Facts Do Not Save

FACTS DO NOT SAVE ANYONE

by Robert Brow (www.brow.on.ca) Aurora, Ontario June 2008

At school I was taught history as a series of objective facts. I first
learned the facts through French eyes in Belgium. Then, at the age of
nine, I went to an English boarding school. There I discovered that I
was meant to see them quite differently. So I learned the dates of all
the kings and queens of England. I also knew the great battles that
were won: Crecy 1346, Poitiers 1356, Agincourt 1415, Trafalgar 1805,
Waterloo 1815. These were all triumphs against those terrible
Frenchmen.

Very much later I discovered that for Russians, Chinese, Arabs, Zulus,
and Polynesians, the English facts were of no significance at all.
Even within a country facts have a different meaning for lords and
serfs, generals and privates, mine owners and children working
underground. Women perceive a war differently from their sons and
husbands.

In that sense the Old Testament gives us the facts of Jewish religious
history as seen through patriarchal eyes. In the Gospels we see the
facts as seen through the mind of the Son of God. And in the Epistles
Paul describes the way he saw those facts as a result of his
conversion.

All these facts are given to us by God for our teaching, correction,
and training (2 Timothy 3:16). But knowing all the facts set out in
the Bible does not save us.

What counts is a direction of faith. We might compare faith to
pointing a satellite dish in the right direction to receive a choice
of dozens of television channels. This means that infants, mentally
challenged
persons, and those who never had a chance to hear the good news, can
have their hearts pointing towards the love of God without ever
getting the facts right.

I certainly do not regret 60 years of studying and teaching the great
facts of the Bible. Since I had the stroke which leaves me unable to
do much else, I am grateful that I can still enjoy writing for this
website. But I need to remember that my personal conversation with God
the Father, Jesus the Son of God, and God the Holy Spirit, is far more
important than all the facts I may or may not have got right.

Robert Brow
e-mail : browr@brow.on.ca
web site : www.brow.on.ca