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Defying Gravity

Adam Bingham

26/10/10

Hey everyone I was walking from the gym to work the other day and I was listening to my iPod and a song came on that really spoke to me so I thought I would share it with everyone. This is the first time I’ve tried to share my thoughts in this way and I hope that it makes sense and that people will take something from it.

Now to the embarrassing part, the song itself, as the guys in my mid week city group know I’m a bit of a glee fan, in fact so much of a fan that I have the soundtrack to the first series on my iPod. As I was walking along I had my iPod on shuffle and the song Defying Gravity came on and it’s a song I’ve heard many times before but the lyrics just caught my attention in a different way this time. The particular lyrics were the following lines

I’m through accepting limits 
Cuz someone says they’re so 
Some things I cannot change
 But till I try, I’ll never know
They then go on to sing that
it’s time to try defying gravity

Through the song they talk about how we are told things and that we are suppose to accept this as truth but until we have actually experienced this it could all be a lie. They’re not saying that what they were told is wrong but just that they want to find out for themselves.
I’m sure as soon as they started flapping their arms to try to fly they would have found out they couldn’t fly but at least then if anyone asked, can you defy gravity, they wouldn’t be basing their answer on what they were told, but their own personal experience.

It made me think that this must be the case for so many things, the amount of times I’ve been told things by a so called expert. Yet because of this persons expertise we instantly accept what were told, and 99 times out of 100 they probably are right but what about that 1 time, experts used to say the world was flat, or that the earth was the centre of the universe. We are often afraid to question people who know more about a topic than we do but the only way we will develop and learn more and find the truth is through looking at the evidence and experiencing it to.
This can happen in all walks of life but I think particularly in the church, a lot of people go to church on a Sunday morning and listen to the sermon and soak it all up never questioning a thing. But should this be the way it is? what if the pastor’s understanding of a particular area is flawed, or we take what he is saying out of context? If we just accept everything then we could end up with a very flawed image of God. This unfortunately is something we see all the time with for example people living in terror of their judgemental God who is looking for any excuse to send them to hell, rather than living in the freedom that we have through grace.

Do we every question what we are taught? Do we ever read up on the topic afterwards to see if we have the same understanding of the passage as the leader and if we don’t, do we ever talk to the leader about this?
I don’t want people to take this the wrong way and think that I am criticising the teaching I have received in redeemer as this is not the case, I have thoroughly enjoyed the teaching I have received since I became a part of redeemer and it is through that time that I have come to understand the need not to blindly follow what I have been told throughout my life. It’s also not to say that you can never believe what you are told but more to get you to think about what you are taught.

I think that is important that whatever church someone goes to they don’t just blindly follow but test what they are taught, it’s not bad to question what we are taught, as even if what we are taught is right, which hopefully it will be, to have questioned it and still come to the same conclusion means if anyone challenges this at a later date you have much more to back up your beliefs than just saying well that’s what I was told.

So let’s not just accept gravity let’s try and defy it, the worst that can happen is that you’ll try and still won’t get of the ground but at least you won’t have missed out on the fact that you can actually fly.

Tags: Grace, Life