Posted on 06/20/2007 8:58:09 PM PDT by Mr. Silverback
I was dismayed a while back when I learned that a Barna survey found that “less than one out of every ten churched teenagers has a biblical worldview.” But a survey is just that, a survey. Things couldn’t be that bad, could they? Well, I recently heard a shocking story that vividly illustrates just how far relativism has infected the Church—to the point where Christian kids balk at the idea that Christianity would claim to be, of all things, true.
Four years ago, the BreakPoint staff and I launched Centurions, an intensive, year-long education program designed to equip 100 people each year to defend a biblical worldview and teach it to others.
One of our Centurions participants takes that call very seriously as she works with students at a local middle school. She sponsors a Christian club at the school, voluntary of course, and in accord with all the state laws. The students lead the club, and she mentors those leaders.
The club has been studying the ReWired curriculum, which BreakPoint created with Ron Luce’s Teen Mania. The DVD explores the four basic worldview questions: Where do I come from? Why is the world in such a mess? Is there a way to fix it? Is there a purpose for my life?
Everything was going fine until the group reached lesson 10. Lesson 10 leads the kids through a series of choices to learn to recognize the difference between matters of truth and matters of taste. One of the choices, “believing Islam, Buddhism or Christianity,” flashed on the screen.
Our Centurion—I’ll call her Joanne, told me what happened next: “The students went nuts. All but one of the eight leaders completely balked at the concept of distinguishing Christianity as true and other religions as false.”
The next day when they met again, Joanne told the students leaders that they would not have to teach lesson 10 to other students if they didn’t believe it.
Joanne learned that several of the seventh graders had talked to their parents or pastors over night. But the result of those conversations was shocking. One girl had written a paper that night on “why we shouldn't hurt others feelings by claiming our way is right.” One young lady had met with her pastor, who told her no one can be sure of truth. “It is all perspective,” he said. The students agreed that they should not offend others by saying Christianity is true. Only one was prepared to teach it.
While Joanne respected the authority of the parents and pastors, she encouraged the students to continue to consider the concept of truth, reminding them that Christianity--like Islam and many other religions--makes an exclusive claim to truth. She also reminded them that the words “I am the way, the truth and the life . . . no man comes to the Father except by me,” were Jesus' words, not hers.
What I find really shocking here is what this story tells us about the state of discipleship, not just of our kids, but of parents and pastors. This story is a wake-up call. We must learn what we believe, why we believe it and then instill it into our children, giving them a biblical view of all of life. We can’t stand idly by while relativism undermines the faith of our kids and robs them of the one sure hope they have—and desperately need. Friends, if this story gets to you like it gets to me, it’s time we got busy.
Liberals also misrepresent the incident where Jesus saved the sinful woman from being stoned. They think that it shows Jesus to be “tolerant” of sinful lifestyles. In fact, it shows that Jesus was forgiving. Liberals always remember that He said, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone” to her accusers. But they forget that after He saved her, He instructed her to “sin no more”.
Yeah, they skip that part, don't they?
If an error is found within that webpage's calculations, would you cease to be a Christian? When the US occupied Babylon (and, incidentally, caused irreparable damage to it), did that mean the Bible was wrong in Jeremiah, where it says Babylon wouldn't be occupied after it fell? (As a side note, I'm surprised that we didn't have DUmmies claiming that W invaded Iraq to prevent Saddam's redevelopment plans for the city, which would have contradicted the Bible!)
Other “religions” don’t do this. Not Islam [...]
Hey, how do you know the trees and rocks won't start talking?! ;-)
Leftists always use just parts of biblical quotes -
“Thou shalt not kill” obviously means that any military action by America is wrong if a Democrat is not president.
“Judge not” obviously means we are to tolerate every destructive and deviant behavior in our society. Similarly, “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” means that since we are all imperfect, we cannot make judgements about others’ behavior.
Liberals make judgments all the time, they just call them something else.
The idea of never being judgmental is ludicrous on its face, and an impossibility in an actual, functioning society. However, a lot of people don’t wish to hear that. They like to feel “free” and “liberated”, and don’t like thinking they’re expected to conform to someone else’s values.
The fact is, every society on earth has value systems which people are expected, and even required, to follow. The only issue is which value system we’ll ascribe to. If it’s presented to people that way, it puts liberalism at a disadvantage because no positive case can be made for most of the things liberals support. Try to make a merit-based case for permitting homosexual bathhouses, for example. It ain’t gonna work.
So liberals have created the phony storyline that conservatives want to “impose their values on others” while liberals do not. This gets the debate off of the actual merits of any particular liberal idea, and onto an abstraction, namely whether or not we should “legislate morality”. This is why we get Orwellian newspeak terms such as “pro-choice” as an accepted part of our political lexicon.
Just using common sense one can see that liberals legislate their morality all the time. Every liberal economic initiative does this. Such proposals force people to give a portion of their own income to a cause they may not wish to support. That may be good or bad, depending on one’s OPINION, but it can’t be denied that it imposes the morality of some on others via the force of law.
Libertarians sometimes assert that liberals are for imposing their morality on others when it comes to economic matters, but not social matters. Conservatives are seen as the opposite, supporting economic freedom but not “social liberation”. That’s not true, either. Liberals DO NOT favor social liberty.
Take abortion as an example. Abortion isn’t a liberty as it would properly have been understood by, say, our Founding Fathers. It’s an ideological claim made against the life of someone else for reasons of personal gain. Again, one may be able to argue that it’s justified (though I don’t agree that it is), but one can’t deny that that’s what we’re dealing with. In addition, liberals have no problem forcing people who oppose abortion from being required to fund it via their tax dollars. They have no problem censoring photos or films of actual abortions taking place.
Homosexuality is another area where the left legislates its morality all the time. They’re for forcing landlords to rent to homosexuals even if the landlord considers such conduct a sin. They’re for “hate speech” laws to stifle public discourse on homosexual issues. They’re for using raw judicial power to crush public opinion and force an alteration of the multi-thousand year old institution of marriage. They even tried to force the Boy Scouts, a private organization, to send little boys on camping trips with homosexuals.
We live in a society where Politically Correct double standards are so commonplace that we hardly even notice them anymore. Conservatives, particularly Christian ones, are expected to achieve a near universal consensus on an issue before legislation can be enacted, but such rules are not required of liberals or secularists.
Why is it okay to ban theft? Isn’t that imposing morality? After all, the Bible says “thou shalt not steal”. Liberals will “explain” that it’s okay to ban (for example) bank robbery since nearly everyone agrees that it’s wrong. But we can’t ban abortion because not everyone agrees that it’s wrong, so we must respect “pluralism”. But do those same standards apply to secular liberals? Do secular liberals only seek to legislate their beliefs when there is near-universal agreement with them? Not at all. They feel perfectly justified in legislating their morality whether the people want it or not.
Can you imagine a liberal asserting that we can’t give state sanction to same-sex “marriage” unless and until there is near-universal demand for it? We can’t sanction such “marriages” unless, oh, ninety-seven percent or so of the public wants it to be sanctioned? Quite the contrary. The moment they decided that they wanted same-sex “marriage” to be legally sanctioned, they demanded that it be done immediately, public opinion be damned. If the people won’t sanction it, then damn it we’ll get judges to force it on them. And then we’ll haul any landlord who doesn’t want to rent to a homosexual couple into court. Our support for homosexuality trumps the landlord’s freedom of choice, his religious beliefs & liberties, and his property rights. And if the dating service E-HARMONY won’t provide same-sex match-ups, we’ll drag them into court and force them to do it. And if someone says homosexuality is a sin, or is unnatural, we’ll shut him down by threatening his job, or sending him off the rehab where he’ll be instructed in our way of thinking, or we’ll fine or imprison him for “hate speech”.
So much for liberalism being liberal, in the classic sense of the word.
Baptist Ping
How could caring about people NOT include warning them about the eternal consequences to their sin? Good grief. Don't offend them and watch them end up in hell? I don't think that's really very compassionate. Hell is forever. We are too worried about offending people.
But, if you tell someone that their behavior is wrong, and that they face eternal damnation ... well, that could really ruin their morning. Can’t have that, can we?
BTW, I really like your tagline. Primarily because those same thoughts occur to me fairly frequently.
Postmodernism is creeping into everything.
A book I'm reading that I highly recommend is "Why We Should Judge" by Erwin Lutzer.
He comments in the book that it is better to argue with a modernist than a postmodernist because at least the modernist believes in absolute truth. The postmodernist only trusts feelings and everything is relative to the individual.
Your posts on this thread make a lot of sense. Secular humanism is a religion in and of itself.
But, I would like to add: The problem isn’t really secular vs. Christian. Moral relativism has infected the churches, too, as the article indicates.
I myself was accused of bigotry by a group of “Christians” when I (politely) stated that I opposed so-called “same-sex marriage”. And I’m not the religious one - I don’t belong to a church.
Secular humanism hasn’t just infected one denomination, either. This was an interdenominational Christian group with Methodists, Baptists, Catholics, etc. You’d think they’d all share some common ground. Well, they didn’t. But, they did agree in the end to draw up a “statement”. No, NOT a Statement of Faith but a Statement of DIVERSITY! :-0
Anyway, it dawned on me that I’m being too hard on myself - apparently, I know more about Christianity than a lot of Christians do. (Not here on FR, but in Real Life.) And, from what I’ve noticed, Christians lose their own moral compass when their faith depends on belief alone.
For example, this particular group would pray all the time for “things” to be delivered to them. They’d have collections for the poor. They’d make sweeping statements, such as, “We’re here to honor God.” They were always smiling and mentioning God. That seemed to be the extent of their “Christianity”. For the life of me, in two years with them, I couldn’t figure out what else they stood for. My kids were baffled, too.
There were many members of the group who agreed with me on marriage, but their loyalty was with the group because, after all, at least THEY all go to church and actively pray. Believe in WHAT and pray to WHOM is what I’d like to know.
Yeah. We’ll be checking out another church I found soon.
And that’s EXACTLY the same way that Satan uses Scripture!!
Not if the stabee was engaged in some activity that it was perfectly legal to be on the receiving end of a pointy object!
It means that if you are a resident of Dallas, the speed limits set in Denver do not have anything to do with how fast you drive from home to Fort Worth!
Most people spout “Judge not, lest ye be judged” because they do not want what they are doing to come under condemnation!
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