Many Americans Prefer A ‘Higher Power’ To The God Of The Bible

A recent article in Huffington Post is entitled, "Many Americans Prefer A ‘Higher Power’ To The God Of The Bible, Study Finds." 

It goes on to say that only 10 percent of Americans do not believe in some sort of spiritual force. It’s just that they don’t want to believe He is the God who is described in the Bible.  

Many of those who reject the God of the Bible have an incorrect understanding of who God is. Some of them have rejected not the God of the Bible but a misunderstanding of the God of the Bible. Some have not rejected the God of the Bible but their own perceived terms of how a person comes to know that God. 

The article claims that this belief in something bigger exists even among atheists agnostics and “nothing in particulars.” (I kid you not. That is the title of this third group. Pew Research has labeled them, “Nones.”) They believe in a higher power but “a new study from the Pew Research Center shows that for a significant number of Americans, “God” is not the God of the Bible.”

Here is the thing. None of them can provide any evidence for what they believe. The God of the Bible, on the other hand, has provided that evidence in the Bible and proven it to be true through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. There is so much intrinsic and extrinsic evidence that the record of the Bible is true that it requires far more faith to discount it than to believe it. The key to all of this is that faith is something passed to us. We don’t just have it. 

The faith of the born again Christian was given to Him by God

The faith of the atheist, agnostic and “nothing in particular” - he got his faith from - “nothing in particular.”

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5ae214d4e4b055fd7fc9af65

A Crabby Perspective

A friend of mine recently gave me this illustration. He said he was out fishing for crabs and needed a bucket. He couldn’t find one with a lid but the guy he was going crabbing with told him, “ You won’t need a lid. Crabs are losers. “ He promised he would see what he meant once they got their first crabs. Sure enough he said, they were losers. As soon as a crab started to climb out of the bucket another crab would pull him back down. 

The illustration has obvious lessons doesn’t it? Don’t let the people we hang around pull us down. 

But those lessons depend on one huge presupposition, that being in the bucket is a bad thing. Admittedly, it seems bad. The crab is going to get cooked and eaten if he stays in the bucket. That sounds bad except that I believe he was created for that very purpose. Perhaps his crabby friends are only helping him fulfill one of the chief reasons for his existence. 

I understand the analogy and even agree with it. But I do see another lesson from a different perspective. We need people in our lives who help us fulfill the purpose for which God created us. The corrupted nature of man constantly strives to climb out of the will of God and make themselves something God never intended, to be their own gods, the masters of their own destiny. Thank God for those people who remind us to stay in the will of God. 

In this respect I see a few buckets a person is best to stay in:

Marriage

God has designed marriage to be one man and one woman for a lifetime. There are numerous temptations that make us seem like this bucket is small, confining and maybe dragging us down. We need friends to keep us in our bucket. 

Work

If a man won’t work neither should he eat. We would like to rationalize that to refer to the ne’er do well. The man who climbs his way to financial independence or works his way to an early and prosperous retirement must be excluded, right? I am not so sure. To become financially able to serve God more freely is certainly advisable. To become free enough to spend time and money in a vacation for the rest of one’s life would be a terrible waste of God’s will. 

Church 

It is impossible to put a group of people into a tight community like a church without some disagreements and disputes. The devil would love to convince the Christian that he could do better without the confinements of the local church. The matter of fact is that God created that church specifically to provoke us to love and Good works. Someone needs to keep pulling us into the unity of the local church. 

I’m not criticizing the first application of the illustration. We would do best to avoid friendships that pull us down into sin. But the friend who keeps us in the will of God is no loser.