Word of God or Teachings of Man?

“I create my own answer, whatever works best for me. And that’s the best way to experience religion”

This statement summarized what I was hearing during a coffeeshop conversation with Riley, a college student who believes some sort of creator god exists but doesn’t believe one can, or should, understand or relate to it. Yet at the same time, without reference to the standards such a higher power might set, Riley was confident of his own goodness and that he would surely deserve rewards in eternity.

This self-righteous belief seems to be common the further we get from God’s holy standard and are left with a standard of our own. The self-righteousness of the Pharisees, the religious teachers of Jesus’ time, seems to have resulted from the fact that there had been no new prophetic voices in Israel for some 400 years, ever since Malachi wrote the last book of the Old Testament. In its absence they had turned to the teaching of man rather than the words of God.

In the same way, I believe the self-righteousness of the “woke” movement today is largely due to an increasingly secular society that has rejected the teachings of God in favor of the teaching of man. It tends to come up with its own rules and punishment for what it perceives as right and wrong, often contrary to time-honored Biblical principles. Riley, for his part, hasn’t read the Bible much for himself and prefers to rely on his own sense of logic and his moral compass. When these fail, he said he is comfortable with the mystery of not knowing.

Riley, who identifies as gay, pointed to the hypocrisy of church members who condemn homosexuality but ignore other sins such as divorce or adultery. He makes a good point, but maybe needs to see the fingers pointing back at himself when he points out the sins of others.

Maybe I do too, so, like John the Baptist who ended the long silence of the intertestamental period that resulted in the self-righteousness of the Pharisees, I’d rather point people back to the word of God and our need for repentance. We need to get back to the word of God rather than the teachings of man.