Make your choice

A recent survey has been in all the news services. We are told, according to the headline, that “Americans freely change, or drop, their religions.” In an increasingly “fluid” religious environment, nearly half (44%) of Americans say “they're no longer tied to the religious or secular upbringing of their childhood. They've changed religions or denominations, adopted a faith for the first time or abandoned any affiliation altogether.” And in a new evidence of the diminished importance of religion in U.S. society, 12.1% of the respondents said their religious identity is "nothing in particular." In some areas, such as Oregon, this unaffiliated status is greater than 25%.

All of this should not surprise anyone familiar with the direction American culture has taken over the past 40 years or so. We live in an age where values like tolerance and choice have taken on a status formerly given to qualities of truth like integrity and moral virtue. Not that people can’t have both integrity and tolerance, or virtue and a respect for the choices of others. But if there is still any consensus on the nature of truth (and that’s questionable in today’s philosophical climate), it should be clear that adherence to principles of truth demand that some ideas can be tolerated in the name of religious freedoms, but that doesn’t make all ideas equally true and equally virtuous.

In purely logical terms (and not all will agree on the philosophy of such logic), if such a thing as truth exists, it is true without regard to how many people believe it, much less what percentage of people in a poll agree with it. And if such a thing as truth exists, it will be just as true now as it was two thousand years ago, without regard to the shifting opinions of societies and cultures. Otherwise, truth is simply another term for whatever I believe, at whatever time I happen to believe it.

I believe the Bible for many good reasons, not simply because it’s the book I was brought up to regard as God’s Word. In fact, I rejected the Bible’s claims to authority and truth for many years as I entertained the ever-popular idea that there are “many ways to find God.” Fortunately for my soul, I found truth in a place I had been trying to avoid, in the words of Jesus, who dared to say, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” (John 14:6) And while I have given time to investigate other claims to truth, I believe they all lack the authenticity of an empty tomb, a Risen Savior, and millions of lives, like my own, that have been changed by the power of His truth; truth that He promised “will set you free.” (John 8:32)

So, if people changing their “faiths” means changing denominations, I’m fine with that. I was raised by a Methodist family, learned Bible stories at a Presbyterian church, and now pastor a Baptist church. And Jesus is worshipped as Lord and Savior at all of them and many others as well. So choice and tolerance for such choices works fine if it remains within a context of truth. But if one chooses to regard an idea as truth that contradicts the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as God’s only Son and Redeemer, then I can tolerate that choice in an open society, but I can’t accept it in the same way as a choice to worship God “in spirit and in truth.” (John 4:24)

Indeed, God gives human beings the freedom to make their own choices, to worship or not worship, to worship Him through Jesus or to seek Him in an endless variety of ways, including some that utterly contradict each other. But a day will come when the time to make choices or to change one choice for another will be finished. In that day when Jesus becomes, not the Savior, but the Judge, then He will decide whether or not our choices are valid. And He won’t need a poll to help Him.