Spellcheckers are one of the great inventions of our day. Even though I am a good speller, I am sometimes a careless typist. The spellchecker is great for catching those transposed letters that come too often from trying to type too fast.

I just recently made a discovery about my spell-checker, though. It is not always right. Not only will it not flag correctly spelled words which are not the words I meant, it also doesn’t catch some variants of words that I expected it to catch. It seems that I have had a problem lately in my lessons in typing Mathew when I meant Matthew. It seems that MS Word is just fine with spelling it “Mathew” instead of “Matthew.” I have relied on the spellchecker to proofread for me, but will have to be more careful in the future, knowing that MS Word does not catch this.

This little insight reminds me that we must be careful what or whom we trust. Not everything you read on the internet is correct or reliable. It is not uncommon for us to look to some great preacher of the past or present for wisdom or judgment. There is nothing wrong with this, but whoever it is, we need to be sure that we use our reasoning abilities and we truly search the scriptures. We may too easily accept some things because of who teaches them, but even the best of us are sometimes wrong.

Luke commends the Christians of Berea: “These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so” (Acts 17:11). The Bereans were searching the scriptures daily to consider if what they were being taught by men like Paul and Silas was correct. If it is necessary to check up on Paul, it is also necessary to check up on Wendell Winkler, Foy Wallace or Bob Prichard. And it is also necessary to check on ourselves. Do we believe what we believe because we have really searched the scriptures? And letting someone else proofread certainly won’t hurt!

Matthew or Mathew?

by Bob Prichard

www.oxfordchurchofchrist.com