Watch what you're doing

Remember when electric hand dryers first were installed in public restrooms? They had directions for use prominently printed somewhere but, because they didn’t work well for drying hands, someone inevitably would add to the instructions, “Wipe hands on pants.”

I recall many establishments took removed paper towel dispensers and trashcans when they installed those electric hand dryers. I still use the paper towels, when available, because I know they work and I don’t usually have to stand in line waiting for someone else to dry their hands, although the lines also form at the paper towel dispenser.

About wiping hands on pants: When I’m eating a fast-food sandwich on the road, I keep a napkin on the right side of my lap. Recently, we’d gotten tan napkins with our food, and I was wearing khaki pants. My wife commented the napkin was almost the same color as my pants. I then became concerned about wiping something like mustard off my hand onto my pants instead of the napkin, but that didn’t happen because I was careful about where I wiped my hands after that.

We must be careful and pay close attention to the religious teachings to which we expose ourselves. Because only God truly knows what’s in a person’s heart, I never would outrightly call anyone a deceiver other than Satan himself and some early church “misleaders” (1 Samuel 16:7; 2 Thessalonians 2:9-12; 2 Corinthians 11:13-15; Acts 20:28-31). Nonetheless, many teachings today are close to the truth (something’s added or omitted), but the deceit of those early “misleaders” still are perpetuated out of an insufficient love for the truth to verify teachings by the truth (Acts 17:11; Luke 12:11-15).

I also never would presume to claim to know everything, for that wouldn’t be true and it’d put me into the same class of charlatan (a quack) as those today who’ve believed the earlier lies and continue to perpetuate them rather than learning the truth for themselves through an honest study of God’s word (2 Timothy 3:14-17). It’s too bad that’s exactly what some people want to hear (2 Timothy 4:3-4; 3:1-7). This indictment may sound harsh, but the ancient fine-sounding arguments, as well as some more recent ones, continue to be accepted, and the only result is the perpetuators and their followers will fall into, or rather they’ll be thrown into the same pit with Satan (Matthew 15:7-14; 23:15; 2 Peter 2:1-3; Psalm 9:15-16; 73:18-19; Isaiah 14:12-15). As if hell wasn’t bad enough, “misleaders” in regard to salvation and Christian living receive some additional punishment (James 3:1; Jude 1:3-4, 10-13; 2 Peter 2:12-22; Galatians 1:6-9).

So, we must pay attention to what we’re doing and study the Bible for ourselves, comparing the Scriptures used to support what we’re taught with the rest of the Bible to make sure we don’t get misled and miss out on heaven because God’s way is the only way that actually works (Colossians 2:4; Hebrews 2:1-4).

Leonard Lauriault is a member of the Church of Christ in Logan who writes about faith for the Quay County Sun. Contact him at [email protected]