Take Back the Good

I’ve been reading about world religions lately, and one of the most interesting things to me about them is...

  

that most of them are based, in some way, on the Bible. In most cases, a man (or more rarely a woman), stole principles, stories, or belief structures from the Bible and added other philosophies, self-proclaimed prophesies or visions (that no one else witnessed but the inventor of the religion), and cultish practices of the day to create something new. For various reasons, a few of these individuals garnered enough influence to grow a whole new religion that is still followed today.

To reject these heretical philosophies outright, Christians have sometimes given away some God designed good gifts. We are deathly afraid to align with anything considered “Buddhist” or “New Age”, and please don’t mistake us for “Jehovah’s witnesses” (even though, technically, we are). Also, we'll never wear rainbow colors again…cause we all know how that could be misconstrued. We have become so “anti” that we’ve let these groups make off with some of our inheritance.

I know that we mostly do it to avoid being swept up into false beliefs, and truly, the enemy is sneaky. We are right to be careful not to accept anything and everything into our hearts and minds. We are right to stay as close as we can to Truth. This failure is what led people to create those other religions in the first place. That serpent is still whispering “Did God really say?”

But we must temper our caution with intense devotion to what belongs to us as God’s children.

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” James 1:17

Good things belong to us…the children of God. We are the beneficiaries of them and the stewards over them. While other religions have had no choice but to use them for some of their foundations and practices (because there is no good outside of God and who would be willing to follow a religion with no good in it), we own them. And yes, “God’s good” rains down on the just and the unjust, but the rain falls at all for God’s children, those who love Him back.

An example of throwing out God’s good gifts because they’ve been tainted by evil that I see in my coaching work is the concept of “mindfulness”. The Buddhists did not develop this resource. It’s Biblical (2 Cor. 10:5; Matt. 6:34; Ps. 118:24). We are also told to meditate on Scripture (Ps. 1:2), on the things that are true and good and pure (Phil. 4:8), on Jesus Himself (Heb. 12:2). When we instantly reject anything to do with “mindfulness” or “meditation” because we believe they aren’t Christian, we miss out on powerful health resources that God has given to us. We need to disentangle the good from the evil (Buddhists use these resources to empty their minds while God intended these resources to focus our minds) and take back the good.

Everywhere we turn on this broken earth, we will find ways that the devil and sin have twisted what God created to be good. The devil isn’t a creator. Everything he gets credit for began with God’s good template. God created angels; the devil turned some into demons. God created humans; the devil tempts some onto his side. God created beauty; the devil uses it to lure people into sin. God created celebration; the devil makes it a reason to lose all self-restraint. God creates. The enemy taints.

My girls love to listen to music. They are continually being drawn to certain songs that they hear in their environment. When they want to add these songs to their daily music regime, we first determine if the message the songs are sending is, overall, good, lovely, true, right, and pure. This doesn’t necessarily mean it is a Christian song or a Christian artist. It just means that the song is based on godly ideas…love, faith, truth, goodness, hope, etc. Some of the songs seem good at first, but examining the lyrics reveals an underlying twisted philosophy. We leave these songs off the playlists that are being continually downloaded into their brains. But we don’t throw out all the songs that don’t fit our genre or circle of artists. We take back all the good that we can. It belongs to us.

My current life verse is in Romans 12 and simply reminds “Hate evil. Cling to good.” This guiding principle is revolutionizing my life when it comes to taking back what’s good. Humans want black and white, good and evil checklists. Our confirmation biases are built to fit everything into boxes because anything outside these boxes feels threatening. This is why we like our denominations and our doctrines and our lists of “dos and don’ts”. They make us feel more comfortable and safer, but they don’t make us freer.

To take back the good, we must examine our assumptions, biases, and judgments on a regular basis. We need to know why we believe what we believe, but we also need to know the voice of the Holy Spirit within us. He’s the One who guides us into all Truth and helps us extricate good from the grip of evil. He teaches us to hate evil, because it’s what breaks the world, but also find and cling to the good.

Let’s not be afraid to look evil in the eye and say, “give that good back!” Instead of throwing the "good gift" baby out with the tainted bathwater, let’s dry off the "good gift" baby and put its God-given clothes back on it. Let’s let go of our preconceived and “always done it that way” notions and take the time to figure out and fight for the good. Because evil loses ground every time we take it back.