There once was an old rich man who lived alone and had the same caretaker for many years. One day, he discovered that the caretaker had been stealing from him for several years. He confronted him and told him that he had two hours to gather all his belongings from the rich man’s estate and then leave.
The wicked caretaker became very angry and plotted how he could secretly kill the rich man. He came up with the idea that he would poison him.
Because the rich man suffered from migraines, he often took pain medication for his headaches. Before leaving, the caretaker opened the bottle of pain medicine in the rich man’s medicine cabinet and filled it with highly poisonous tablets that were exactly the same shape and size as the pain medicine.
Late that night, the rich man awoke with a crushing headache. Without putting his glasses on, he went to the medicine cabinet to get his pain medicine. Because it was late at night, he did not even turn on the light in the bathroom.
Grabbing three tablets of what he sincerely believed was a painkiller that would quickly relieve him of his agonizing pain, the man swallowed the tablets with half a glass of water. Within minutes, he was dead.
His sincere belief was not good enough to keep him from dying from taking a deadly poison. In a much more important way, merely sincere religious belief is not enough—what one believes must be true.
“Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6).
Copyright © 2011-2024 by Rajesh Gandhi. All rights reserved.
