When I was growing up my dad told me “everyone who writes a book has an axe to grind.”  He meant that everyone has an opinion and they want to convince you to think like them.

Fast forward to today (a long fast forward), and I think those words have never been truer.  Last week I talked about brands wanting you and I to buy into their message.  Today I’m really concerned of all the people who want to shape the way you think.

There are people writing today who are telling half the truth, some of the truth, none of the truth, the lies and truth mixed together until it’s all grey and you can’t tell which is which.  People who know you are only skimming and so they use the headline (the only bit you really read) to sink the hook and prop it up in the first paragraph…

There are a lot of writers all around us today.  They don’t just write books.  They write facebook posts, newspaper articles, blog articles, emails, lead ins to the news shows, scripts for movies and scripts for the talking heads we see on tv and the internet.

In fact, today any yokel with a smart phone can pitch a message out to a world-wide audience, thanks to the internet.  These are people who don’t have to tell you anything about their background.  They don’t have to tell you who they are.  They don’t even have to be honest about any of that.

This makes it really hard to vet any given source of information that we come into contact with.  

We have more access to “information” (perhaps I should just call it “stuff”) than at any time in history.  Yet we also have more garbage and manipulation in our faces than human kind has ever seen.  It means that we (generically) need to be very careful.

This is double true for Christians.  Our challenge is to come to faith, then keep the faith.  It’s the same issue Paul ran into in the first century – almost 2,000 years ago.  From Galatians 1:6-9

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—  not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.  But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.  As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.

Paul was facing the problem that the church in Galatia was being led astray by people with different agendas, preaching a different gospel about a savior who was so much less than Jesus.

It’s a real problem.  And it’s dangerous for us today.  Very dangerous.

So what am I going to tell you to do?

Not that much. 

I’ll go back to something I said a few weeks ago.  You need to get connected to the source.  You need to hear what God has to say.  It will be 1,000% better than anything I could say.

I really believe in daily Bible reading.  I’m getting a lot out of doing it myself (that’s my testimonial for you).  I think you should do it too (that’s my axe to grind today).

Here’s a page where I’ll tell you about the daily Bible reading strategy I’m using.  It will put you in God’s word every day and you can get the right gospel about the right Jesus backed up by the right Holy Spirit.

That’s trustworthy.  It will be the best thing you read all day.  It will pour truth and God’s love into your life.  You need it because there’s enough garbage being poured in anyway.

So click the link and look at what I’m using and then decide if that isn’t something you need to start doing as well…