Never accept 3rd hand knowledge as truth…..

I’m thinking here primarily of those in both Catholicism and Judaism, who have at some point been taught that scripture is not for the “ordinary” person to discern, but rather that only those who’ve spent years studying it or reading it are “wise” enough to be able to discern its meaning enough to pass that on to the masses. Catholicism has its priests and Judaism its Rabbis (and even Islam has its Imams) – all of these remove any responsibility from the believer to do much in the way of reading for themselves.   Islam and Judaism force a rote learning of the scriptures on the youth in particular, but it’s purely a repetitious learning; most don’t understand what they’re reading.   And therein lies many dangers. If you’re in one of those belief systems, then you’re perhaps guilty of accepting 3rd hand information as your foundation for life, and that I feel is a rather errant way of living any sort of belief system.

Jehovah God has been gracious enough to provide us with scriptures – His Word, which I presume we would all agree on.  Thus, why would you then believe that He provided it cloaked in some sort of disguise or overlay to make it almost impossible for anyone to understand unless they spent years stuck away in a monastery, or searching out the hidden depths of every single word and punctuation mark.  God is not a God of pretence, nor confusion.  His Word was given to those who couldn’t read much of the time, but they were skilled with the ability to remember the history of their ancestors and were able to verbally pass that on to others – where in scripture do you read about any one of them spending years trying to search out the hidden meaning of what they knew (i.e. the Jewish Kaballah) or hiding away somewhere repeating what they knew ad infinitum (as many monks do).

Scripture is given by God to be readily and easily understood by those who are truly seeking Him.  He has given his Ruach Ha Kodesh (the Holy Spirit) to all those who desire to know Him fully and He is the One who leads us into all Truth for God is Truth.  Therefore, the only thing you need to do if you want to know God, is to read scripture for yourself, and ask Him to reveal the meaning to you.  If the thought of that scares you, you really need to ask why, and be willing to dive in and find out for yourself if you have anything to fear.

So many nowadays are led astray by the sometimes very errant discernment of others whom they hold in esteem. Too many Jews only listen to what their Rabbis say because they consider the Rabbi to be pretty much the equivalent of the Pope (i.e. someone who couldn’t possibly get spiritual matters wrong), and the Rabbis equally look to their own mentors (who look to someone “above” them, but ironically rarely God Himself),  in trying to determine how to live their lives or what to believe of any portion of scripture.  If you want to know what God wants you to do – read His Word yourself and discover the multitude of things I guarantee your priest or Rabbi has never told you.  Ultimately in any church service you will only ever hear at best maybe 5-10 minutes of scripture read and only what the “leader” thinks you will be “smart” enough to understand.   You may be quite surprised when you read either side of those particular passages to get the true context of what they mean.

The dangers of assumption….

I have multiple hidden illnesses, most of which cause chronic pain and am judged by many to be perfectly healthy because all they see is a smiling face and me getting on with my life. They don’t see the daily ritual of drugs that keep me able to continue on my feet at times, although thankfully I’m much better at the moment than I have been other years. But I find the assumption that because I look well, I must be well, highly frustrating.

However, a more serious issue is at stake for me and countless others who have any medical diagnosis, or in one case, (not me!) pregnancy. One of my diagnoses is fibromyalgia – a chronic rheumatic pain syndrome with varying and sometimes multiple symptoms, and quite often when I develop some new symptom whether pain, nausea, visual disturbance, skin rash, or bowel problems – invariably one or more of my docs will happily state “It’s just your fibromyalgia” and leave it at that. I’ve learnt over the past 15 years to never accept that statement until I’m content that it is indeed “just my fibro”! So now, if I have some symptom that I feel isn’t down to my fibro, I will push my GP to investigate it further, or even to refer me on to a Consultant for more in-depth testing. I’m ‘fortunate’ perhaps in having other more complex and potentially more serious conditions alongside it so my GP will tend to err on the side of caution and comply with my request. Sometimes I’m right in my concern, other times wrong, but the Consultants usually tell me I was right to get the symptom checked out given my history.

Sadly, though what I hear happening more often is that doctors make grave errors in assuming that whatever symptom someone presents with is firstly attributable to some already established diagnosis or health state, with sometimes dire outcomes. One notable case that instigated my thoughts on this post, was of a young 30 something mum to be who took quite ill in the middle of her pregnancy with vomiting and diarrhea etc. She was investigated by 3 or 4 doctors all of whom assumed her problems were just “severe morning sickness” and treated her with little more than fluid replacement for weeks. By the time one new doctor finally figured out it was more serious and tests confirmed she had severe Crohn’s disease (an inflammatory condition of the bowel) it was too late, and despite intensive treatment, she and her baby died from complications of the disease. This was an utterly unnecesary death in many ways, and just spoke volumes to me of the dangers of assumption. And I’m sure any of you reading this would equally have at least 1 horror story in your own experience of something similar.