Morning Devotional

September 13, 2003

"White or White"  

by Don Emmitte

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"Don't store up treasures here on earth, where they can be eaten by moths and get rusty, and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven, where they will never become moth-eaten or rusty and where they will be safe from thieves. Wherever your treasure is, there your heart and thoughts will also be. Your eye is a lamp for your body. A pure eye lets sunshine into your soul. But an evil eye shuts out the light and plunges you into darkness. If the light you think you have is really darkness, how deep that darkness will be! No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” (Matthew 6:19-24 NLT).

We are at the end of the model year, which means that selection is not as great as it might be at other times of the year. Recently a man called me and inquired about a truck. He asked if we had a very specifically equipped model in stock. He told me he wanted a “¾ Ton Crew Cab Four-wheel Drive with both a Duramax diesel engine and Allison transmission.” I asked him further if he wanted a long-bed or short-bed? His reply was that nothing but a long-bed would do. I looked through our inventory on the computer and told him I had good news! We had three in stock. Then came the “magic” question. He asked what colors we had! I said I had white or white! We only had that particular truck in white. There were no other colors left. 

That exchange caused me to think. Universalism, Edgar Cayce, the Bahai Faith and Jesus can't all be right. You can take the good from each and form your own religious mix, but at some point you'll have to face the fact that some things are right and some are wrong. Not just "wrong for you," but in order for some things to be true, some other things must simply be false. They're not relative truths. There can be black, there can be white and there can be any color in between. These are relative. However, there is only “white or white” when it comes to our relationship with Christ. 

Let me illustrate a little further. You can't have a body and not have a body at the same time. You can't have a soul and not have a soul at the same time. You either have one or you don't. You can't be alive and dead at the same time. You're one or the other. These are not relative truths. And if you're stuck on a cliff with nowhere to go but down, and a truck is coming to run you down, you can either pitch off the cliff or not. You can't do both. But if you choose not to, the decision will be made for you by default.  

Either Jesus died in your place and rose again or He didn't. You must decide. If you decide He didn't, go ahead and take the good from all those religions because your decision implies that there are no eternal consequences anyway. But if He did, you can't simply take from Him what you like and leave the rest. Because if He did, you must conclude that He is God. And God is, by nature, Absolute Truth. As Jesus taught in our reading this morning, you may serve only one Master. Who are you serving today?