The Missing Earring

I was vacuuming the other day when I spotted something shiny on the carpet. I reached down to pick it up and realized it was a favorite earring. I have a rather bad habit of putting my earrings in the back corner of the fourth or fifth step so that I can grab them on my way upstairs. Up to this point, that had worked just fine.

That is…until Dixie came along. Our Labrador Retriever puppy gets into everything and I had grown a bit lazy with keeping the gate across the steps. I knew right away that she had found them.

But there was only one earring lying there. Where was the other one?

I briefly scanned the floor, the path to the steps, and the steps and then started to panic a bit. Had she eaten it? She must have eaten it!

I made the assumption that somehow (and for some unknown reason) she had eaten my earring. I started thinking about the size of it, trying to discern if we were going to be dealing with a pet emergency. I was also more than a little disappointed to lose a pair of earrings I actually cared about (there aren’t many that I would care about).

As I stood there, my husband came in the house and asked what was wrong. I cried out in dismay that Dixie had eaten one of my favorite earrings. He wisely cautioned me not to panic and to take some more time to look.

So I went back over the path from the steps to where I had found the earring. Nothing there. And then I stood at the steps and really looked at each one. The earring blended in with the carpet, which made it a bit harder to find. My eyes carefully searched each step. Reaching the bottom step, I finally saw the small piece of jewelry winking up at me.

How had I missed it the first time? I realized that it was because I was already assuming that Dixie ate it so I didn’t expect to find it.

I’ve been thinking about how this incident can teach us a variety of lessons regarding discerning the truth in a “Christian” culture filled with lies.

1. Laziness is dangerous. The whole problem with the earrings began because I couldn’t be bothered to shut the gate to the stairs. So many issues begin because we aren’t willing to do a little background work on that author that our best friend recommended or the Instagram account that our sister insists is just great. It’s just easier to go off someone’s recommendation, isn’t it? But we can’t do that anymore. We need to carefully make sure that this person recommended is someone that lines up with scripture. We can’t afford to be lazy.

2. Assumptions are rarely helpful. My assumption that the earring had been eaten kept me from seeing the truth: The earring was still on the steps. Only when I opened my mind to the possibility that I might find it, could my eyes see the actual truth of what really was. Oh, how similar this is to us in real life! Whether we assume someone is a biblical teacher or we assume someone is not a biblical teacher, we cannot fairly make an assessment until we compare something they have said, done, or written to scripture. We need to be open to the possibility that we are wrong in our assumption. It is critically important that God’s Word be our litmus test for ALL things. It is our only certain anchor in the midst of the religious chaos we find ourselves in.

3. We need to pay attention. I could have vacuumed that earring right up. Thankfully, my eye caught the little shiny object before I heard that familiar “clank clank” in the vacuum tube. But so often, in life, we don’t spot that lie before it’s too late. It’s so important that we become familiar with some of the common red flags that signal a false teacher OR a teacher that is moving away from solid biblical doctrine. (I wrote about some of these red flags we can be looking for in this post.)

4. We need to be teachable. When my husband encouraged me to keep looking for the earring, I could have just ignored him or even told him to “stop being so optimistic”, assuring him it was a lost cause. But, instead, in this instance (I don’t always respond like this!), I heard what he said and I followed his advice. I was so glad I did. I think so often when someone tells us something that goes against our assumptions or the thoughts already so firmly embedded in our minds, we just don’t want to hear what they have to say that might not agree with those assumptions and thoughts. BUT what if they are right? What if that person we so dearly love to follow is compromised? We have much so much to gain by at least checking into what they might be saying and so much to lose by not checking. It’s a win win situation. If they are biblical, we have lost nothing but a little time. If they aren’t biblical, we have saved ourselves from imbibing false teaching and straying off the narrow path.

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I don’t know if this is helpful. I’ve noticed a real change in the “Christian” culture over the past few years. It seems to me that you are either someone who is already aware of what I wrote above or you are someone who doesn’t see the importance of what I wrote above and do not care. There just do not seem to be many in between anymore.

But, I know that God is still working on the hearts of His children, one by one. And so I hope that this will be an encouragement and blessing to someone out there today.