Turning On Your Bulldust Filters

What I have illustrated though is that we all have to develop what I call a bulldust filter. Now four wheel drivers know what bulldust filters are. When you go driving in the outback you’ve got to be careful of incredibly fine dust known as bulldust. This stuff goes right through normal air filters and can be sucked right into the engine. Bulldust in your engine can cause big problems. To stop it you’ve got to use a better air filter than the standard one.

Us humans need a bulldust filter too, because the one we were fitted with at birth doesn’t always do the job very well. What do I mean?

It’s a fact of life that we can’t know everything. We haven’t got time to check everything we hear. So we’ve got to trust other people. Now there are some people we trust. And there are others we don’t.

So whom do we trust?

† Lawyers?

† Doctors?

† Accountants?

† Friends?

† Preachers?

I guess we’d trust some of these people in some situations, and not others. So if a lawyer advises you on a point of law, you may trust him or her. If a doctor advises you on a medical issue you would be more likely to follow it than if, say, an accountant gave you the same advice.

However, we must turn our bulldust filters on! We can’t hope to know everything about what we are told by an expert, but sometimes we have to be able to sort out the good from the bad.

For example, how many of us know of people that didn’t trust the advice given them by an expert, and are vindicated? It’s a common story.

Why? Because we all turn our bulldust filters on at some stage. We instinctively have a bit of a nose for information or advice that is misguided. However, I’m concerned about times when we turn them off.

For example, there are some situations when we’ll take the advice of a friend over the advice of an expert. Why? Because they’ve been right in the past about some things. However, the thing I want to warn about today is how we never turn our bulldust filters on when Christians are talking.

****Bulldust Filters in the Bible****

Unfortunately we don’t always display a lot of judgment when preachers or other Christian experts are having their say. For example, many people believed me when I said that Mr Ed was a zebra. Most of us would have walked out this morning believing it, simply because I said so. I’m standing behind a pulpit, I have a microphone in front of me, and I have a Bible here to back up everything I say. I look like I know what I’m talking about.

However, I’m not an expert on early 60s sitcoms. I can talk as long as I like about Mr Ed’s zebraness, but nothing I do or say will ever make that true. It’s all bulldust!

Is it different when it comes to matters of faith? Well, no. Again, having a pulpit, Bible and microphone don’t make me correct. If I raise my voice and sound authoritative about something, it doesn’t mean anything except I can talk loudly! I heard of one preacher who knew people would believe him if he came across more strongly. He once wrote on the margin of his preaching notes: ‘Argument weak here. Thump pulpit and speak loudly!’