By Ralph W. Moore
Now, there’s a strange title.
Idolatry is by far the most wicked sin any person can commit. It caused fervently religious people to nail the Lord Jesus Christ to a brutal cross. These religious people placed their own ideas of truth above the very Person Who determines truth!
When one hears of the sin of idolatry, many things come to mind. I immediately think of ancient people carving a statue out of wood or stone, setting it up in a shrine and bowing down before it.
But idolatry is the worship of anything other than the Lord God Almighty Himself. Anything. Even our perceptions of truth. Truth is reality as perceived by God. God reveals His perception of reality—truth—in His holy Word, the Bible.
In the Bible, God explains that every person born from a human male has a sinful nature (Ps. 51:5; Rom. 5:17; 1 Cor. 15:21,22; Eph. 2:1-3; 1 Pet. 1:17,18). This sinful nature means that man begins life spiritually dead, having a deceitful heart that only desires evil and selfishness. We are blinded by sin, and cannot see truth unless God Himself opens our eyes to our depravity.
Even after God gives us new life through His Holy Spirit, we still battle with our old nature, thinking our blind ideas of truth are actually God’s truth. But God’s Word is the only standard of truth in the universe. Anything else is only man-made opinion.
More importantly, God’s Word is exclusively God’s originally intended meaning. Any other meaning applied to Bible verses is not only mere man-made opinion, it is idolatry. Placing our sin-marred, finite understanding above God’s perfect, holy understanding is committing the heinous crime of idolatry.
God commands us to study His Word diligently in order to understand God’s intended original meaning of His revelation of truth (2 Tim. 2:15). God says exactly what He means, and means exactly what He says. Studying God’s Word with a "this is what this verse means to me" attitude is useless. We are commanded to discover what this verse means to God, and then obey it.
God also commands us to understand His will (Eph. 5:17). How can one know God’s will in whether he should attend this school or that school? What about home education? Should I use this method or that method? If God commands me to know His will, how do I know which is the “godly” method?
Believe it or not, the answer to every question of God’s will on every decision a person can possibly make is in the Bible. Again, God commands us to know His will—not guess, throw out a fleece, or find a prophet.
If God commands us to know His will, then He obviously reveals it in His Word. That is exactly what God says. Scripture trains the man of God and equips him for “every good work” (2 Tim.3:14-17). Again, Scripture is God’s Word—not man’s ideas, opinions or interpretations.
God set up New Testament reality like two pillars. The left pillar represents all the things God commands us to DO, like "You shalt love the Lord your God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind" (Matthew 22:37) The right pillar represents all the things God commands us NOT to do, like "Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers." (Eph. 4:29)
Everything else that God does not specifically address is addressed in Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8–10. These are matters of Christian liberty, also called matters of conscience—the "gray area" between the two pillars.
In matters of Christian liberty, which is anything not specifically addressed by God, God allows us to make the decision. So, what method of home education is God’s will? God tells us to train our children. But He does not specifically command particular education methods, just specific principles to be incorporated in the method we use.
For an example of a principle versus a method, God commands us to "Rejoice in the Lord always" (Phil. 4:4)! I can obey that command and fulfill the specific principle by several methods: I can sing along with a worship CD, listen to a preacher extol the magnificence of the Lord on the radio, or rejoice as I read God’s Word displaying His glory! God totally supports any method I decide to use if it obeys the principle in His command.
God permits in Romans and 1 Corinthians that you may decide for yourself and your family which method you use to obey His commands, provided God’s four conditions are met:
1) The foremost consideration of any decision made by a believer is the glory of God, for this is His life we are living.
2) The second consideration is that any decision must not violate related commandments of God.
3) The third consideration is that any decision must not violate the believer’s conscience.
4) The final consideration is that any decision must not violate a weaker brother’s conscience.
WARNING: Judging another Christian’s liberty is condemned by God (Romans 14:4, 10, 13). Anyone rebuking a brother because he exercises his Christian liberty differently is committing the heinous sin of idolatry. Placing our opinions above God’s commands is the worst of sins.
If God does not specifically spell out homeschooling methods, and He does not, then this is a matter of Christian liberty. Judge another Christian’s liberty to your own peril, for God fervently hates such idolatrous hypocrisy (Mark 7:1-13).
Rather, understand the will of God, and understand matters of Christian liberty. Rejoice with other Christians in their liberty, though they may not exercise it the same way. In a word, "...love thy neighbour as thyself".(Matt.22:39).
Ralph Moore graduated from Arizona State University in 1984 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Telecommunications. He also attended Reformed Theological Seminary in the early nineties.
Mr. Moore has spent his 20 years as a committed Christian learning of God's ways in order to know Him intimately. Many people have been asking the tough questions about God since the September 11th tragedy—questions such as: "Where is God?" or, "If God is all-loving and all-powerful, why do evil and suffering exist?"
Clear answers from God's Word, the Bible, are presented in Mr. Moore's book Yes, I'm A Christian! So What Do I Believe? Knowing God intimately by the Truth, the Lord Jesus Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, is the very definition of eternal life (John 17:3)! It is the prayer of Mr. Moore that those chosen by God to love Him would seek to know Him more intimately in every moment of life.
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