Beneath the SurfaceSample

Have you ever heard a story about a giant sea monster? Sailors liked to tell exaggerated stories and would come back with stories about giant sea serpents and mermaids that weren't exactly true. The people hearing the stories didn't know any better. How could they? They'd never been to the ocean. They just had to trust that the person telling them about these sea monsters was telling the truth. It wasn't until years later, when ocean travel became more common, that people realized most of those stories were lies.

That's how a lot of us tend to view our own identity. If someone tells us we're stupid, it only bothers us if we really think that of ourselves. If someone tells us we're ugly, we believe them. These things aren't true — just like the stories about sea monsters weren't true — but we go on believing them when we aren't focused on who we really are.

In today's Scripture, Paul is writing to some friends at a church in Rome where people were telling lies about each other. These lies were tearing the community apart. That's what happens when lies take hold, and that's why Paul tells them to stop listening to unreliable voices and instead trust God to give them wisdom and truth. The sooner we stop believing lies about ourselves, the better we'll be able to understand the truth about who we really are.