As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.
Colossians 2:6-8
King Gustav III of Sweden had a number of very strong opinions. One of them was that drinking coffee was a dangerous habit to a person’s health. To test his theory, he devised one of the strangest experiments ever recorded. He found two identical twins who had been sentenced to die for their crimes, and offered them a commutation. In exchange for their lives, one would drink three pots of coffee a day, and the other would drink three pots of tea. Gustav was sure that his dim view of coffee would be verified, but the actual events unfolded somewhat differently. First Gustav was assassinated in 1792. In time both of the doctors involved in the study died. The tea drinking brother finally passed away at eighty-three years old, but his coffee drinking sibling was still going strong, and outlived them all.
There are a lot of ideas that people hold firmly and with conviction. But that does not mean those ideas are correct. The sincerity and intensity of our beliefs does not guarantee their accuracy. If we want to know what is reliable and true and trustworthy, we must start with the Word of God. All of man’s ideas are subject to error because all men are fallen. The only settled and certain basis that we can always fully count on comes from God. David wrote, “As for God, his way is perfect; the word of the LORD is tried: he is a buckler to all them that trust in him” (2 Samuel 22:31). The world is happy to promote their ideas to us, but if we are not cautious we will be robbed of the joy and peace and hope God offers through vain ideas.
