Barry Newton

In the playground, a child might start to believe, "since I cannot run as fast as other kids, I am not as good as them." Through school or watching television, a young person could begin to accept, "I have evolved from lower forms of life." Certain young adults might draw the conclusion that what is most important for their lives is whether they have the right clothes, the right car, or perhaps the right friends.

Our lives are awash with notions which we have picked up through the years. All of the ideas we embrace as being true will have consequences for our lives. The prison walls of feeling inadequate and inferior can be slowly built up by thoughts such as: "because I don't have ___, I am not really an important person" or "because ___ has happened to me, others are better than me."

The stale suffocating dungeon of living a meaningless life can be the ultimate conclusion which comes from embracing the belief that we are here as the result of blind naturalistic forces. Along the way, the idea of naturalistic evolution becomes an uncontainable acid eating through one's concepts of truth, morality, and meaning to leave the individual with nothing more than the belief that such things are social conventions and personal preferences.

Chains of compulsiveness can have their origin in many different types of thoughts. Believing that life is measured by what I have or the conviction that in order to be somebody I must prove myself can drive a person into the doomed effort to generate genuine success based upon this world.

These paltry examples do not even being to scratch the surface of the varied consequences which arise from the vast continuum of ideas. All of the ideas we embrace will have consequences for our lives.

What is important for us to know is that Jesus came from God to testify to what is true. That's right -- real truth which will always be true regardless whether people agree with it or not. Through his teachings, Jesus has sought to free us from those lies which would debilitate and destroy us.

Consider, for example, the liberating power of the truth, "your life is not measured by what you have." (Lk. 12:15) Also, through his death and resurrection Jesus destroyed the chains of sin and death to set us free from our sinfulness in order that we might serve God in truth. Through Jesus we can know the truth and it will set us free.