{"id":1468,"date":"2015-10-12T00:39:08","date_gmt":"2015-10-12T05:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/focuspressblog.com\/?p=1468"},"modified":"2015-10-12T00:39:08","modified_gmt":"2015-10-12T05:39:08","slug":"it-doesnt-matter-what-you-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tampaseo.expert\/focus\/2015\/10\/12\/it-doesnt-matter-what-you-think\/","title":{"rendered":"It doesn&#8217;t matter what you think"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Well if I believed in hell, yeah, that&#8217;s probably where I&#8217;d go.&#8221;<br \/>\nI&#8217;ll never forget that response, given by an\u00a0agnostic in a campus ministry video I once saw. Pressed with a question about his eternal destiny, he acknowledged that the broad way to hell was the path he had chosen, and he would probably go there &#8211; if he believed in it. He couldn&#8217;t see how he could possibly end up somewhere if he didn&#8217;t believe in that place. Like a criminal saying he doesn&#8217;t fear jail because he doesn&#8217;t believe such a place actually exists, this man was espousing an absolutely insane\u00a0line of thinking&#8230; and yet it&#8217;s the same one that so many in the world today cling to for nearly all questions of religion.<br \/>\nWe have our preconceived ideas of the way things\u00a0<em>probably<\/em> are, and then we convince ourselves that that&#8217;s how they&#8217;re going to be. Any evidence or line of reasoning presented to the contrary doesn&#8217;t matter because we&#8217;re confident with our\u00a0<em>probably<\/em>.\u00a0We have everything completely backwards. Instead of letting the truth influence our opinions, we let our opinions define the &#8220;truths&#8221; we hold. Sure, some things in life are matters of opinion. Some\u00a0things can&#8217;t possibly be known. But to file everything under those categories and make all truth relative to our understanding of it is to say that truth doesn&#8217;t really exist, which of course is a self-defeating philosophy.<br \/>\nWhat we have to realize is that it doesn&#8217;t matter one bit what we think. \u00a0Ironically, &#8220;It doesn&#8217;t matter what you think&#8221; is the philosophy today&#8217;s world espouses, too. They just mean it from the other side of the equation, saying that there is no truth, so everyone is allowed to think whatever they want. When I say it doesn&#8217;t matter what you think, I mean that our opinions don&#8217;t have any\u00a0bearing whatsoever on the truthfulness of our claims.<br \/>\n<em>It doesn&#8217;t matter if you think God probably doesn&#8217;t care what you do with your life, as long as you try to do some good.<\/em><br \/>\n<em>It doesn&#8217;t matter if you think God is too &#8220;mean&#8221; in the Old Testament and therefore don&#8217;t want to believe in Him.<\/em><br \/>\n<em>It doesn&#8217;t matter if you think the Bible is unfair in its teachings on sexuality.<\/em><br \/>\n<em>It doesn&#8217;t matter if you think that\u00a0doctrine probably isn&#8217;t that important.<\/em><br \/>\n<em>It doesn&#8217;t matter if you think that you&#8217;ve probably been &#8220;good enough&#8221; to get into heaven.<\/em><br \/>\n<em>It doesn&#8217;t matter if you think that church attendance or church choice isn&#8217;t that important.<\/em><br \/>\n<em>It doesn&#8217;t matter if you don&#8217;t believe heaven and hell really exist.<\/em><br \/>\n<strong>What ultimately matters is whether those beliefs are true.<\/strong> Despite what the world wants you to believe, truth isn&#8217;t relative. We don&#8217;t all get to create our own realities. Each of those statements are either true or false. Tricking ourselves into believing that we can ignore those issues and they&#8217;ll just go away or become insignificant is hopelessly foolish.<br \/>\nThe challenge that Elijah set before the people of Israel in 1 Kings 18:21 applies to us today &#8211; &#8220;If the Lord is God, follow Him!&#8221;\u00a0Either the\u00a0Bible&#8217;s message is true, and you are eternally responsible for what you believe, or it&#8217;s not true and there is no eternity to worry about. There is no middle ground, and living as though there is one is going to end in disaster for a lot of souls. You can know the truth (John 8:32). Don&#8217;t settle for anything less.<br \/>\n<strong>By Jack Wilkie<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>Jack Wilkie is the author of <a href=\"https:\/\/tampaseo.expert\/focus\/Shop\/Detail\/212\">\u201cFailure: What Christian Parents Need to Know About American Education\u201d<\/a> and is the speaker for Focus Press\u2019s \u201cThe Lost Generation\u201d seminar. To schedule a seminar at your church, contact jack@tampaseo.expert.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Well if I believed in hell, yeah, that&#8217;s probably where I&#8217;d go.&#8221; I&#8217;ll never forget that response, given by an\u00a0agnostic in a campus ministry video I once saw. Pressed with a question about his eternal destiny, he acknowledged that the broad way to hell was the path he had chosen, and he would probably go [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1503,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20,59,60],"tags":[689,23,243,98],"class_list":["post-1468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all","category-christian-living","category-existence-of-god","tag-beliefs","tag-jack","tag-postmodernism","tag-relativism","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>It doesn&#039;t matter what you think - Focus Press<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/tampaseo.expert\/focus\/2015\/10\/12\/it-doesnt-matter-what-you-think\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"It doesn&#039;t matter what you think - Focus Press\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"&#8220;Well if I believed in hell, yeah, that&#8217;s probably where I&#8217;d go.&#8221; I&#8217;ll never forget that response, given by an\u00a0agnostic in a campus ministry video I once saw. 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