After India’s seemingly below-par batting performance was countered by amazing-above-par bowling performance in their Group Game against the West Indies on 27 June 2019 in the ODI World Cup, making them win by a whopping 125 runs, Virat Kohli spoke about M. S. Dhoni. This is what he said, “If he says 265 is a good score on a pitch, we don’t aim for 300 and end up scoring 230. His experience, eight out of 10 times, works for us.” Kohli trusted the experience of Dhoni in assessing the pitch and conditions in deciding what would be a winning score when India has to bat first. Dhoni’s words were taken to be words of authority – without any questions being asked – in Kohli’s opinion.
That reminds me of something. For how many of us believers, the Bible’s words are the most authoritative? Do we trust the words of a popular preachers/worship leaders more (so, is that why so-called miracles are seen as proofs of validity of any ministry we support and associate ourselves with)? Do we regard church tradition more (so, it that why we discourage women from preaching and disobey God when it comes to water baptism)? Do we trust the mood of the popular societal sentiment more (so is that why, we don’t stress on the uniqueness of Jesus as the only way of salvation over coffee-table conversations with colleagues from other faiths)? When it came to formulating doctrine, Apostle Paul’s question was simple: “What does the Scripture say?” (Rom. 4:3; Gal. 4:30). In Acts 15, we see that the early church which was all Jewish at one point had this crucial question: “Can the Gospel be preached to the Gentiles (non-Jews)?” The answer for this question came from Apostle James who spoke after everyone in that conference spoke (Acts 15:13). He quoted and elucidated from one of the written prophecies of Amos (the written Word of God, the Bible he read) to underscore the clear command of God from Scripture that the church had to preach to the Gentiles (non-Jews). And that was the end of the debate (Acts 15:13-21). So, what was written in the written Word of God was enough to decide which way to go when it came to controversial decisions in the early church. Let us take the cue from the apostles. So, let’s also make the Bible as the final court of appeal for all matters of belief and behaviour, like they did.
While Dhoni’s pitch assessment and par score assessment has about 80% accuracy (according to Virat Kohli), the Bible’s assessment of any matter is always 100% accurate and binding on all.
(Duke Jeyaraj, the author of this piece, is the founder of Grabbing the Google Gen from Gehenna Mission, the G4 Mission. This is a listener-supported Indian ministry. Find out more at www.dukev.org).
