Same Old Story Never Outdated

When I came of age I desired to shed myself of all that was old in an effort to discover for myself what this life was all about.  I was excited to do life for myself.  The process endeavored to rid me of the traditions that had moored me to the docks and, I assumed, limited my scope to see reality 'as it was.'  This was a conscience undertaking in which I tore down the values and morals that I was raised with while I was feeding on the assumption that these things were but fences that kept me confined and shackles that prevented me from life.

Fully embracing the relativism around me I begin to construct a life and developing a lifestyle that echoed my newly-formed worldview.  Hedonism became my status quo.  I felt the need to build my own new traditions steeped in pleasure and full of relative concepts of truth, namely, if it was exciting and usable then it was true.

My major assumption, and my downfall, was that tradition and truth that was not new or relative was, in some way, more valid.  My assumptions proved false under testing.  Truth begin to rise to the surface in my heart in the form that I had already discredited and thought illegitimate: Christianity, more directly, Christ Jesus Himself.

I had discounted the value of Christianity because of its oldness.  I thought that because traditional religion and Christianity was old that then it was also tired, outdated, and irrelevant.  I had attributed the value of Christ to the ancient age of the beliefs and, in effect, found it wanting for that.  My bias, however, betrayed the basic reality of truth, particularly that truth is by nature true and true agelessly.

God, in a sense, hit me in the heart and I was devastated at my own desolation.  My response was to pray and read.  I prayed and read Scripture like a famished dog lapping up water.  I could not get it enough.  At some point, not a point per se but a moment in the process, I realized the profoundness that had so eluded me before.  God is and He has revealed Himself to mankind by His Word and through His Son Jesus Christ.  

When I finally discovered it for myself, what I thought was old and cold theology was vibrant and energizing.  The reality was that the truth of God did apply.  I realized that it stood the test of time not because it was passed on to successive generations (though surely it was), but the truth of Christ stood the test of time because it is true.  I had never understood that until I faced Christ myself.  At the final analysis, Jesus never goes out of style because truth is always true and Jesus is truth.