New
World Christian Ministries
Bellingham, Washington
All Material © 1986 - 2003, NWCM & Ray
Hermann
The
weather has been kind to the Pacific northwest recently; Spring has brought the area into
full bloom. During one glorious Sunday walk, a few memories of my childhood returned as I
watched some youngsters play ball in a nearby park.
Most of the kids in my neighborhood were poor, like I was, and we
"made do" most of the time. Our play things were usually the cast-offs of
others. One boy had a real baseball bat, but organizing a game in the local vacant lot was
not possible, because we had no baseball. So, I vividly remember the day that my best
friend brought home a real baseball that was discarded by the town's minor league. It was
defective. The ball was lopsided and its weight was off-center, but for us kids it was
wonderful for we could now play a real game.
We soon learned that the ball traveled in a natural curve when thrown.
At short distances the error was negligible, but the further away it was thrown, the
greater the error in missing the target. We put up with the flaw by compensating for the
error. We continued with our games and before long we forgot that the ball was defective,
because we got used to the adjustments we made. We became very good ball players, too.
Flawed Christian Beliefs
These are the memories that I had as I
watched those children recently. And it brought to mind how false religious doctrine is
kind of like my childhood baseball experience. Like the lopsided baseball, at first the
error seems slight, but over distance the flaw is compounded until it misses its target by
a large margin. And, like the baseball game, people tend, over time, to compensate their
other beliefs to fit the flaw until they are comfortable with it. The false doctrine
becomes the "accepted truth."
Today, some Christian
churches are teaching with lopsided doctrines and
their members have learned to accept the flaws as correct. Those of us that are so very
fortunate to have learned truth have to be very careful. Each bit of information that is
picked up must be examined to make sure it isn't "off center." We don't want to
become comfortable with error.
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© 1994, Ray Hermann
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