September 21, 2022

Proverbs 14: 12 (NIV)

There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.

Nobody can be truly better off from believing and advocating a lie.*

In the movie, Quigley Down Under, Matthew Quigley and Crazy Cora, after being left for dead in the Australian Outback, have acquired a horse upon whose back they hope to ride to civilization. When Crazy Cora points out that they are making good time, Quigley laconically responds, “Don’t know where we’re going but there’s no point in being late.”

Quigley’s words could be the motto for the man who pursues a way that seems right to him. A man who is sincere while on the wrong path is just as lost as the one who deliberately, rebelliously takes the highway to hell. Case in point: Saul/Paul. Read Acts 8: 1-3, and 9: 1 and 2 for a look at someone who wasn’t just sincerely wrong – he was zealous and bloodthirsty. When Saul was blinded by the light on the road to Damascus, Jesus didn’t tell him that being a terrorist was okay since he thought that persecuting Christians was pleasing to God. Jesus told him the truth and Saul had to decide what to do with his new knowledge.

I sometimes think that Paul had an unfair advantage. I mean, who wouldn’t turn to the truth if Jesus appeared to you in a flash of light and gave you an attitude adjustment? Paul might say that our advantages far surpass his: we have the truth in a handy reference book called the New Testament. He didn’t. He had to write most of it. Ignorance of the truth is no excuse when it is so readily available to us, and we are faced with the same choice as Paul: continue to pursue the way that seems right or pursue truth.

Don’t make good time on the road to hell. Seek the truth in God’s word. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you in your search for the path to righteousness - for sincerely wrong leads to death.

God created man with the ability to think, to acquire knowledge and to discern truth. God wants us to use our minds.*