LEARN TO THINK FOR YOURSELF (3)

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 6 

“My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge.” Hos 4:6 NIV 

Professor Benno Muller-Hill said that one morning, he stood last in a line of forty students in his schoolyard. His physics teacher had set up a telescope so that each student could view a planet and its moons. The first student looked through it. When the teacher asked if he could see anything, the boy said no; his near sightedness hampered his view. The teacher showed him how to adjust the focus, and the boy finally said he could see the planet and moons. One by one, the students stepped up to the telescope and saw what they were “supposed” to see. Finally, the second to last student looked into the telescope and announced that he couldn’t see anything. “You idiot,” shouted the teacher, “you have to adjust the lenses.” The student tried, but he finally said, “I still can’t see anything. It’s all black.” The teacher, disgusted, looked through the telescope himself, and then he looked up with a strange expression. The cap still covered the telescope lens. None of the students had been able to see anything! Until Jesus came along, everybody thought the Pharisees had figured out the truth about God and how life should be lived. But Jesus said, “You don’t know the Scriptures, and you don’t know the power of God” (Mk12:24 NLT). He also said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (Jn 8:32 NLT). Note the words: “You will know.” The only way to know the truth is through intuition, investigation, and application. It’s not intellectual knowledge that comes from something you’ve heard, but intuitive knowledge that comes from experience.