blessed by the best and dump the rest.
Truth is truth, no matter how it is packaged.