Tinker Toy Religion

Dusty Owens

Every small child from my era was given a Tinker Toy set to help develop his creativity and ingenuity. I was no exception. You could follow the pictures and build what the designer had in mind, or use your own imagination and arrange the pieces just any way that suited your fancy. There were enough parts of various shapes and sizes to accommodate most any conceivable concoction.

What does that have to do with religion? Well, it makes about as much sense to make a religion out of Tinker Toys, as it does anything else man has invented that God has not specified and approved.

God has always given man specific instructions to please Him, all the way from Adam and Eve, the Patriarchs, Moses and Israel, to Jesus Christ and the Christian age. On all matters pertaining to religion, God has always made known His will through the Bible. People have not been satisfied to follow these requirements, but instead, fashion their own religions by taking pieces from the imaginations of men, and mixing in the additions, subtractions and perversions of what Clod has revealed. One group assembles pieces to build a religion that meets with their own approval, while another group does the same with different pieces. Hence, Tinker Toy religion!

This problem is as old as man. The Bible is replete with examples of people assuming they can change what God ordered. Adam and Eve ignored God's command, "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (Genesis 2:16-17), and they died! Cain offered a sacrifice to God that did not please Him (Genesis 4:4-7). God called it sin! When Moses revealed God's Law to the Israelites, he warned, "Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish from it, that ye may keep the commandments of Jehovah your God which I command you" (Deuteronomy 4:2). As it turned out, every generation thereafter was punished when they corrupted the "commandments of Jehovah"!

Under the Law of Christ the principle is the same. Paul wrote to the Galatians, "I marvel that ye are so quickly removing from him that called you in the grace of Christ unto a different gospel; which is not another gospel: only there are some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach unto you any gospel other than that which we preached unto you, let him be anathema (accursed). As we have said before, so say I now again, If any man preacheth unto you any gospel other than that which ye received, let him be anathema" (Galatians 1:6-9). God considers this serious business; notice: "Ye are severed from Christ, ye who would be justified by the law; ye are fallen away from grace" (Galatians 5:4; Revelation 22:18-19).

There is only one true religion today. Jesus said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no one cometh unto the Father, but by me" (John 14:6). It doesn't pay to "tinker around" with God's religion as He revealed it in His word. Every Tinker Toy religion will be destroyed!

Guardian of Truth XXIX: 4, p. 103, February 21, 1985