Truth and...(6)

Contingencies

When confronted with the unchanging, objective, and absolute truth, a person has options. Contingencies may arise upon considering those options. For one, Joseph Smith, at age 14 was faced with the truth. It happened in a divisive church meeting over various doctrinal differences. Perhaps one of those doctrines displayed that day was the truth. Perhaps not. But Smith faced the choice of joining one of the churches that sprung from that meeting. He developed a contingency plan.

He claims that God the Father and His Son appeared to him as he prayed in the forest. He claimed that angels told him about a sacred text written on golden tablets. And he claimed to acquire these tablets and translate them into the Book of Mormon. His story has deceived many, but we ought to see his church as one that rose to influence as a result of ungodly and hypocritical Christians.

Muhammed faced a nearly identical situation. Faced with the truth, Muhammed rejected it and developed a contingency. Like Smith1200 years after him, Muhammed claimed that an angel appeared to him and gave him a new sacred text - the Koran. Muhammed was illiterate, so while he could not write it down, he passed it down orally until it was recorded.

It's not surprising that contingencies develop in the presence of such significant truth as the Bible claims. People don't want to face the consequences of what really happened, because it means that certain things will happen in the future. So contingencies develop to assuage the fear of the consequences of the truth. It's like saying, "If we don't like the truth, let's make new truths, so that the consequences that would have been under the truth change into the consequences we want." The trouble with that is this: THE TRUTH NEVER CHANGES.

We can tweak or change it all we want, but it doesn't change. The truth is marching on, whether we're in agreement or not. Jesus said, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but through Me." That's the truth. Will you concur and follow Christ? Or will you develop a contingency?