How to Determine Spiritual Truth

How do you determine spiritual truth? Reason? Common sense? Logic?
These approaches seem sensible, maybe even scientific. So why do they lead to so many different conclusions?

One reason my outreach conversations never cease to be interesting to me is I am amazed at how varied and creative the answers are to my simple question – “What do you think happens after this life?” A young man named Oscar responded with a detailed description of his belief that we are, as humans, the result of an experiment conducted by aliens who are monitoring our response to their manipulations of our gene pool, and that as higher powers these aliens themselves are gods from other galaxies.

Oscar had cobbled together his beliefs from various videos he has watched on the history channel, especially “Ancient Aliens”. He wasn’t joking, and I took him seriously, because this is really no different than dozens of other beliefs I’ve heard. After all, outside of God’s revelation of Himself in the Bible we are left with either our own reason, common sense, and logic, or the reasoning and logic of others.

Of course. some unbiblical beliefs are more common that others. Some I would say have reached the level of “accepted science”, such as the idea that since energy cannot be created or destroyed but simply changes forms, then our spirit or soul will likewise change forms when we die and become absorbed into a larger energy collective. Basically, we just cease to exist.

After I talked a while and focused on the fact that building and creating our own ideas about God is really a modern form of idol worship, Oscar turned from his space alien theory and focused on perhaps the most common idea about God and eternity of all: that on God’s balance scale we will be rewarded in heaven for our good deeds.

But I thought it was interesting how in one conversation I heard one of the most outlandish views of eternal truths - involving space alien gods - juxtaposed with one of the common views, a heavenly reward for our good behavior.

It was interesting because both views have something in common – they are based on the reason, common sense, and logic of man, and they are both equally mistaken.

Using our God-given faculties of logical thinking and common sense serves us well in many areas of life. But when it comes to spiritual truth, our ultimate authority needs to be God’s direct revelation through His Word.

In the Bible, the first letter of John ends abruptly with a warning: “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.” It’s an important reminder, because we can build idols physically, but we can also build them in our imaginations when we rely on our own abilities to know and describe God.

But how can we avoid idols? Fortunately, just before ending with that warning against idolatry, John gave advice on just how to do so: “We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.”

Knowing Jesus is the way to avoid idolatry. He is the way, the truth, and the life. He is the image of the invisible God, which means if you want to know God, look to Jesus. John tells us that Jesus gives understanding, and we learn about Jesus’ life and ministry through God’s word, the Bible. It might not seem as polished and engaging and provocative as “Ancient Aliens”, but then again, it is there to give us eternal truth that can lead us to a right relationship with our Creator, not to distract us and lead us unwittingly into idolatry.