Christian- Your Belief Is Their Only Hope

This is my 21st year on God's planet as a Christian. I was drawn into ministry right away. Many reading this article have been walking with Christ longer than I, and older Christians help younger ones understand that the Christian life is full of ups and downs.

One of the most heartbreaking parts of being a Christian is to watch people either shipwreck their faith or turn away from Biblical doctrine. This article is going to hopefully serve as a help to remind us not to let emotions and rejection undermine our Biblical presuppositions.

Let's start with presuppositions (underlying assumptions.) When a person comes to Christ, they repent and place their faith in Christ. One of the benefits of doing this is giving up your old network of beliefs and old presuppositions that are full of selfish inconsistencies—like using universal morality while claiming there are no universal morals; or observing and enjoying the uniformity in nature while denying the plausibility of such; or saying life has no meaning or purpose but getting mad when someone is called the wrong gender pronoun of their choice.

Becoming a Christian pulls you out of this sinful reality matrix, placing your feet on a firm foundation, and gives you new presuppositions (underlying assumptions).

This foundation of the universal truth of scripture gives you the ability to say there is right and wrong outside of the constantly changing tides of different cultures throughout history—and the current culture included. This sets you free to engage creation, culture, and concepts on a superior level of understanding. I want to remind you how important it is for you not to be

ashamed of your presuppositions; because it is God’s truth that is the hope of this broken world. Christian, your belief is their only hope. These underlying assumptions are vital in helping others understand life on God's terms—which is the reality no one can escape.

Everyone has presuppositions, but they are inconsistent and arbitrary. That's why no one likes to talk about them. However, they are the glasses that we see life through. Let these first two points serve as warnings that could begin to dismantle a Christian's presuppositions and take you back into a sin matrix's inconsistency and absurdity.

1. Emotions should never determine your doctrine.

While sharing my faith with individual people, I have heard:

 I don't believe anymore because someone who is a Christian hurt me.

 My child struggles with the doctrine of the elect. This makes me question God's sovereignty and omniscience.

 My child has this incurable disease; therefore, God cannot exist or be good if He does.

 There are so many religions everyone has to have their truth as long as they are sincere.

 I am now free to be who I am: a homosexual.

These beliefs that people have may be sincere, but they are not determined by God's universal truth found in Scripture. They are a production of the current emotional climate that a person finds themselves in. They are neither healthy nor biblical. We must not downplay hard life situations a person may go through. We must sit and listen to these hurting individuals. But if we are Christians, we cannot let this erode the presuppositions that help the hurting make sense of the situation.

Emotions change like that rise and fall of the tide at the ocean shore. God's word is the opposite; it is like a mason’s plumb line when building a wall. If the plumb line is not laid in the beginning, the wall will topple over before it is finished. God's word serves that purpose for us all; however, Christians accept it but unbelievers reject it. Read what Jesus says, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away." (Matthew 24:35)

The Apostle Paul states, "And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together." (Colossians 2:17)

Emotions must be harnessed and tamed by the truth of God's word, not the other way around. These emotionally driven times allow an opportunity to show how foundational presuppositions are in anyone's life. The second warning that I want you to be vigilant against is what most people think of you.

2. How people will respond to me in this cancel culture.

The more our culture goes further into the darkness of self-love and lust, the louder cancel culture will become. Paul dealt with cancel culture before it was even popular; read the following paragraph from scripture:

These he gathered together, with the workmen in similar trades, and said, "Men, you know that from this business we have our wealth. And you see and hear that not only in Ephesus but in almost all of Asia this Paul has persuaded and turned away a great many people, saying that gods made with hands are not gods. And there is danger not only that this trade of ours may come into disrepute but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis may be counted as nothing, and that she may even be deposed from her magnificence, she whom all Asia and the world worship." When they heard this they were enraged and were crying out, "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!" So the city was filled with the confusion, and they rushed together into the theater, dragging with them Gaius and Aristarchus, Macedonians who were Paul's companions in travel. (Acts 17:25-29)

Paul stood on the presupposition that God's words are true; therefore, idolatry is sin. Everyone who preached and believed this from the Bible were in immediate danger. Watch a present-day example of this documentary paint the wall black (24:17 min).

Christian, you may feel the pressure soon to give up the truth on sexuality, gender, and morals. The cancel culture may come. Are you ready to stand on biblical doctrine regardless of what may happen to your social media feeds and livelihood? I hope it never happens; however, you need to settle in your heart how important biblical doctrine is for you and the lost world around you.

Read what Paul shared with Timothy, "Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers." (1 Timothy 4:16)

Look at how many have turned away from sound doctrine and gone the way of the culture because of the pressure of emotions and pressure of cancel culture. We will now move on to how presuppositions are exposed; you are either on the solid rock of Christ or the sinking sand of popular opinion.

3. All presuppositions will be exposed by life

When bad things happen: child turning away from the faith, loss of a child or young loved one, or the pressure of the culture implodes on you, this will expose what you believe about God's sovereignty, holiness, omniscience, and man being responsible to God's precepts in His word.

Having to harmonize God's word in all those categories will strengthen your biblical network of beliefs, but failing to do this may result in moving from sound doctrine when either hard situations or cultural pressure comes. The problem will always be with us, not God. If God is holy, then his word is infallible and inerrant. Infallible means that whatever God's word addresses, it addresses sufficiently. Inerrant means that God's original autographs are without error. If you think there is a contradiction, the issue is with your interpretation, not the scriptures.

Taking the time to find out what the scriptures say about evil, the fall of man, the elect being saved, man's responsibility, God's holiness, foreknowledge, omniscience, and sovereignty. This will be vitally important to building a strong Christian worldview. At the end of the day, the question is do you really take God at his word and realize the text has one major meaning? If you do you have an underlying assumption that you will be able to build on that will allow the harmonization of tension that biblical doctrine will bring. What is some of the tension you will face?

 Did God decree the fall of man?

 If he did, how can humans be responsible for his sin?

 If God wishes that no one will perish, why are the non-elect condemned to hell?

These are just some tension point, and I am sure you can come up with several more. I just wanted to get you started.

Next month's article will seek to untangle the doctrinal knot of God's decreed will (Did God decree the fall of man?) and God's preceptive will (God's guidelines for life from the Bible). I hope you see the importance of biblical doctrine. The world needs it in order to repent and have faith in Jesus to receive the proper underlying assumptions that allow them to make sense out of reality.

People don't like to talk about underlying assumptions, but everyone has them. No one is neutral; they are looking at life through a particular set of lenses. We must lovingly direct them to be honest to see the inconsistencies and arbitrariness. Watch this video where I attempted this.

Remember the two warnings I gave, beware of emotions and the cancel cultural pressure shifting you off your firm underlying assumptions rooted in Christ. Don't be the one that is being swept away by emotions and the cancel culture. These two will destroy the proper interpretation of God's word.

Until next month go out and proclaim the gospel to see a life transformed