Have American evangelicals lost all sense of biblical discernment?  The wildly popular book The Shack that has become one of the best selling religious books of recent memory would suggest so.  The book, though a work of fiction, is distinctly heretical in much of its teaching.  Read Dr Albert Mohler’s assessment of this book here.

Perspective is very important in life.  I remember one New Year’s eve many years ago when a group of my buddies and myself were griping and bemoaning our being stuck in a remote part of the world in southern Turkey.  We were in the United States Air Force stationed at Incirlik Air Base just outside of Adana.  It was far from home and we considered it to be at the “end of the world.” 

Later that same night we met two airmen from a remote radar site up in the rugged mountains of central Turkey.  They had come to Incirlik for R&R (rest and recreation).  They told us of their situation and we quickly concluded that compared to them we “had it made.”

It was all a matter of perspective.  I have thought about that this week in the furor of the University of Tennessee football coach leaving for greener pastures in Southern California.  It has been all over the news and from the comments left on blogs and Facebook has consumed the time and interest of millions of people, including me.

But again it is a matter of perspective.  Also in the news has been the devastating earthquake in Haiti.  This disaster is one of epic proportions and involves the suffering and deaths of hundreds of thousands of some of the poorest people on earth.

When the two events are juxtaposed, the wanderings of a young man already immensely overpaid for the job he does, seems trivial at best. 

It is inevitable that as Christians we will get caught up in the affairs of this world but we must always keep our eyes on the eternal perspective and on what really matters.