Preface

Why change? Why unsettle your mind? Why rock the boat? Without change there can be no growth!

Change for the sake of change is of questionable value, but change is necessary for maturing.

Even though physical development is mostly involuntary, it can be encouraged or restricted in some ways. Spiritual growth must be sought voluntarily. Progress in broadening our knowledge and understanding may be limited by lack of incentive. It may be impeded by illiteracy, misdirection, lack of time, and other circumstantial factors. It may be blocked by prejudice and fear. These factors can imprison and enslave us by restricting our freedom to change.

Change can be stifled and frustrated by fears of cutting loose from ideas in which we have found comfort and security. We fear being the cause of controversy. We dread the rejection, misrepresentation, and abuse that leaders suffer. We anticipate with fright the loss of vested interests__status, role, reputation, income. We have to be the "good ol' boy" to keep our place.

When we are supported by the system, we must support the system, and as long as we please a system, we are not free.

Once a person can release himself or herself from these tension traps, there is a new world of discovery ahead to explore. One may then go to the Scriptures with nothing to prove and no apprehension as to what will be learned. Bible reading becomes a new, exciting, and refreshing experience. It brings one much closer to God even though misguided fellow-disciples may tend to reject the freed one. These friends may think that one is reacting to some bitterness or disappointment. They find it hard to believe that one is just being honest with self.

Without intellectual honesty, one is not free to change. Honesty is not demonstrated by parroting the party line, but it is seen in the expanding to the dimensions of new-found truth.

The following paragraph entitled The Love Of Truth by an unknown writer was sent to me by Bob Gleaves, of Brentwood, Tennessee: "To love truth sincerely means to pursue it with an earnest, conscientious, unflagging zeal. It means to be prepared to follow the light of evidence even to the most unwelcome conclusions, to labor earnestly to emancipate the mind from early prejudices, to resist the current of desires and the refracting influence of the passions, to proportion on all occasions conviction to evidence, and to be ready, if need be, to exchange the calm of assurance for all the suffering of a perplexed and disturbed mind. To do this is very difficult and very painful, but it is clearly involved in the notion of earnest love of truth." In order to follow truth, one must be free to change.

Most of the essays in this collection were published in Restoration Review, Ensign, THE EXAMINER, ONE BODY or Refreshing Waters. They are not all on the subject of change, but their challenge to restudy various aspects of our beliefs should bring about profitable change and growth.

In our freedom to change, let us be supportive of each other so as to encourage full growth in Christ.

Cecil Hook

July 17, 1990

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Preface