I grew up in a much less complicated time than now. There are things that seem to be better now but many things have grown worse. However, there are those things that have never changed.
As children we played a game where we would all sit in a circle and whisper something in the ear of the person next to us. The person in whose ear you whispered was to whisper the same thing in the ear of the person next to them. This went on until the message had been whispered from person to person around the entire circle. Without exception, the message would change by the time it got back to where it had started. This game that was taught to children showed that as stories are repeated, they can become totally misleading. The bible gives us God’s instructions to his people.
Exodus 23:1, “You shall not circulate a false report.”
This was instruction by God to a people who had been in slavery for 400 years, but it is a universal truth for all time. Sitting in the circle and repeating what someone had said is not an intentional false report because we just repeated what we heard. If we did not know that it was a false report, is it still a false report? Setting in a circle and whispering a message to the one next to us has proven not to be something that we can stake our life on. If we are not getting accurate information, and we repeat it as if it were accurate, we are just fabricating things as we have been told or as we want them to be. The truth is that if you stick your hand in a fire you will get burned. Jesus promised us that we do not have to live our life in deception.
John 9:32, “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
2 Timothy 2:24-26, And a servant of the Lord must not quarrel but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient, in humility connecting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance, so that they may know the truth, and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will.
These are the issues we address at the Gathering Place Church every Sunday morning at 9:30 and 10:30, and Wednesday evening at 7. We have Youth Group and First Steps Recovery Sunday evening at 6. Come and join in.
