Posted on 12/09/2014 7:17:40 AM PST by wagglebee
“There is no right and wrong!” the angry university student said loudly, storming up to our campus pro-life display.
“Is that right?” my friend Caleb said slowly. The student came to an abrupt stop, realizing, perhaps for the first time, that his worldview was, in philosophical terms, an “argument to commit suicide.”
That anecdote is illustrative of how we’ve been letting the Cultural Left get away with murder. I’m not just referring to the institutionalized destruction of life in the womb or the “mercy-killing” of the old, but also the broad cultural acceptance—including among Christians—of two stupid and dangerous ideas that have allowed the Left to dominate the cultural discussion for decades.
Christians have not been losing in the public square because we do not have the arguments to respond to the New Moral Revolution of the Cultural Left. We have been losing because we have not been making those arguments, or have not been making them articulately enough.
First, Christians are told loudly, we can’t legislate morality.
I could point out that this argument is inevitably used to justify the legality of something blatantly wicked and immoral, like abortion. Yet, I’ve heard countless Christians tell me that while they are pro-life and do believe in Christian ethics, they don’t think trying to impact public policy or bring our message to the public square is useful because “we can’t legislate our morality.”
They’re forgetting something: All laws legislate morality. All laws are put in place because of a value judgement that something should be permitted, restricted, regulated, or banned. When Christians leave the discussion, all we’re doing is ensuring that it is someone else’s code of morality that is being enshrined into law, and someone else’s values are being used as the guiding principle for governance.
If we don’t fight for the lives of pre-born children and demand legal protection for them, for example, we’re not ensuring that the government won’t legislate morality; we’re allowing those who claim that the right to destroy human life at whim exists and is moral to seize and win the day. Eventually, the government will be paying the butchers with our own tax dollars—because a New Morality has been legislated, and ours has been definitively replaced.
A very brief look at the news cycle reveals that the Cultural Left, while silencing Christians with the demand that we cease trying to “legislate our morality,” is attempting to do precisely that. When they howl that gay marriage should be legal and accepted, they are demanding this because they say it is right and good and moral. They are stating that to deny marriage to homosexuals is discriminatory, and therefore wrong. And the solution to this, they tell us, is for the government or the courts to step in and ensure that this wrong is righted, that this injustice is corrected.
It is not that they don’t think morality should be legislated. They simply think that Christian morality should not be legislated.
Which brings me to the second argument the Left has used to silence Christians: That morality is subjective, if it even exists at all. In other words, it’s okay if you believe that, but that only means its right for you. Other people must remain “true to themselves” and do “what’s right for them.”
This is obviously nothing short of profound stupidity, but a brief jaunt on to any university campus will show you that the number of those who believe that morality does not exist (while simultaneously calling fracking and Christian ethics evil) is staggering. I’ve engaged in dozens of debates that went something like this:
Student: “Well, there is no morality.”
Me: “Okay. Do you think rape is wrong?”
Student: “Of course rape is wrong!”
Me: “Why?”
Student (nervously): “Because…you can’t just force yourself on someone.”
Me: “Says who? You’re appealing to a moral law, which necessitates a lawgiver. Who says that is wrong?”
Student (relieved to have found an answer): “The government! It’s illegal!”
Me: “While I’m glad you’ve found your source of morality, wouldn’t you agree that laws have been wrong before? What about slavery? Segregation?”
This is to illustrate, of course, that morality cannot be subjective, or it is not morality. Right and wrong cannot be subjective, or they cease to exist. Appalling crimes like rape and murder should be illegal, because they are immoral. Christians would argue that they are immoral because God, the Lawgiver, has said they are. The Cultural Left cannot claim that banning abortion, for example, is immoral—because they cannot claim anything is immoral. Inevitably, their claims that something is or is not immoral is based on one thing: How they feel about something. (When they appeal to science, they are again being fallacious: Science, of course, can only tell us what is, not what ought to be. Science can reveal to us observable truths, but cannot provide us with correlating value judgements.)
Christians have not been losing in the public square because we do not have the arguments to respond to the New Moral Revolution of the Cultural Left. We have been losing because we have not been making those arguments, or have not been making them articulately enough. We’ve often bought the laughable lies that morality simultaneously does not exist, and cannot be legislated. Both of these lies are simply a means of keeping us from fighting for what is right in the public square. In many cases, we’ve vacated the battlefield. It’s time to engage like never before—because as we see with abortion, assisted suicide, and euthanasia, lives literally depend on it.
Thank you!
I love this place!
Keep believing that.
There are at least 4 posts on the thread accusing me of being “not conservative” and “deceived”.
You’re a big boy...go back through the thread and re-read it.
Are you Pentecostal?
I’m not going to have a discussion with somebody who believes in a works-based salvation.
And you attempting to judge somebody you have never met is quite telling also.
1 John 1:8 says you’re full of it! I’m done....
17 Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.And no, I am not a Pentecostal, but I am a Born-Again Christian, a sinner, saved by Grace whom God has given forgiveness and liberty from my sin as explained by Paul in Chapter 8 of Romans.
18 And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation;
19 To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.
20 Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God.
21 For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
9. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.Pay close attention to the "cleanse us from all unrighteousness", it means he changes our heart, giving us the ability to obey him and stop sinning.
This article proceeds from a false premise: that Christians can have much of a positive impact in the electoral sphere as it is currently constituted. I think many Christians are wising up and shaking the dust from their sandals. Hence this article.
Results matter, and the net result of a generation of political activity on the part of Christian conservatives has resulted in...not much. The millions if not billions of dollars and millions of manhours spent have resulted in, well, what we have today. And now this author wants Christians to continue to spend time, sweat, and treasure to get more of the same?
I think we need look no further than abortion to see exactly what political involvement gets Christians over time. After 41 years, with some very minor exceptions, abortion is just as legal as it was in 1973. And while thankfully the abortion rate is going down, can it really be said that its related to politics? Or rather is it the result of ultrasounds, changes in the underlying culture, and a sort of horrible compounding where the culture of death has already wiped out its own progeny? In my opinion,
Christians who care about social conservatism and life would be far better served to pray and hold fundraisers to buy ultrasound machines than to waste time and resources on politics.
I actually enjoy it—cheers!
So not only do you believe in a works based salvation—you also believe that you CAN LOSE YOUR SALVATION!
WOW! Amazing that a professed Born-Again “christian” can even think that, much less say it.
Face it, everybody sins...daily! You do well to quote Romans 7, because till the day Paul was executed he was the living embodiment of it as we all are. (Rom 7:15) I am never going to make excuses for sinning, I am deeply sorry for it because it wounds Christ (as you should be too when you sin daily). Flesh will sin.
What does 1 John 1:9 say? I confess daily because I’m not a boaster like you (Ephesians 2:8-9).
Again, you lie....1 John 1:8 calls you out and do I call you out. I am saved and Permanently SEALED with the Holy Spirit per John 6:29, Romans 10:9-10, and John 14:6. Nothing can take me from His Palm (Romans 8:38-39 & John 6:37)-—it’s a shame you believe otherwise really.
I will rest on God’s word, not yours or anybody else’s. Cheers!
And yours make about as much sense as schizophrenic on cocaine.
Call it what you want, I don’t give a rip.
I’m done conversing with losers who vote 3rd parties and sit behind their keyboards bitching about how corrupt our political system is, and how the elitists choose for us, and how this person isn’t “conservative” enough.
You keep yourselves out of the game by having a mind about as narrow as a rail and calling those who would be your natural allies “faux conservatives”.
Step into reality. This nation will never ever again elect a conservative if we fight bitterly among ourselves over who we think the “Perfect Candidate” is. Save your ammo for libs, agitating somebody like me who agrees with probably 80-85% of what you think/believe isn’t going to get us anywhere.
Like I said earlier, my real Hope is in Christ anyways. What happens to this nation is really irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
I know your family disagrees—oh well!
Maybe after a year you’ll like me who knows?
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