Greer Willis-Pastor
I recently came across a series
of talks called “Myths
That Make Us Miserable."
Have you ever considered that what
you believe can actually mess up your life? Your ideas about
life can cause you to miss the most important things in life or
even make you miserable. In this series the author points out
beliefs that people have that will make us miserable if we
believe them and act on them. It has been said that ideas
have consequences.
What we hold to be true about
life, ideas that we use to make decisions and form attitudes are
called our belief system or worldview. Everyday you make
decisions on how to treat people, how to succeed in life, how
you make ethical & moral decisions using your own worldview.
That means that your Worldview has consequences for
you and those around you; your worldview is very powerful
because it drives and directs your daily life.
We all have watched a large
thunderstorm move across the far horizon. It has a massive
cloud structure going up 50, maybe 70,000 feet. It is loaded
with tons of moisture that will fall as rain as it moves across
the land. Those massive thunderstorms move as one unit. They
are called a weather cell. They are driven by the steering wind
currents above them in the atmosphere. That is like the ideas
or worldview that drives and directs our life. We have basic
ideas that are the steering currents in our lives by which we
form goals, make decisions, develop attitudes, and by which we
measure life’s purpose and meaning. One person defined
worldview as “my beliefs that I build my life on.”
The truth is everybody has a
worldview whether they realize it or not. Remember Forrest
Gump. He said, “Life is like a box of chocolates.” That’s a
worldview. His idea of life was like opening each individually
wrapped piece of chocolate. You don’t know what you’re going to
get. When you say, “I’ve always thought of life as…” that’s
your worldview. “I think of life as a party,” “I think
of life as a contest,” “I think of life as a race,”
or “I think of life as a circus.” The way you view life
is going to be a large part of your worldview. How you view
life, how you view God, how you view other people--that’s all a
part of your worldview.
The author of this series of talks
on MYTHS said that one myth that will make us miserable is the
belief that: "It doesn’t matter what you believe as long as
you’re sincere."
I saw a guy once at a party walk
up behind a woman that he thought was his wife and put his arm
around her waist, kind of resting his hand on her hip. As they
both looked at one another he realized that he had made a
mistake. He was very sincere but very wrong and very sorry. I
read recently about a pilot who thought that he
was high enough to get over a range of mountains but flew into
them crashing his airplane. It does matter what you believe.
Eventually sincerity crashes as it runs into truth. Because
truth is like a mountain. It is higher than you think it is,
and it isn’t going to move no matter how much sincere you are;
you will run into it.
Truth is always true.
If it was true 2000 years ago it’s going to be true 2000
years from today. In fact, if it’s new it’s not true. Because
truth has been around forever. We are constantly
discovering truth. We discover more truth all the time about
DNA and about genes and all kinds of things @ our physical
makeup. We call it new truth, but it’s been there all along.
We just didn’t know it. It’s been around since God created the
universe.
So sincerity is not enough. I can
sincerely say, “I believe that the sun revolves around the
earth.” It doesn’t matter how sincere I am about it. I’m
sincerely wrong. It’s just like all the people in Columbus’s
day who sincerely believed the world was flat. It’s not flat
and it never will be flat. When I have a doctor working on me,
operating on me and I’m lying on the operating table, I want
more than sincerity. I want competency. I want the doctor to
be in touch with truth and reality. The one thing I don’t want
to hear a doctor say when he’s working on me is “Ooops! I
sincerely didn’t mean to do
that!” No. I want him to get it right.
Another myth that can make us
miserable is the
situational myth. IT says: “It doesn’t really matter what
you believe because it all depends on the circumstance.”
You can believe one thing in one situation and believe another
thing in another and even a totally different one in another
situation. Sly Stone said, “Different strokes for different
folks.”
In our multi-cultured world, in
our pluralistic society, this one is a real popular worldview.
Nobody wants to say, What you’re doing is not right. The only
thing that’s wrong in our society today, a lot of people
believe, is when you tell somebody what they are doing is
wrong. Then you’re wrong.
A lot of people like to pick and
choose. They say “When I go on date, I’ll have ‘this’ set of
beliefs. But when I go to church I’ll have ‘this’ set of
beliefs. Then when I go to work and I’m closing that deal I’m
going to have ‘these values. Then when I need to cheat on a
test at school then this is important.” Whatever works I will
use it to be successful. This type of thinking is called
pragmatism. It is a very popular way of handling life.
A survey was taken to determine
the spiritual lives of people. This survey found that
Sixty-two percent of Americans consider themselves to be
deeply spiritual. But when they sifted that down and said how
does your spirituality affect your day to day decision making?
It didn’t. In fact, 24% said they make their
moral choices based on what feels comfortable. 16%
said they make moral choices based on the Bible. 9% said
they make moral choices based on what makes other people happy
or causes the least conflict.
Then they asked about absolute
truth. They found America was divided in three parts.
One third of America believes that moral truth is absolute.
That it’s not dependent on circumstance. If it’s true it’s
always true. Another one third of America believed that
morality and truth is always determined by the situation.
And another third of America believes that they don’t even
know if moral truth exists.
When You want to use what’s
convenient for you, what happens is that it creates confusion
and stress and all kinds of negative emotions in your life.
Truth is always true.
There’s a problem with this
situational thinking. There are things that work in our favor
that are just plain evil. If you bug me and you’re really
irritating me I could shoot you and you’d be out of my life.
That would be very pragmatic. It worked for me. The only
problem is it’s morally wrong to murder. Hitler’s decision to
kill six million Jews in World War II was pragmatic. Whatever
works… Wipe ‘em out. It might have worked for him but it was
evil.
The Bible says this in
Proverbs 21, “There is a way that seems right for a man
but in the end it leads to death.” It seems
effective in the situation but in the end it leads to death. A
lot of things might seem right – whatever works for you – but in
the end they lead to a destructive life.
You don’t break God’s universal
laws. They break you. You can say I don’t believe in them!
But they’re still there. It’s like that pilot trying to fly
over those mountains. They are still there and they won’t go
away.
You meet whatever-works-for-me
people all the time. ?“You are cheating on your wife?”
Yeah. “How’s it going?” So far so good. “You are
stealing from your boss?” Yeah. “How’s it going?”
So far so good. “Are you still getting strung out on drugs
or alcohol?” Yeah. “How’s it going?” So far so
good. You meet these people everywhere. Their marriage is
headed for a train wreck. Their business, their personal life,
their relationships, their health – all headed for the scrap
yard of life. And they’re saying, “So far so good!” Just
because it’s working now doesn’t mean it’s right or it will
continue working. Just because you’re not feeling the
consequences of it yet, all ideas have consequences
sooner or later. The Bible says, “Be careful how you
think; your life is shaped by your thoughts.”
Some one wrote these words summing
up situational thinking: “The crumbling of our culture, the
crisis in our schools, the controversies in our courts, the
corruption in our businesses, the chaos in our government, the
carnality in our churches, the confusion in our families, and
the conflicts in our personal lives are all caused by this
futile attempt to hold and believe and live out incompatible and
contradictory worldviews at the same time.
The wonderful thing about
worldview and the set of values you life by is that it is a
choice. Although your set of beliefs can make your lives
miserable, the good news is that a worldview is a choice
and you can choose something that really works.
How do you know when you have a
wrong worldview? You start asking questions like, Why are
things not working out? Why is this happening to me? Why are
things not happening the way I thought they were going to
happen? It could be that you have a faulty worldview.
AND You need to get it in line
with truth and reality.
There’s one other worldview.
It’s the one that the Bible talks about. The Bible calls it
Theism. This worldview says God made me for His
purposes & with His help I can find purpose and happiness in
life.
Theism comes from the Greek word
for God, Theo. “Timothy” and “Dorothy” – both of those
names mean “lover of God.” Theology is the study of God. The
Bible says that God created us for a purpose. The Bible says in
Colossians 1 “For everything, absolutely
everything, above and below, visible and invisible, everything
got started in Him and finds its purpose in Him.”
Absolutely everything was created by God, for a purpose. When
God created you, He had a purpose and reason in mind. You were
created By God and for God. Until you
understand that, life does not
make sense.
How can we find a biblical
worldview and choose to make it ours?
1st We begin to see
what the Bible says.
The book of Proverbs 29:18
“If people can’t see what God is doing they stumble all over
themselves.[That is what we have been talking about with
these myths that make us miserable]
It goes on to say: “But
when they attend to what He reveals they are most blessed.”
If we don’t have God’s truth, we
don’t see what God’s doing, we don’t have a worldview that’s
solid, we don’t see where our life is headed, so we stumble all
over ourselves. When you don’t know the purpose of life you
just drift through it. When you don’t know the purpose of life
you don’t have any meaning. You’re just kind of hanging out,
wondering what’s next. But when you attend to what He reveals,
you pay attention to God’s truth that is revealed in the Bible,
then you’re blessed. If you want your life to be blessed, then
you pay attention to God and get your worldview in line with His
reality and truth and not popular opinion.
2nd . Begin to Apply
God’s Truth to your Life.
Jesus finished His most famous
sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, with a story. He said there
were two guys who went out and they built houses. There have
been several houses built in Pecos recently. One is behind my
house and the other is not far away on Texas. In Jesus story
one guy built his house on nothing but a foundation of sand. He
is like the guy who had a worldview that will eventually make
you miserable. It does not stand up to reality. He did not
spend much time thinking about the consequences of how he was
building his house that represented his life. The other guy,
however, built his house on the solid foundation of a rock.
Solid rock. He is the one who looked at life and realized that
the only values and beliefs that matched reality out there was
God’s truth. When the storm come along, the wind blew, the
water flooded everything, Jesus pointed out that the guy who
built his house on the shaky foundation of sand, had his house
to collapse in storm. It falls in. It crumbles. His life was
miserable. There’s nothing left of it. But the guy who built
his house on the solid foundation of rock, it stands the test of
time. And he is blessed of God. You have the choice of
building your life on the solid foundation of God’s truth
about reality. Believe me the storms will come. I have had a
few and you probably have too. So you already know that life
can dish it out sometimes. That is reality. But it is also
reality that when you begin to apply God’s truth to your life
that He helps you.
3rd Thing: Build a
solid set of values and beliefs by Asking God to help you.
Put your life under God’s care and
He will enable you to change.
Several years ago there was a
television special about miraculous changes in children with
certain mental disorders. It featured the commitment of one
autistic child’s mother that really touched viewers. She moved
to a clinic where for eight months, 14 hours a day, seven days a
week, she worked with her son, retraining his brain. In the end,
he was completely cured of autism and is now a healthy
three-year-old boy.
Do you think God will do anything
less than what this mother did for her child? He will teach you
how to build a solid life of values & beliefs if you ask Him and
follow His direction.
The Message paraphrase
of Romans, 12:1:, fix your attention on
God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Unlike the culture
around you ...God brings the best out of you and develops well
formed maturity in you.....” I encourage you to simply
talk to God and tell that you are turning your life over to Him
so that He will develop the values and the beliefs that will
make you life blessed instead of being miserable.
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