What IS Truth?

I've been re-reading a book titled "Twisted Cross".  It was written about twenty years ago by Doris L. Bergen.  It's a rather scholarly examination of the "German Christian" movement in Nazi Germany, and how that movement subverted people from following Jesus Christ and the traditional teachings of the Bible.   Instead,  they sought to make the church an Aryan church, a "manly" militant church, which glorified and supported war as a means to German greatness.  Hymns were changed or deleted,  Jewish Christians were kicked out of the church, and those who stood against the incoming tide were ridiculed--or worse.

As a follower of Jesus, it's a hard book to read, because one sees how easily the perverse Nazi philosophies corrupted that church.  Though German Christians didn't influence the Nazis, the Nazis influenced the German Christians and used them for their own ends.  The result was a weak, un-nourished, ineffective church, which was view with contempt by the Nazi party.

If we are true followers of Christ, we need to be careful of who and what we listen to. There's a lot of diversity in the Christian community,  more than we are given credit for,  but it's disturbing when I see those who call themselves Christians buy into beliefs that clearly deviate from the Word of God.  If we aren't under the authority of Holy Scripture, then we must be under an authority other than God.

           "For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine.  Instead,
             to suit their      own desires, they will gather around them a great number of
             teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear."  2 Timothy 4:3 (emphasis
             mine).

As a believer in Christ, I must not first be a Democrat or a Republican, a conservative or a liberal.  I  must first be a follower of Christ, and the Word of God.  Period.  Every thought, every action, each belief must first pass through these filters.  My faith is not to be defined by my politics, it is to be defined by Jesus and Holy Scripture.  When we modify our beliefs to fit any political persuasion--we are on dangerous ground.

The German Christians allowed the tail to wag the dog.  Their ethnicity and spurious beliefs were put ahead of their faith, and thus dictated the shape of their faith.   The applications may be somewhat different today in our nation, but the results are always the same: a move away from God.  It cannot be otherwise.