The Shaping of a Person

Everything in the makeup of our personality began with a thought or concept that was filed away in memory. The thoughts, in essence, are ideas. Each succeeding idea is filed away with the proceeding, the sum of which makes up our belief system. Our ideas tend to integrate with other similar ideas forming opinions or convictions about specific issues or areas of living. These are the building blocks of our belief system (our ideals). These, in turn, constitute our viewpoints of God, others, ourselves, and life in general.

Our belief system is the controlling factor of our life. What we believe dictates what we are, what we say and what we do. The writer of Proverbs said: 'For as he thinketh in his heart (his ideas), so is he (his ideals)' (Proverbs 23:7a). Again he says: 'Keep your heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life' (Proverbs 4:23).

Since our belief systems are a composite of opinions and convictions formed from countless encounters and experiences of life, a certain percentage of them are misshapen or erroneous. All of us are exposed to influential people and situations that lend to the shaping of our concepts--some of which are destructive, misguided, or polluting. Taken as a whole, then, our belief systems are a composite of right and wrong, good and evil, truth and error. Even the best of mankind, to some degree, has corrupted belief systems and is strongly influenced by them.

There was a time when life was much simpler. His parents and older siblings primarily shaped a person's belief system. With the advent of cooperative schooling (ultimately the public schools) thinking was diluted from specific family concepts and ideals with the broader incorporation of the thinking and ideals of others. Through the expansion of technology the capacity for communication expanded again. This resulted in the proliferation of a variety of communicational instruments such as newspapers, books, radios, movies, and television. Through these plus the development of the computer, knowledge has exploded.

As a result of the overwhelming barrage of information we don't have the time and capacity to properly process what we are exposed to and which is ever enlarging our belief systems. This creates the potential for ungodly, unwise or destructive thinking and behavior.

When man divorces his thinking from any absolutes (such as the scripture) he becomes freewheeling in his thinking. Having no anchor to prevent his drifting, he will drift with the winds, tides, and currents of popular and/or corrupted thinking. God has given man the wonderful capacity of reason. Reason that is cut off from absolute standards becomes rogue reasoning and as a result is destructive to one’s person and to others. 'There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death' (Proverbs 14:12).

The Bible is God's absolute standard of truth. The degree to which we decimate its message, question its truthfulness and have reservations about its authenticity will be the degree that our we will be subject to a corrupt system with no absolute way of winnowing it to determine what is truth and what is error. There was a time in my questioning and doubts that I took the Bible, laid my hand on it and said: 'I accept this book as God's truth and will not question its message from this day forward.' That was the real beginning point of all God has done in my life.

We can't improve on the admonition of Jeremiah when he said: 'Thus saith the Lord, Stand in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way and walk in it, and ye shall find rest for your souls' (Jeremiah 6:16).

Jeff