WHAT MATTERS MOST? by Vance Havner
S o m e o n e is r ep o r t e d to h a v e s a id that he wished he had never read the Gospel of John so that he might read it for the first time. I think I know what he meant. It is a blessed thing to have grown up in a Christian home, to have been soaked and saturated in the lan guage of Scripture from earliest days, but it has its dangers. There is the peril that while familiarity may not breed contempt, it may breed complacency and we might take these glorious truths for granted. Something has been said to the effect that nothing hinders a genuine Christian experience more than a superficial knowledge of the language of Christianity from child hood.
But even where that knowledge is not superficial, it is possible for the traveler to get lost in the baggage. The wealth of doctrine and experience which have accumulated through the centuries of church history are invaluable and may indeed help us to get through to a simpler experience of our Lord. Yet one can get lost in all of it and devoutly wish that he could forget a lot of it, start over, and come to Jesus for Himself like those who first knew Him in Galilee. Now a man may be a scholar, well-versed in all this, and withal a simple Christian, but if one had to make his choice, he had better be a plain believer without benefit of all of this wealth than to have it in his head and not know the
FEBRUARY, 1966
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