The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law.

• Mark 1:22

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

• John 14:6

Boilerplate

I was born into a Presbyterian Church.  For all my life up until now, I have been a member of one Presbyterian Church or another.  It is told that the founding fathers were wondering how the organizational structure of the US Constitution should be set up and a founding father who was Presbyterian showed how it worked in his church.

So, if anyone has had enough time to screw up bureaucracy and the church as a whole, the Presbyterians are great at it.

I had someone tell me that I do not sound like a member of the Presbyterian church, and I replied that I might just be a Reformed School Dropout.  This is a play on words.  Reform school is what they used to call a special school for juvenile delinquents so that they could be incarcerated and given an education at the same time.  They do not have these schools anymore or they call them something different.  Presbyterians and a few other denominations are considered Reformed Theology instead of protestant, but the military could not understand the distinction, so my dog tags read PROTESTANT, meaning Christian and not Catholic.  And of course a school dropout is someone who quit before finishing.  Thus, I think I really dropped out of the reformed way of thinking and the bureaucracy of the denomination when I accepted Jesus into my heart.

When my heart is moved to do something, I feel that it is the work of the Holy Spirit.  Once I suggested that I was going to buy a banner to show where people were being persecuted for their faith and I simply wanted a prayer made on a specific day, the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted.  The pastor said he would send that to the worship and discipleship teams for approval.  As usual, it was buried in committee until after the specific day.  Bureaucracy had triumphed and the Holy Spirit was grieved.  The next year, I bought the banner.  I handed out prayer cards to my Sunday school class.  I displayed the banner each Sunday for a month before the day of prayer, and I took the banner down before a bureaucrat caught me.

Yes, I am a Reformed School Dropout.

Discussion

In the time of Jesus, you had to give your credentials.  You had to state who your teacher was.  You had to prove that you were worthy of the attention of the people in attendance.

No wonder they asked each other in Nazareth, “Isn’t He the son of the local carpenter?”

But Jesus spoke with His own authority.  He was not just fully human.  He was fully God.  He was and is His own authority.

I have heard and read a lot of people say that blog reading should come second to reading the Bible.  I agree with that.  We need to see how other people interpret various passages in the Bible, but we need to know what that passage says in the first place.

Why does the media think we need an interpretation of what was said, when we can hear what was said directly from the expert?

Oddly, we do that every time we watch the media.  Are we so unaccustomed to thinking that we allow someone else to think for us?

Let us go to the source of all Truth.  We may be looking in the mirror dimly until we see Jesus face-to-face.  But until then, I will hold onto the words Jesus said.

And what He said many times was to love others.  We can stand against other teachers, teachers of false doctrines and ideologies, while still loving the person who does not know the source of Truth.  They may not see it that way, but that is part of their problem.

Jesus is the Way.  Jesus is the Truth.  Jesus is the Life.

He needs no other credentials.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.