Shelf Fungi
John Miller
01/13/20
- Windstream Mail
R E F L E C T I O N S Thoughts on nature and the Christian faith - 1/13/20 ______________________________________________________________________ "For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough. - II Cor. 11:4 |
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After autumn has ended and before the first snows have blanketed our property things look pretty bleak around here. It seems as though all color has taken a vacation until spring. But color can be found if one looks closely. I came across a rotting log covered with a few very colorful shelf fungi. Their beauty however hides a dark secret. They are being nourished by the interior of the rotting log. They are, in fact, the product of decay. A corrupt foundation can indeed produce an outward beauty. This is sadly true in many of our churches. If the person and work of Jesus is distorted, if the Holy Spirit is replaced by a counterfeit spirit, if the gospel is man-centered in any way, then a rot has been introduced which will result in what looks to be beautiful on the outside but is in reality the sign of a dying church. People will be attracted no doubt to a church like this, but the result will simply be the addition of new clothing and make-up to a corpse. The fault and the accountability belong both to those leaders who have introduced false teaching and to those who have blindly accepted it. A healthy church must constantly be returning to scripture, to reexamining what is taught and what traditions are being followed. What a church is fed determines what it will produce. New programs and new techniques cannot replace sound theology. Shelf fungi are designed to grow on what is rotting and dying. We aren't. - John
