Hammer on Anvil '

Imagine a scenario for a moment.  A man named Bob is walking down the street when he sees a woman carrying a purse approaching from the opposite direction.  When they cross paths, Bob grabs the woman’s purse and sprints away.

This is the true version of events as far as the scenario is concerned.  In this version, Bob is a thief.

Now let’s add some information.  In this version of events, Bob had been talking on his cell phone before he saw the woman.  His wife, who was only a few blocks away, had called Bob to frantically explain that a woman had just stolen her purse.  When Bob saw the woman approaching, he immediately recognized his wife’s purse.  It was easily distinguished from other purses because of some special pins and beads that Bob’s wife had decorated it with.  When Bob got close enough, he grabbed the purse and ran off.

In this version of events, Bob is the good guy and the woman is the thief.  There’s just one problem.  This version isn’t the truth.  This version adds information to the truth in order to make something different appear to be the truth.

Or to offer a different illustration, imagine that you have built a tiny house out of Lego blocks.  Somebody else comes along with a lot more Legos.  They add Legos inside, around, and on top of the house.  The end result is a six foot tall statue of Yoda.  (I’m a big Star Wars fan, so I couldn’t resist this illustration.)

At this point, is your tiny house still there?  Sure.  It’s still somewhere in there, but it has been so fundamentally changed by addition that it can no longer be called a house.  The additions have transformed it into something else entirely.

Now let’s apply this to Christianity.  Christians (and non-Christians) sometimes do the same thing to the Bible and to the character of Jesus Christ.  And there’s only so much that can be added until it has been changed so much that it isn’t the Truth anymore.

The smaller additions often come about when we fail to read the Bible to know what it actually says.  If you are a basically good person, you will go to Heaven, right?  There are many roads to Heaven, right?  If I believe in God, that’s enough, right?

 No, the Bible never says anything of the sort.  Somewhere along the line, somebody added these myths.

The larger additions often result in splinter religions that consider themselves Christians, but they have added so much that the Truth is indistinguishable from the additions.  The one that I am most familiar with is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or as they are more commonly known, Mormons.  Most Mormons believe that they worship the same God and Christ as Christians do.  However, they are mistaken.

Here are some of the additions Mormons have made to the Bible.  In addition to our Heavenly Father, we also have a Heavenly Mother.  They are married and they have had children.  One of those children was Jesus.  However, they also had millions of other children, including you, me, and Satan.  Jesus got married and had children.  There are different layers to Heaven.  Almost everyone will make it to at least one of the layers of Heaven.  And if you are a practicing Mormon during your time on Earth and meet certain criteria, then you will become a God or Goddess yourself someday.

As I hope you can see, what we have here is a Yoda built on top of a house.  God is still in there, as is Jesus, but the entire structure has been so fundamentally changed that it is no longer the same thing at all.

So, just like last week, I urge you to keep addition in mind when you consider 2 Corinthians 13:5a, “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves.”