Everyone pledges to lose weight “in the new year.”
Okay maybe not everyone. I did, though. I want to lose forty pounds(!) before Halloween, when I plan to start gaining at least half of it back. See? It’s not breaking the resolution if you write that into it. The thing is, the first day of the New Year was a Wednesday. Wednesday’s not the day you start a thing. You start things at the beginning of a week, not the middle. No one starts a diet on a Wednesday, unless you’re a psychopath.
So I very carefully worded my resolution to be “I’m going to lose weight starting around the new year.” That’s fair right? I can wiggle and worm and create loop holes to get out of eating less, right? Sure I can, because they’re my resolutions. I make the rules; I can change them as I see fit.
>>BIBLE APPLICATION INCOMING<<
People use that same self-serving logic when interpreting the Bible. They read what is plainly written and, if it interferes with what they want to do, they either discard it entirely or they twist and turn and spin and contort it until it sort of maybe could almost say something that conveniently is exactly what I want to do already.
And that’s how we have religious division.
The problem is, you didn’t write the Bible. You didn’t make the rules. God did. Listen to what He says and resolve to do it, His way. If everyone did that, wouldn’t we all agree? By the way, I’m starting my diet tonight, a Thursday. No it’s not the beginning of the week, but if I want to do things right, there’s no better time to start than now. I hope all my religiously-divided friends (and me!) have the same attitude toward Scripture this year.
~ Matthew