Truth Really Matters

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131.  1/1/19:  The Fearless Little Evangelist
132.  2/1/19:  One or Two?
133. 3/1/19: How Should We Then Live?
134. 4/1/19: The Open Society and Its Enemies Part 1
135. 5/1/19: The Open Society and Its Enemies Part 2
136. 6/1/19: Why do you believe?
137. 7/2/19: 1776 or 1789?
138. 8/1/19: The Fountainhead
139. 9/1/19: What We Can’t Not Know
140. 10/1/19: Some Practical Advice Toward Happiness
141. 11/1/19: The One Thing Christians Won’t Do
142. 12/1/19: Is Faith Enough?

Tver
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131. The Fearless Little Evangelist
January 1, 2019

Are you a fearless evangelist? After all, you claim to be a born again Christian, a child of God, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, saved from a just judgment in Hell, destined to reign with Christ in the New Heaven and New Earth . . . shouldn’t you faithfully and diligently obey the Great Commission and get the Gospel to those around you? After what Jesus did for you? And do it fearlessly?

Well, I’m not a fearless evangelist, either. But I keep a short stack of fearless little evangelists in my pocket every time I leave the house, and medium stacks in my cars in case I exhaust my pocket, and huge stacks at home to replenish those other stacks.

The fearless little evangelist is a tract, of course. What is a tract? An unknown author once suggested that a tract is . . .

A silent missionary

A faithful missionary

A sower of God’s Word

A tireless worker

A continuous worker

A very economical worker

A worker that repeats many times

A worker that never gets angry

A worker that never contradicts itself

A worker that may touch multitudes

A worker that can go anywhere

A worker that stays on the job

A worker that needs no vacation

A worker that goes where you cannot

A worker that needs no salary

A worker that never gets sick

A worker that needs no building

A worker that heeds no opposition

A worker that travels in pockets

A worker that persists in calling

A worker that is always obedient

A worker that speaks many languages

A worker that takes no offerings

A worker that has endless patience

A worker that is absolutely fearless

A worker that depends on the Holy Spirit!

Earlier this week a middle-aged fellow saw me handing out tracts to customers and workers while I was waiting for my order in a local McDonald’s. He said, “Hey, remember me? You gave me some of those about a month ago, in my driveway. Remember? My name is __________.”

I said, “Sure, I remember.” My grandson and I were knocking doors in his neighborhood a few weeks before. I asked, “So, did you read them yet?”

He said, “They’re in my truck right now.”

I said, “Be sure and read them, OK?”

He said that he would. Those tracts were still ‘alive.’ He’s still got a chance to respond to the fearless little evangelists sitting in his truck.

Some years ago in Michigan I made a habit of eating lunch at a Taco Bell. I would always leave a Chick tract on my seat when I left. I got to know a co-worker from another department who turned out to be a born again Christian, and my wife and I got to visit with his family. They had been ‘church goers’ their entire lives. His wife told us she had been finally and truly born again just a few months before, after she had found a Chick tract at Taco Bell. Quickly under conviction, she brought it home and told her husband that she believed she had never been saved. They prayed and wept together as she trusted Christ as her Savior that very night.

In Illinois a few years ago we went to a steak place to celebrate an anniversary. One of the workers we gave tracts to was a teenage girl, the cashier. Later that evening I got a call from her mother, who was upset that we had dared to ‘push our religion’ on her daughter. I was able to turn the conversation around enough to share the Gospel with that mom.

One year later, after visiting the same steak place, I got a call from the manager, who complained to me that an atheist had found a tract that Bonnie had placed in the restroom. Shockingly, the atheist was offended and the manager took up that offense. I talked to that manager for about twenty minutes, explaining the offense of the Gospel to him. I also suggested that it might not be to his benefit if I were to tell every Christian I knew in that city that his restaurant was particularly offended by Christians.

I used to prefer going to restaurants before they filled up with ‘prime time’ crowds, arriving at 11 am, for example. But I’ve learned to aim for prime time – noon – so I can tract more people. Today (as I draft this) for example, there were several tables occupied when we arrived for lunch. If it’s a couple or a family, I’ll give them one ‘packet’ – two of our own 3×5 card tract designs (ThinkTracts.com), plus a Chick tract. (See my preferred Chick tract titles in my other Tracts essay on this site.)

If, instead of a family, the table is occupied by two or more apparently unrelated individuals, I’ll give a packet to each person. About midway through our meal, I’ll do another ‘sweep’ to catch new diners that have settled in. Finally, when we leave, we’ll catch a few more newly arrived folks on our way out.

My ‘accept rate’ for giving tracts away is about 98%. If you’d like some tips on how to do this effectively, write to me or give me a call and I’ll walk you through it. Easy as pie. And very satisfying. Occasionally, someone will look at the tracts and come over to chat. Occasionally, I’ll be able to start a 121 (one-to-one) Gospel witness with someone. Mostly, though, inside a restaurant, I’m looking to get a lot of tracts out.

Yesterday, a lady at Walmart observed me handing tracts out to a couple of folks, so when I turned to her, she thanked me for the ones I gave her and commented that not many Christians hand out tracts in this generation. I took a minute to encourage her, giving her several tracts and suggesting that if she liked them I would give her as many as she could use. You see, in the Great Commission, we are to reach out to the lost, and also teach / disciple / encourage / exhort the believers to serve the Lord in the same manner.

One day, a partner and I were doing sidewalk evangelism in downtown Chicago. My partner, apparently, gave a tract to a reporter for a local webzine. Fascinated by the content, the reporter published the text, even though he thought it all a bit humorous. But that fearless little evangelist confronted the eyeballs of every reader.

On another day outside Chicago’s Daley Center, a radio reporter was so interested in what I was doing that he asked to interview me. I got to share the Gospel with his radio audience.

I once gave a short stack of tracts to a shy Christian who knew that he should be about the Lord’s business, but had been too scared to try. He promised to hand them out. A few months later a young mother called us to say that she had been saved through one of those tracts . . . she described the shy fellow to a “T” so I knew the source. She had a Roman Catholic background, but that little tract brought her under such conviction that she studied the Bible for several months, finally rejecting the heresies of her youth, and then trusted Christ for salvation.

Bonnie and I braved zero-degree weather to visit the Northern Illinois campus one January day. On our way home I got a call from a campus newspaper reporter. Someone had left one of our tracts lying on a table in their office. Curious, the second-hand recipient called me, interviewed me, and published a column in their paper the next week. He was a skeptic, to be sure, but his column was fair enough and so that little tract was multiplied to many more recipients.

I gave a Chick tract to a dad outside of a courthouse who called me later, thanking me profusely for the message in it. He thought that it was exactly what his son needed, who was in some measure of trouble.

I hope to find out in Heaven, some day, the end result of some of these little adventures.

A partner and I set up a table at a mall for several Saturdays, to do 121s and to give tracts to anyone who came close by. A year later we found out that someone had received a tract and left it on an end table in their living room. A relative dropped by, saw the tract, got saved and led the rest of his family to the Lord.

I used to drop tracts on car seats when the windows were open in the summer time. Yeah, I probably shouldn’t have. One day when knocking doors, a fellow exclaimed that he’d seen exactly the same tract I was offering him. When I asked him about it, he said he’d found it on his car seat two years before. He still had it, on top of his dresser. That fearless little evangelist was still staring him in the face every day when he got dressed.

I leave tracts on gas pumps every time we fill up. I once got a call from someone who found the tract on a gas pump 50 miles away, in a town I’d never visited. Some Christian had ‘recycled’ that tract and it led to a serious conversation with the fellow who called. Another time I got a call from two fellows in North Carolina who had found one of our tracts on a gas pump there. They wanted to know more. I did my best to help . . . but I’m always praying that the Lord will help me to do better than my best.

I knock doors regularly with my wife as a partner, or else one of our grandsons. Going with a youngster gives you a little more grace in the eyes of the one who opens the door. We share the Gospel while handing them a packet of, typically, 4 tracts – two of our 3×5 cards, one Chick tract, and one business-card sized tract like those you can get from onemilliontracts.com. Why 4 tracts instead of 1? I’m hoping that the hook or the argument in at least one of the tracts is compelling. Also, most households have multiple inhabitants with different tastes. I’m not going to be cheap in getting the Gospel out. Life is short. Time is precious. And what’s money for, if not for the greatest cause of all?

I’ll admit that knocking doors isn’t my favorite thing. At any given door I’m usually hoping that no one is home! But once they answer I’m fully engaged, trying to do better than my best to help them understand their need for the Savior. I recall one Saturday afternoon in Arizona, when I took a 20-something fellow with me who had never knocked doors before. Whenever I take a ‘new guy’ with me, the Lord always blesses our efforts.

In this case we determined to do a residential block of 25 homes. Usually, I find about a third are home, and most, but not all, are willing to talk. That day 17 of the 25 were home and they were all willing to talk. By the end I was completely exhausted, both physically and emotionally. But also pumped up spiritually and thankful to God for such opportunities.

The emotional content of this work reflects the reality of spiritual warfare. What other activity in life is so satisfying, so rewarding, and yet entails such anticipatory dread? If you enjoy eating a steak dinner out, do you suffer dread before you go? Of course not. If you enjoy a visit to Disney World, do you suffer dread aforetime? No. Yet 121 evangelism, for most people, is wonderfully and invariably satisfying, yet provokes spiritual opposition in advance, particularly a spirit of dread. Clearly, this fear is not sourced in God (2 Tim 1:7) . . . rather, it must be sourced in a local minion of the Adversary.

So when you feel the dread, ask and trust the Lord to walk you past it. Get busy. The Lord Jesus promises to be with us in this work right until the end of this age. You will experience that joy if you get after it, and keep after it.

You can also, simply, place tracts where people will find them. I like napkin dispensers in restaurants. The next fellow to sit at that table pulls out a napkin and a tract flies out! I’d be glad to share many other ideas with you, but not in writing. Contact me and we’ll talk if you like.

I find it much easier to do 121 evangelism by walking down a busy sidewalk or by visiting a campus to talk to college students. Not everyone will talk to you, but multitudes will accept a tract (or two or three). The main thing is to get out of your house and find someone to help . . . at least give them a chance.

I visited one campus regularly for four years. I know of only one definite convert from that work. If he was the only one, was his soul worth the effort? Yes. I visited another campus regularly for eight years. I know of one definite convert from that work, also. Worth it? Oh yeah . . . friends for life and brothers for eternity.

Yet I have hope that my little part is just a portion of the efforts the Lord makes on all He died for, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. I hope to see in Heaven others where I had a small part. There will be much rejoicing.

We regularly visit churches and find an adult Sunday School class. When we introduce ourselves I make a pitch, trying to stir people up to get busy in 121 work. We hand out tract samples to everyone, and make an offer to supply as many for free as they can use. All they have to do is ask. I have also met with many pastors, offering seminars on 121 methods. Positive responses are oh-so-rare.

One mega-church pastor admitted to me that he was against “confrontational evangelism.” He wanted his people to build relationships, to do relational evangelism. I responded that I totally agreed with the idea of relational evangelism, something we should be doing throughout our lives. Yet a typical church member, counting up all the relationships he has in his neighborhood, his business, his relatives, etc., could share the Gospel clearly with everyone he knows within two to four weeks. That is, if he has any urgency to do so while all his lost acquaintances are each one heartbeat from Hell, every second of every day. Also, that is, if he actually knows how to do a good job of explaining the Gospel and dealing with objections – which takes some practice, experience that can be acquired only by making 121 work a part of your life.

Hey, if you really care about your lost grandmother’s soul, you had better do a good job when you ask her to sit down and talk her through her need for salvation. If you’re doing only ‘relational’ evangelism, you won’t be competent. Specifically, I mentioned to that pastor that I enjoy the liberty I have as an American citizen to drive to a nearby campus and then tract or talk to thousands of college students whom I will never have a ‘relationship’ with. Just by walking up to them and saying ‘hi.’

By the way, I got to know some of the most mature and established members of his church. They weren’t doing ‘relational evangelism’ at all, not even with their own relatives. Too scared, too incompetent. The church culture worked against such ‘confrontations’ in every way possible. Not only that . . . these ‘mature Christians’ had no discernment at all. The problems they described with their relatives showed clear evidence that their relations were unsaved, lost, not a chance that they had ever been born again. Yet they didn’t see that. Whatever alleged Bible knowledge they professed, in a church that exalted ‘spiritual formation’, they didn’t know how to apply it to the most vital of real-life applications – the salvation of their dearest family members.

Furthermore, if you don’t ‘practice’ by making 121 work a weekly part of your life, how can you possibly be ready when an opportunity falls right into your lap? We had just started a house church meeting on a Saturday afternoon in the home of good friends. The doorbell rang. My friend opened the door to greet two Mormon missionaries who were canvassing the neighborhood. He invited them in. Later he told me that he thought it would be ‘fun’ to see how I dealt with them.

My first inclination was . . . Groan! Why not just invite them back later so he could deal with them on his own? I really wasn’t in the mood! My second thought was to insist that my friend have the ‘fun’ and I would just play the observer. It took me about three seconds to work through all that and then get into gear. I took the lead and we talked through the issue of salvation with these Mormons – didn’t let them get into their spiel, but rather used some apologetics, asked them probing questions, and then treated them just like I would treat Roman Catholics, or Jehovah’s Witnesses, or Muslims, namely, any religious lost folks. It was a good, satisfying thirty-minute discussion. We helped them understand the stakes. We told them the truth. We gave them a chance to repent from false religion and embrace Truth. Interestingly, a few months later, exactly the same thing happened with a different set of Mormon missionaries.

But what do most Christians do when lost cult-chained souls greet them with a smile at their doorstep? “Nope, we’ve got our own church. Not interested!” And then shut their door on someone who wants to talk about salvation! Disgusting, heartless cowardice!

As hard as it is to find lost people who are ready to repent and trust Christ for salvation, in my experience it is harder to find professing Christians who care for the souls in their community . . . who care even enough to offer a Gospel tract to give someone a chance to miss Hell and find Heaven.

How tragic. How pitiably sad. How maddening! What are Christians doing to make their lives count? I’ve visited megachurches that list as many as 100 ‘ministries’ or activities to fill up the lives of their people. Everything under the sun except personal evangelism. Hopefully, we’re in the last of the last days. I believe that God’s work is flourishing today in China, India, Iran, and other places where persecution is powerful. But nothing much is going on in America. Lots of seeker-sensitive pablum, but no meat, no fervor, no zeal.

How about you? Whose team are you on? No, not whose team do you profess to be on, but whose team are you playing for . . . on the field, sweating, hustling, trying to make a difference?

• drdave@truthreallymatters.com

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132. One or Two?
February 1, 2019

In 1963 Bob Dylan caught the spirit of his age with the song, The Times, They Are A’Changin. In it he tells parents not to criticize their children who, he insists, are not under their authority. Get out of the way, for the times they are a-changin’.

The America I grew up in is no more. Our continued economic prosperity coasts on what used to be a Christian heritage, a substantially Biblical worldview. Of course, America has never truly been a ‘Christian nation.’ Yet its institutions, in the family, in the church, in a governmental design based on separation and distribution of political power . . . supported common values, respecting individual liberty, sexual morality, honesty in business, and civility in discourse.

But today when a politician speaks of American ‘values,’ what is he talking about? For example, during much of the 20^th century sexual immorality was widespread, but most people knew what was right and what was wrong. Today there are no boundaries. Anyone that dares suggest that fornication or adultery is sin, well, that’s the guy who’s in trouble.

Most churches have yielded to criticisms that they care more about individual salvation than about social justice, and so create low-resource programs – which I call ‘cheeseburgers for the homeless’ – that purport to establish a this-worldly kingdom that will ‘certainly’ eliminate poverty, disease, war, racism, and injustice of all kinds. All we have to do is throw absolutes under the bus. Jesus was a nice guy, but not God Almighty, for example. Those churches that still pay lip service to the Gospel do not share it, or, when they do, water it down so there is no chance of offending, no chance of provoking repentance – a word that has virtually disappeared from Christian culture!

An interesting perspective on this violent shift in culture and worldview is offered by Peter Jones (2015) in One or Two: Seeing a World of Difference – Romans 1 for the Twenty-first Century. He sees the West as rushing “headlong into the brave ‘new’ world of pagan Oneism” – God is the creation, including all the stuff, including us. This comes after centuries of Biblical Twoism – God is outside His creation — as the ruling paradigm.

Jones uses Romans Chapter 1 as a template for his discussion, noting that Paul’s epistles turned the world upside down. New Testament truth “shook emperors from their thrones, brought adulterers like Augustine to their knees in repentance, and ended the mad dash to generalized sexual perversion and moral decay.”

“Everyone is out of the closet,” Jones says, “not just homosexuals, lesbians, crossdressers, and transgenders. Porn addicts show no shame. Graphic reports of sexual oddities sneak into the evening news. Oprah shamelessly attacks the God of her Christian past, and talk show host David Letterman jokingly denies his interest in sex with monkeys, while admitting his adultery with female members of his own staff. Radical feminists demand that their sisters . . . liberate the inner slut” and “re-establish the consciousness of the Sacred Prostitute.” The only taboo is taboo itself.

So what are American values today?

Jones sees the West today as gorged on the ancient pagan philosophies, on “Oneist pagan spiritualities, endless sensual fantasies, and cock-eyed global utopian illusions.”

The big question is, What is reality? Not what religion do you prefer, but what is reality? Is God just a meaningless term for everything around us? Are we all little gods running around, deciding what reality should be? Or is God there, a Person to whom we, as separate persons, are accountable?

In Oneism we and the stuff – atoms and molecules – all share the same nature, or essence. In Twoism the Creator is a different being, not constrained by the stuff He made. In Twoism, God determines reality, including the nature of man, not just man’s molecules, but his essence in meaning, purpose, morality, and relationships with each other and with our Creator. I won’t go through the Romans 1 citations that Jones does, but will point out a number of conclusions that any Bible student should relate to, the chiefist being that Paul identifies Oneism as “the lie,” and Twoism as “the truth.”

I grew up during America’s big transformation. “From its founding until the 1960s, American culture was defined by patriarchal, heterosexual, and Judeo-Christian presuppositions. In one generation, this worldview has been largely replaced by a radically egalitarian, omni-gendered, pansexual, multi-religious (and Oneist) belief system that has turned our contemporary world upside down.”

The author cites Julian the Apostate, the nephew of Constantine, who tried to return the Roman empire to paganism, persecuting Christians and promoting the worship of Isis, goddess of magic. Julian failed, uttering his famous last words in AD 360, “You have conquered, Galilean.” But Julian’s team is winning again in the nations derived from the old Roman empire.

The book is worth reading, especially for the many examples that support his thesis. Here are a few, citing events in England that correlate with American trends.

• An experienced foster mother with a spotless track record involving 80 children over the years, was de-licensed for allowing a Muslim girl to convert to Christianity. She had actually worked to find alternatives for the girl, to practice her Muslim faith, but the girl insisted on becoming a Christian. So the lady lost her job and her livelihood.
• A Community Nurse was suspended for praying with an elderly patient.
• Adoption agencies, nurses, firemen, foster parents, and workers in elderly care homes are being punished for Christian beliefs. Jones asks, “Will the English punish their Queen for being ‘Defender of the Faith’”?

As the Christian worldview is pushed out, the moral and social vacuum is quickly filled by Oneist spirituality.

Jones reviews some history. In the 1950s, for example, Carl Gustav Jung, the famous Swiss psychiatrist and demon-possessed mystic, predicted the West would create a Christianized version of yoga that would bring eastern spirituality into the churches and into the culture. He was right! In 2014 spending on yoga classes reached 27 billion dollars! Some yoga programs are covered by welfare payments! Yoga, of course, is intrinsically tied to its Hindu (pagan / demonic) roots. You may as well promote ‘Christian heroin clubs’ or ‘Christian strip clubs’ if you’re going to promote ‘Christian yoga.’

In more recent times, Prince Charles has spoken out for the ‘Perennial Philosophy,’ another way to promote the idea that God is One and Universal and that all religions are One. Charles believes that the wisdom of ancient pagan religions will rescue our spiritually starved world. He admires the Jewish Kaballah and the mysticism of the Bushmen of Botswana. He ties his pagan philosophy to the supposed environmental crisis of the 21^st century.

“The lie” hasn’t changed. Satan promised Eve that she could be like God. Today’s pagans see man as god and so defy and deny a transcendent Creator.

Here is about one-tenth of a list of modern spiritual practices or programs that Jones cites . . . A Course in Miracles, American Indian Vision Quest, Aryuvedic medicine, Astrology, Bahai Unity, Buddhist / Christian dialogue, chakras, channeling, crystals, divination, Eckankar (soul travel), EST, I Ching, mantras, Reiki, tarot cards, Wicca, Zen . . . it goes on and the list grows continually.

Jones: “Biblical Twoism clashes with esoteric spirituality, which claims both the democratic right to influence public policy and the ideological right to silence the classic Christian view as ‘hate speech.’”

Hey, Christian . . . the trends are all negative, racing toward the rise of the Antichrist and the Tribulation. Our job is to get the Gospel out, to try to wake people up, to (at least) give people a chance to face reality – their need for the Savior.

I resonate with a bit of history that Jones describes. In the 1970s and 1980s I saw atheism / materialism as the reigning paradigm of the enemy. But atheism has been largely defeated by postmodern pantheism, that denies rationalism, that sees us all as spiritually connected, that exalts self-centered emotions above objective truth, indeed that hates anyone who claims to know truth.

I’ve heard Rush Limbaugh say, some years ago, that a lot of leftists despise him, not so much for his particular views, but more because he says that he’s right about something and the other side is wrong. They hate his discrimination between right and wrong. It’s different now. Their hatred of conservatives, not to mention actual Bible-believing Christians, is overt and blunt. They hate us for what we believe and say. So the job of postmodernism was to make conservatives into wimps, afraid to stand up and speak. Once that was accomplished, the Left is now free to be dogmatic and persecute any diversity of opinion.

Jones sees postmodernism as denying theism and debunking man-centered rationalism, creating a vacuum that invites paganism. “If reason failed us, perhaps unreason will save us; if logical analysis was not enough, perhaps the ancient myths of spiritual empowerment will lift us to new heights of human achievement.” In searching for spiritual Oneism, people develop an occult relationship with nature. The climate change movement is just a piece of this, but it infects much of the scientific establishment, which may or may not get mystical about their models, but they have enough sense to support the leftist political establishment that provides the funding.

Jones was teaching at a pastors’ conference in Bolivia when he heard that President Evo Morales announced plans to take over all three branches of government, making Bolivia a totalitarian workers’ utopia. What’s interesting is that Morales was once an atheistic Marxist, but became a shamanistic Marxist, reviving ancient Andean tribal spirit worship. “A shadow cabinet of shamans helps him decide public policy.”

Pagan books are now published by university presses, and academic courses multiply. Young people are taught – rather, indoctrinated – to be passionate about environmentalism and globalism. Every field is infected, including psychology and economics. Evolution, of course, suffuses the ‘scientific’ disciplines, but there is an increasing spiritual consciousness replacing old-fashioned Darwinism. Ultimately, to save the planet and educate all the young in acceptable group-think, the new paganism must have total control. Tyranny is inevitable. We can only hope that we’re in the final slide toward the takeover of the Antichrist.

Yet we can be busy about getting the Gospel out to individuals regardless of the world’s path! Whatever our aggravation with politics, social media, entertainment, public education, or the cultural sewage of our day, we can still do exactly what God wants us to do . . . which always includes the Great Commission!

Jones has talked to Christians on campus who, typically, are scared to death to speak of their faith. They try to stay under the radar. I’ve met such young folks, too. It’s sad – indeed, it’s tragic. The Devil’s team is bold and vocal. The Christians are usually wimps.

Christian student groups used to invite bold speakers for campus events. No more. One campus ministerial leader said, “We now have created a hybrid kind of meeting based on community healing and friendship. We love, serve, befriend. We create trust; we want to be a kind of hospital for people.” Yeah, I know the type. They are so sweet that they never get around to preaching about sin, judgment, repentance, and the necessity of the new birth via faith in the exclusive Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Instead, many ‘emerging’ Christians are redefining their ‘witness’ as guiding the pursuit of mystical experiences or by launching another cheeseburgers-for-the-homeless program. The reality is that we’re all desperately ‘poor’ without God’s grace via the Gospel. It’s the bread of life we must give the lost, not just another burger. Sure, give them a burger if you like, but share the Gospel or you’ve just comforted them for a few moments while they’re on their way to Hell.

For a Biblical model on attitude, see what Paul desires in asking the Ephesian church to pray for him in Eph. 6:18-20. He’s not asking for cheeseburger-style boldness.

Jones has much to say about Oneism and sexuality, which I won’t detail here. One main point is that Twoism is about distinctions and Oneism (paganism) is about destroying distinctions. Sexual confusion and addiction to perversion is correlated in Romans 1 with denial of the true God . . . denial of reality. Go far enough down that road and the conscience is seared. That fellow will usually reject the opportunity to discuss Truth with a Christian who tries to reach him with the Gospel. Yet we can try, with compassion, and yes, with boldness.

It won’t get any easier from this point. The favorite target of ‘hate speech’ activists is the Christian who opens his mouth.

Oneism theology infests the United Nations and motivates globalist politicians, along with many evangelicals. “They say we can create a utopia where all people get along, universal justice rules and humans live in unity with nature. Based on delusional fantasy, it will become a planetary nightmare.” Why is Trump’s wall so viciously contentious? If America loses its borders, global government is that much closer.

Why is this a nightmare? Because salvation (temporally or eternally) doesn’t start within the human breast or from evolution. Global unity doesn’t cancel egotism and greed or sin of any kind. Look at local tyrannies. The more tyranny in any city or nation, the more corruption and the more misery. Selfishness rules in the heart that is devoid of God’s grace. This won’t change by global reorganization. It will hit its peak under the Antichrist.

Jones: “When Man is God, then so is the State, for do we not need wise leaders who know what is best for us? Welcome, tyranny.” The Oneist left in this country drips with condescension. They know best. They must control everything. Anyone who doesn’t agree must be destroyed.

Jones has an interesting chapter filled with quotes from Oneist thought leaders. Ken Wilber writes, “The universe is winding up, not down.” And that global consciousness will arise when we realize that we and every-thing “share a dual nature: as a whole unto itself, and as a part of some other whole.” We need to “transcend and include.” (Yes, there is lots of double-talk in this business.)

Feminist theologian Rosemary Reuther prefers “the nature and fertility religions” of paganism, including Baal-worship. Bishop John Shelby Spong sees God not as an external being but as the power of love flowing through everything. Lloyd Geering predicts that the global community will return to nature worship.

Many see all religions as fundamentally the same . . . except for those subscribing to a God-breathed Bible with salvation only through Christ. In that, they’re right! In 1993 Jones attended a world religions conference and watched 8,000 delegates from 125 religions lock arms and dance to an American Indian tom-tom drum. (He didn’t join arms. Of course. See 2 Cor 6:14-18.)

Jones has a useful summary of the issue with Islam. Allah is unknowable, like an impersonal force, and thereby similar to pantheistic religions. Allah swears by elements within the creation. So how can he stand above it? God can swear only by Himself (Heb 6:13). The lack of person-ness within Islam tempts many Muslims to Sufism which, Jones says, is thoroughly Oneist.

Progressives despise Biblical Christianity, insisting that for our culture to thrive, “we must return to pre-modern, pre-Christian cultures and their notions of oneness with nature. So the ‘progressives’ are also ‘regressives.’” Because Christianity is so old-fashioned and worn out, we’re supposed to submit to ancient Andean and American Indian shamans . . . who give evidence of demonic influence and even possession.

Atheism and evolution are used in the schools and the universities to trash the Christian worldview, but the end of that road is postmodern spirituality. In my experience it’s clear that many college students don’t go far down that road, but rather slouch along in some nominal atheism or agnosticism, get into their careers and coast along for decades, mostly clueless.

Yet many move on to New Age beliefs. Gaia and universal consciousness are much more fun than boring old materialism . . . and much more in tune with leftist propaganda regarding climate change and a utopian global government. Who needs borders? Let’s just all live together as one big happy family. (Just don’t talk about those nasty no-go zones all over Europe, the spiking rape statistics in Sweden, or rising violent anti-Semitism, etc., since those nations relaxed their borders.)

The Devil has a huge smorgasbord of doctrines and attitudes that deny reality and enable us rebels to live the way our glands lead us, but ultimately support the candidacy of the Antichrist.

Jones has a friend who is a missionary to the Cree Nation and must deal with shamanism on a day-to-day basis. In the sun-dance ceremony, about 40 people fast all day and bounce up and down from sunrise to sunset, shaking rattles, channeling prayers to the Thunderbird Spirits, the Buffalo Spirits, the Sun Spirit, etc. The point is to sacrifice your body, often to the point of illness, to the spirits for power and cleansing and getting requests answered. Great, huh? Some of this stuff gets taught in the public schools now, too.

Shamanistic methods have gone mainstream, producing bizarre psychic phenomena, encounters with demonic deities, communication with spirit guides, and, occasionally, creative inspiration. I’ve always thought that the ‘top performers’ in a variety of fields (rock / pop music, Hollywood, TV, sports, politics,) likely have ‘help’ to get to the top.

Christian prayer, study, and worship are not about trances and mysticism. God commands us to think, reason, study, and learn. Knowledge and wisdom require rationality, not irrationality. “Doctrine requires thought, which is the enemy of mystical states of wholeness / irrationality.”

Jones observes that singing is usually absent in pagan gatherings. The Christian praises God and thanks Him, knowing who He is. (See Ps 86:12, Rom 15:6, and Col 3:16-17, for example.) The Oneist has no one to thank.

Jones has a lot more to say about today’s obsessions with sexuality, in all its weird forms, and its connection to Oneism, but I’ll end here. I do heartily recommend the book. The Christian needs to be informed, in order to witness coherently to those caught up in anti-reality, in order to discern Oneist ideas that infiltrate the churches, and to protect their children and grandchildren.

In Oneism, man strives to be god. The Biblical truth is entirely opposite . . . God became man in the incarnation. There begins the path to salvation. Miss that and you miss everything.

• drdave@truthreallymatters.com

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133. How Should We Then Live
March 1, 2019

This essay is found in the Discipleship section. Click on . . .
How Should We Then Live?

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134. The Open Society and Its Enemies Part 1
April 1, 2019

Are there ‘laws of history’ that can be discovered and used to predict the future? Isn’t it reasonable to assume that we can discover laws of psychology that can be used to develop a ‘science’ of sociology and, in turn, predict how societies will develop over time? This idea is called historicism and, while some think it is quite plausible – Karl Marx for instance, who was certain that capitalism would morph into socialism and thence into dissolution of the state, resulting in an ultimate uprising and rule of the proletariat, namely communism – the idea is “based on a gross misunderstanding of the method of science.”

So says Karl Popper, one of the foremost philosophers of the 20^th century, in his book The Open Society & Its Enemies, first published in two volumes in 1945, more recently in a single volume in 1994. Popper’s specialty was the philosophy of science, but in this work he explored the philosophical history of tyranny. He sees historicism as “harmful” in its tendency toward diminishing personal responsibility in lieu of a groupthink wherein class warfare and collectivism are supposedly inevitable.

Popper is a secularist but has much to say that is in sync with a Christian worldview. His view of the Christian faith is that it is beneficial in its emphasis on individual morality and charitable works, but he disdains the view that the Bible is true, and that Biblical history and prophecy serve as God’s outline for world history. He would criticize us Bible believers for our own historicist position, that the 2^nd Coming of Jesus Christ will re-order history for all time. Nevertheless, he is a friend of freedom and virtue and of limited government. His stated desire is to add to our understanding of totalitarianism and why it is important to continually fight against it.

In this essay and the next, I’ll be pulling out nuggets from his book and adding my own comments, as I am wont to do!

Popper builds a large and damning case against Plato, who was a primary source for the justification of totalitarianism through the ages. Here’s why, in Plato’s words:

“The greatest principle of all is that nobody, whether male or female, should be without a leader. Nor should the mind of anybody be habituated to letting him do anything at all on his own initiative . . . in war and in the midst of peace – to his leader he shall direct his eye and follow him faithfully . . . even in the smallest matter . . . For example, he should get up, or move, or wash, or take his meals . . . only if he has been told to do so. In a word, he should teach his soul, by long habit, never to dream of acting independently, and to become utterly incapable of it.”

 This principle underlies Plato’s political philosophy, which we’ll get into. For now, note that the sentiment is entirely anti-Christian, opposing the image-of-God individuality of each one of us, and idolatrously substitutes a human leader in place of God, His wisdom, and His word. And that’s where America has been racing for a long time, literally Hell-bent. Political parties and governmental power are the gods of this age. Everything is politicized, including K-12 and collegiate education, news, entertainment, and sports. Groupthink, no matter how irrational or morally egregious – consider the fussing and fighting in national politics over the last few years – dominates the news and the attention of too many.

Plato labored at times of political instability – but don’t we all. Plato had royal blood and viewed humanity from the perspective of the elite. He saw his culture as depraved and decaying and viewed the cosmos in the same way. He believed in human destiny, but felt that it could be broken or altered by efforts of moral will, supported by human reason. (Which is not an entirely self-consistent position.)

His proposal to halt corruption was to establish a state that would arrest all political change. The perfect state would return us to a Golden Age which knew no change, a Golden Age that supposedly existed in ancient times before the decay turned on. This is an interesting echo of Eden, albeit without God! It correlates with Plato’s central philosophical idea of ideal forms which are reflected only crudely in earthly experience. (We won’t get into that in this essay.) If Plato were a full-blown historicist, he would have thought it futile to fight fate.

Popper describes the social engineer as the man who is the master of his own destiny, who can choose and implement policy just as an artist or an engineer creates. Popper applauds the social engineer as long as, when in governmental power, he carefully experiments and limits his intervention. The variables are so numerous and difficult to grasp that social or political engineering must be tentative and careful, as Popper sees it.

Karl offers, as an example, a police force. It can be designed, carefully, as an instrument for the protection of freedom and security, or it can become a weapon of ‘class rule’ . . . as we see in the security forces of Communist and Islamic states. The overreach of our own federal agencies in recent years (DOJ, FBI, CIA, NSA) has shocked many Americans who grew up with the idea that such government agencies should be instruments of security and true justice, and should not to be used as political weapons.

Plato agreed with his mentor Socrates at times, but disagreed emphatically at other times. In an area of agreement, Socrates was “a moralist who pestered all kinds of people, forcing them to think, to explain, and to account for the principles of their actions.” Why should we act ‘wisely’, for example? What is wisdom anyway? Or efficiency, or justice, or piety?

The secular philosopher, even in modern times, has no satisfying answer to such questions, because he has no solid foundation. The Biblical presuppositionalist starts with God’s word and the rational mind and conscience he is gifted with. When wisdom, love, or justice are defined Biblically, and acted upon, a man finds himself in sync with his conscience and has a clear sense that he is in sync with the way God created man and wants him to be.

The atheistic philosopher may stumble into a proper conclusion about what love or justice is, but he must make an irrational leap to do so. After all, in his atheistic worldview what comes out of his mouth is the consequence of brain chemistry. The Periodic Table and the laws of physics and chemistry contain nothing of rationality, justice, logic, etc. The unbeliever must start with his conscience, his emotions, and the rationality that God gave him, although he won’t admit it. He certainly cannot derive justice from Maxwell’s or Einstein’s equations!

In Plato’s Republic, he insisted that the original form of Society, indeed that which conforms most closely to the Form of the ideal state most closely, is monarchy, wherein the king is the wisest and most godlike of men, surrounded by counsellors and ministers of the same class. Plato sees oligarchy – rule of the rich families – as less desirable, followed by democracy which produces too much liberty, leading to lawlessness, and finally tyranny – the fourth and final sickness of a city or nation.

Plato, like Marx, is a historicist, believing that history inexorably unfolds in this progression. Yet Plato believes the trend can and should be fought. If the ruling class can avoid disunity, which comes from personal ambition, then the state can persist without change. Marx likes the idea of class warfare until all classes are subsumed into a proletariat or workers’ class. Plato wants to avoid class warfare by establishing the supremacy of the ruling class, with no internal conflicts. You might note that actual ‘communist’ states are, therefore, more in line with Plato than with Marx. Modern communist states are always ruled by an elite that oppresses the workers’ class.

Growing up during the Cold War, I often noted how the Soviets and Chicom leaders would talk about their desire for peace. What they meant, of course, was that peace would occur when the communists ruled the world and there was no opportunity for conflict. In actual communism, there is always a ruling class – a Communist Party tyranny. Marx’s dream of a classless society cannot conceivably happen in actual, modern Marxist movements. The Left will always establish their own tyrannical ruling class.

Popper sees Plato’s arguments as faulty and immoral. “He uses invective, identifying liberty with lawlessness, freedom with license, and equality before the law with disorder.” He calls those who disagree with him profligate, insolent, lawless, and shameless, “as gratifying every whim, as living solely for pleasure, and for unnecessary and unclean desires.” He would see the average American citizen as a deplorable.

Plato, an Athenian, analyzed the transition of Syracuse from democracy to tyranny. Such a transition is easily accomplished by a popular leader clever to exploit class antagonism between the rich and the poor. Once in power the poor become more and more dependent on him. Today we call this identity politics, with all kinds of victim identities based on race, gender, economics, and whatever can be imagined. Because they have no God, supposedly victimized minorities make gods of their champions, gods who will play the game only to acquire more and more power.

The Left never solves problems, especially the problems they create themselves. Just look at the inner cities. For over fifty years, blacks have voted into power Democrat urban leadership. How’s that been going? Unemployment, crime, the destruction of families, and poverty remain ubiquitous . . . yet those problems are repeatedly used by the Left to justify their own reelection.

Plato was optimistic that a young tyrant could be reformed if he “has the good fortune to be the contemporary of a great legislator.” Plato saw himself as the epitome of such a wise philosophical companion. Today’s Left, similarly, is well-staffed with politicians, academicians, and media types who envision themselves as part of the ruling class once their champion gets power.

The Spartan society of Plato’s time was a slave state, in contrast to his idealized caste state. In either system only the ruling class is permitted to carry arms. The Leftist elite in America, similarly, fights hard to disarm American citizens, while retaining arms, armed guards, and gated communities for themselves.

The Athenian ruling class enjoyed a broad education, within which they were trained to be professional warriors. Popper, quoting Plato: “Children of both sexes, we are told twice, ‘must be taken on horseback within the sight of actual war; and provided it can be done safely, they must be brought into battle, and made to taste blood; just as one does with young hounds.’”

It’s interesting to me that in this point, today’s Left is entirely against Plato’s point. Why? Well, Plato wanted Athens to be great again . . . MAGA! The American Left wants the destruction of America . . . open borders, unconstrained abortion, gender confusion, infinite debt, immorality . . . and so promotes a simpering pacifism, producing generations of snowflakes who need safe spaces whenever someone says something outside the daily groupthink.

What about education? That’s only for Plato’s ruling class, especially the political training to keep the sheep in their place. As with the 2^nd Amendment, so it goes with education. The American political elite, whether Republican or Democrat, confiscate wealth from the middle class to establish a dominant and dysfunctional public school system, while sending their own kids to private schools.

Plato, like today’s Left, abhorred mingling of the classes. Slaves or poor laborers must not be elevated to a higher class. Plato justified the rulers’ superiority in three respects: race, education, and values. His racism and self-righteousness is easily matched today. Consider the media outrage when a conservative black speaks out, or a woman stands up for the life of the unborn. It’s a ‘sin’ for anyone to act inconsistently with her pre-ordained identity.

Plato’s desire is for the state to be all. Society must be designed so that each of the lower classes is dependent on the state. The state is higher than the individual. Only the state can be self-sufficient, perfect, and capable of improving the condition of its subjects. These principles are completely antagonistic to those upon which America was founded, and anathema to the multitudes of immigrants who fled tyrannies around the world to enjoy freedom here. (You might review the Declaration of Independence to refresh your memory.) It’s also Satanic, opposed to the humanity God gave to us, making us – soulishly – in His image. Scripture’s priorities are clear . . . first, man’s individual responsibility to God and His laws, followed by responsibilities to family, community, and his nation’s laws – as long as those laws do not conflict with God’s. (See the Book of Acts in that regard, for the exceptional cases.)

Plato’s program is totalitarian, although he would never admit that. His ideas continue to infuse culture and government throughout the world. Popper observes that Plato gets a pass from most philosophers, or is deliberately misunderstood. Most moderns tend to idealize the guy, without realizing that modern tyrannical movements owe much to the ancient Athenian. Popper cites as an example the very translation of the title of Plato’s so-called “Republic.” When we see the word ‘republic,’ we think, perhaps, in terms of a representative constitutional republic. Popper asserts that a better translation of the word would be ‘The City State’ or ‘The State.’

What do most Americans mean when we speak of justice? Popper suggests (a) an equal distribution of the burdens of citizenship, (b) equal treatment of citizens before the law, (c) the laws show no favor toward particular individuals or groups, (d) an equal share in the advantages of citizenship.

What did Plato mean by justice? Simply – that which is in the interest of the ‘best’ state, namely the state structured to maintain class division and the rule of the elites. At the practical level, a carpenter must confine himself to carpentry, since that work is best fitted for his nature, in order to serve the state. Similarly, the shoemaker is ‘justly’ constrained to stick to making shoes. Merchants are not to be warriors, and slaves should ‘justly’ not expect the state to educate them.

Plato: “When each class in the city minds its own business, the money-earning class as well as the auxiliaries and the guardians, then this will be justice.”

Plato: “You are created for the sake of the whole and not the whole for the sake of you.” The Psalmist in Psalm 8 would disagree. (As would Ayn Rand, who occasionally got some things right.) Furthermore, Plato identifies altruism with collectivism, and individualism with egoism. And so our government sees our money as belonging to them, not to us, and all charitable work must be administered by the state, which maximizes the political power of the elite.

An earlier Greek, Pericles, took a more humane view. He wrote that the laws must guarantee equal justice ‘to all alike in their private disputes.’ More than that, ‘We do not feel called upon to nag at our neighbor if he chooses to go his own way.’ Why do liberals want to control everyone else? There’s something devilish about that! Jesus taught us to love our neighbors, not to oppress them.

In short, Plato’s justice is no justice at all, from the perspective of a healthy human conscience, which is God’s given perspective. Plato fought against the equalitarians of his day. Popper is sure that Plato knew exactly what he was doing, including his doubletalk usage of words like justice and equality. His doubletalk helped him to avoid outright confrontation at times.

Plato demanded natural privileges for his Philosopher-King rulers. How prevalent is that today, regarding DOJ / FBI investigations (or lack thereof) into our corrupt ruling class? Plato and Aristotle (Plato’s student) both defended their views based on the idea that equality would be terrific if only men were equal, but treating them equally (under the law) is impossible because they are not equal. So who gets to decide who is superior or inferior? The ruling elite of course! And don’t change anything! Keep everybody in their place and all will be well!

Consider one Biblical illustration, in 1 Corinthians 6, especially verse 4: “. . . set them to judge who are least esteemed in the church.” God has enormously more respect for the basic moral judgments and common sense of His image bearers than did Plato or his acolytes who lust for power today.

Yet to Plato and today’s Left, groupthink must lead to the total eradication of individuality. In the Republic Plato describes the ideal state as the elimination of all that is private and individual. ‘There is common property of wives, of children, and of all chattels . . . Our very eyes and ears and hands . . . (belong) to the community. All men are to be moulded . . . and they even rejoice and grieve about the same things and at the same time.’ In the meantime, everyone must follow his elite Leader. Do nothing on your own initative . . . ‘to his Leader he shall direct his eye, and follow him faithfully.’

That’s the end game. Do you want to ‘reach across the aisle’ and continue to compromise with the Left? Just know where you’ll end up.

Plato: “The wise shall lead and rule, and the ignorant shall follow.”

 The question, ‘Who should rule?’, Popper argues, is quite useless. It assumes unlimited authority / sovereignty in the ruler or ruling class. The better question is, ‘How can we so organize political institutions that bad or incompetent rulers can be prevented from doing too much damage.’ This idea drove the Constitutional framers to establish a balanced, tripartite form of government.

This more pessimistic starting point is in touch with the reality that men are sinners and must be constrained, especially those who are most capable and attain the highest positions of power. The secular humanist, on the other hand, is happy to ascribe godlike motivations and attach godlike powers to their favorite socialist hero . . . despite disappointment after disappointment.

In Popper’s experience, he observes that “rulers have rarely been above average, either morally or intellectually, and often below it.” Accordingly, “it appears to me madness to base all our political efforts upon the faint hope that we shall be successful in obtaining excellent, or even competent, rulers.”

Have we not observed in our generation how venal, how corrupt, how eager to lie, how deceitful, and how devoid of rational arguments are most of those in our ruling class, especially on the socialist wing . . . which includes all the Democrats and a good portion of the ‘establishment Republicans’?

Popper lauds democratic institutions and the democratic process, which “makes possible the reform of institutions without using violence, and thereby the use of reason in the designing of new institutions and the adjusting of old ones . . . The question of the intellectual and moral standard of its citizens is to a large degree a personal problem.” Whatever America’s internal problems, the blame goes to the citizenry, which elects the government it deserves. The solutions to the problems cannot be solved by top/down authoritarianism. That way lies tyranny and a host of problems well beyond what Americans have ever experienced . . . but can take note of the historical trends in Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union, the Kim dynasty’s North Korea, and even Venezuela today.

Plato, like academics of today, sees the educational institutions as responsible for developing America’s future leaders, rather than the family, the church, or the local community. Universities brag incessantly on the accomplishments of their alumni, particularly if they are wealthy and / or politically powerful. But it’s clear to Christians that the universities today, and for the last several generations, work hard to indoctrinate, and work hard to produce anti-Christian alumni. That trend shows no sign of abating. Plato was explicit in his desire not to awaken self-criticism and critical thought – rather, that was Socrates’ view. Socrates reveled in public debates! Instead, Plato wanted to mould minds, to censor opposition, and to establish an educational monopoly for the ruling class. Plato would be very happy with the state of American universities and the NEA-empowered public school system that feeds them. They hold the keys to power.

The best of the best of the ruling class, to Plato, is the Philosopher-King, not the modest, rational individualist that Socrates extolled (and which would be consistent with a Biblical view of man), but rather a totalitarian demi-god. Can you think of the names of any recent Leftist politicians who might enjoy becoming totalitarian demi-gods?

Plato, apparently, had a poor track record in training students who would rise to power. At least 9 tyrants were among his alumni, who each demonstrated Lord Acton’s principle . . . power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Totalitarianism will not, and cannot tolerate criticism, and so freedom disintegrates.

Plato bluntly declared that rulers have the privilege to lie and deceive, both to enemies and to their own citizenry, for the benefit of the city, as they saw fit. Also, that no one else must touch this privilege! Access to medicine was a political hammer, too, to be applied in the interest of the state. Plato loved the idea of government-controlled health care! Plato insisted that the physician has “no right to attend to a man who cannot carry out his ordinary duties; for such a man is useless to himself and to the state.”

Plato saw power politics as art, and the composition of cities to be done for beauty’s sake. Popper protests, properly, that human lives must not be the means to satisfy an artist’s expression. Those who love liberty would agree. “Rather, every man should be given, if he wishes, the right to model his life himself, as far as this does not interfere too much with others.” God treats men – individually – the same way. Righteousness and redemption are choices. The Lord Jesus Christ does not compel. He speaks truth, He reasons with us, and He pleads. But He has given us spectacularly-free will. We choose both our eternal destiny and how we want to live our lives, day by day.

In keeping with the title of Popper’s book, he defines an open society as that where members strive to rise socially, even to take the place of other members in open competition. This contrasts with a closed society, akin to an organism, or a herd or a tribe, in which relationships are well-established, fixed. In an organism the cells or tissues do not engage in class struggle. The leg has no ambition to become the brain. The key is to recognize what proposals, what policies, what trends tend toward which end. The elite do quite well in a closed society. (Note that in malnourished North Korea, the dictator is overweight.) Everyone can do well in an open society.

Pericles wrote, a half-century before the Republic was written, “We do not copy our neighbors, but try to be an example. Our administration favours the many instead of the few: this is why it is called a democracy. The laws afford equal justice to all alike in their private disputes . . . The freedom we enjoy extends also to ordinary life; we are not suspicious of one another, and do not nag our neighbor if he chooses to go his own way.” Pericles is consistent with the Biblical principles of pastoral authority in 1 Peter, chapter 5. Pastoral authority has two pillars – to teach the word of God and to live as an example. No coercion, no tyranny.

Plato was an advocate of what we would now call an Inquisition. In Plato’s ideal state, free thought, criticism of political institutions, teaching new ideas to the young, and attempts to innovate in religious practices would all be capital crimes. In Plato’s state, Socrates would not have had the opportunity to defend himself publicly. But Athens was close enough at the time to execute Socrates anyway.

Plato supposedly despised tyranny, thinking that his Philosopher-Kings would never be corrupted, and that the lower classes would be content to be oppressed. But oppression provokes resistance and rebellion which the Philosopher-King must suppress, thereby playing the tyrant. And so utopia never works. When it fails, because man is such a diligent sinner, tyranny results. The Bible is clear that utopia will appear with the Lord Jesus on the throne in the ages to come. It’s not that man wants to wait until then. Rather, man does not want that Lord on the throne.

In Part 2, next month, I’ll continue with Popper’s analysis of political power as expressed in the philosophies of Hegel, Marx, and others.

 

• drdave@truthreallymatters.com

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135. The Open Society and Its Enemies Part 2
May 1, 2019

Aristotle, at first blush, seems to love democratic principles more than Plato, holding that all citizens should have a right to participate in government. But Aristotle excludes all slaves plus all members of the working classes from citizenship! And so, as with Plato, the working classes must not rule, and the ruling classes are not obliged to work. Today’s professional politicians, perpetually lobbying, fund-raising, and running for office, eagerly follow Plato’s political philosophy, entitled – apparently – to be part of the ruling class.

Karl Popper, whom I introduced in Part 1 of this double-edged essay last month, is a friend of liberty and a friend of fully-franchised democracy. He was perhaps the 20^th century’s most notable philosopher of science, but applied his analytical skills to political philosophy in his 1945 work, The Open Society and Its Enemies. He is no friend of Plato, as I discussed last time. Here, in Part 2, I’ll pull nuggets from the 2^nd half of his book, wherein he moves forward from ancient Greece to the modern foundations of the political culture in which we live.

Popper suggests that the Dark Ages began in about A.D. 529, “with Justinian’s persecution of non-Christians, heretics, and philosophers.” Of course, Popper doesn’t readily distinguish between the Roman Catholic thread of history and that of truly Biblical Christianity. True Christians don’t persecute. How could they, if they actually are followers of Jesus Christ, born again, and even minimally acquainted with Biblical truths? Rather, multitudes of genuine, independent Christians and churches were persecuted by the tyrannical Roman Catholic Church, which Popper refers to as “The Church.”

And so, “The Church followed in the wake of Platonic-Aristotelian totalitarianism, a development that culminated in the Inquisition.” That the Inquisition is philosophically Platonic is seen by noting that “Plato shows that it is the duty of the shepherd rulers to protect their sheep at all costs by preserving the rigidity of the laws and especially of religious practice and theory, even if they have to kill the wolf, who may admittedly be an honest and honourable man whose diseased conscience unfortunately does not permit him to bow to the threats of the mighty.”

If you like sci-fi, and would like to see how, in a fictional scenario, a religious Inquisition might work itself into every aspect of society, you should read the Safehold series by David Weber. It’s quite brilliant and uplifting, IMHO. Yes, it’s ten books long, but if you dare read the first book, you’ll be hooked. I’ll mention that the series’ principal characters are lovers of liberty, and reflect the most virtuous values of America’s founding fathers . . . but back to work now . . .

The German philosopher Georg Hegel (1770 – 1831), according to Popper, was a follower of Plato and Aristotle. Like many secular philosophers, Hegel’s writing can be obtuse, opaque, and generally painful to read. Indeed, a critic, J. H. Stirling, wrote, “The philosophy of Hegel, then, was . . . a scrutiny of thought so profound that it was for the most part unintelligible.”

Popper quotes Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 – 1860), who viewed Hegel’s success and influence as the beginning of the ‘age of dishonesty’ or the ‘age of irresponsibility.’ Popper: “. . . a new age controlled by the magic of high-sounding words, and by the power of jargon.” Others characterize Hegel as a founder of modern totalitarian philosophy. Popper humorously quotes Hegel’s explanation of the relationship between sound and heat, which I also found quite unintelligible.

Hegel was never taken seriously by scientists, except for evolutionists if you would dare to deem them legitimate scientists, but Hegel greatly influenced moral, social, and political philosophy. Marxists and Fascists base their political ideas on Hegel.

Popper sees medieval authoritarianism in Europe beginning to wane during the Renaissance, and the fight for the open society taking root in 1789 with the French Revolution. In 1815 Prussia’s reactionary party grabbed hold onto power and cast about to find an ideology to justify it. Hegel eagerly complied, resurrecting Plato. “The historical significance of Hegel may be seen in the fact that he represents the ‘missing link,’ as it were, between Plato and the modern form of totalitarianism.” Hegel’s job, literally, was to fight against the open society in order to serve his employer, Frederick William of Prussia.

Students who may know nothing of Hegel or Plato have been taught to worship the state, their tribe, and a narrative of history that suits. Hegel writes, “The Universal is to be found in the State.” “The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on earth . . . The State exists for its own sake . . . The State is the actually existing, realized moral life.” To Hegel the State overrules all personal morality.

Schopenhauer (although he had his own problems, out of scope for this essay) saw through Hegel: “Philosophy . . . had become a tool of interests; of state interests from above . . . real purposes indeed, namely personal, official, clerical, political, in short, material interests . . . Party interests are vehemently agitating the pens of so many pure lovers of wisdom . . . Truth is certainly the last thing they have in mind.” Today, are not our universities, indeed our high schools and elementary schools, consumed with Leftist ideology, the professors and teachers harassing and censoring any opposing speech? And all in the guise of education, wherein tribalism has fully ripened in identity politics.

Hegel, unlike Plato, does not see the world in decay, away from an Ideal. Rather, he sees everything in flux but moving toward the Ideal. Every bit of progress must be protected ruthlessly, though. Hegel: “The state must protect objective truth.” But who is to judge what is truth? “The state has, in general, . . . to make up its own mind concerning what is to be considered as objective truth.” A case in point is the dogmatic establishment of evolution and an evolutionary (social justice) worldview within the public schools. A teacher who dares to question Darwinian dogma gets fired.

Hegel twists equality into inequality: “That the citizens are equal before the law contains a great deal of truth. But expressed in this way, it is only a tautology; it only states in general that a legal status exists, that the laws rule. But to be more concrete, the citizens . . . are equal before the law only in the points in which they are equal outside the law also. Only that equality which they possess in property, age, etc., can deserve equal treatment before the law.” And so the poor are judged on an entirely different basis than the rich, or the establishment elite.

The ultimate standard in a state, to Hegel, is the one who is in a class all by himself: “. . . absolute self-determination constitutes the power of the prince as such . . . the absolutely decisive element in the whole . . . is a single individual, the monarch.” Popper observes that in Hegel’s view, “How can anyone be so stupid as to demand a constitution for a country that is blessed with an absolute monarchy?” Apparently, Hegel’s Prussia was the absolute peak in governance with its absolute monarch. Do you see why the Left loves Hegel? Without a monarch “the people are just a formless multitude.” Elsewhere he calls a nation of private, self-determined individuals “a rabble.”

Hegel’s authoritarianism diverges from Leftist movements today in that he extolled nationalism, that a chosen race / nation / state is destined for world domination. I see the trend today as simply the culmination of Hegel’s views in that modern Marxists are attempting to turn a world of separate states quickly into one unified super-state. The EU and the UN are steps along this path.

It’s similar in that the state is exempt from any moral obligation; it is only historical success that counts. Collective utility is to be the foundation of personal conduct. If lying generates success, then lies are good. Fake news is only fake if it fails to serve the state. Ideally, the state is led by a ‘Great Man,’ a world-class historical personality, a man of deep knowledge and great passion. Witness the worshipful attitudes of the Leftist press throughout the Obama administration.

Hegel saw fame as a great reward for individuals who play the game. How thrilled would he be to see the opportunities for fame in today’s connected world! Consider any Republican who speaks up against conservatives or their principles. He’s an instant hero! Hegel: “The Great Man of his time is he who expressed the will of his time; who tells his time what it wills; and who carries it out. He acts according to the inner Spirit and Essence of his time, which he realizes.” Indeed! Get in touch with the current group-think and find publicist-happy ways to articulate it. Furthermore, the Great Man is “able to arouse passions in others.” Forget reason, logic, common sense – just stimulate passions in the mob!

Popper cites a humorous criticism of Hegel, courtesy of Schopenhauer: “Should you ever intend to dull the wits of a young man and to incapacitate his brains for any kind of thought whatsoever, then you cannot do better than give him Hegel to read. For these monstrous accumulations of words that annul and contradict one another drive the mind into tormenting itself with vain attempts to think anything whatever in connection with them, until finally it collapses from sheer exhaustion . . . A guardian fearing that his ward might become too intelligent for his schemes might prevent this misfortune by innocently suggesting the reading of Hegel.”

Could this be an explanation for the Left’s derangement over the last few years?

Let’s turn to Karl Marx (1818 – 1883). Popper sees Marxism as “the purest, the most developed, and the most dangerous form of historicism.” Recall from Part 1 that historicism is the idea that there are laws of history that necessitate a definite future. In Marxism the determinate future is a global state ruled by the ‘proletariat,’ a single workers’ class. Once we have a classless society, there can be no class dictatorship and the state “withers away,” as Engels put it. No more diversity after that!

Note that Socialists and Communists never come close to this; indeed, they are determined not to, since they each aspire to be part of the tyrannical elite.

The strategy of revolutionary movements, particularly Marxism, or the Democrat Left in this country, is to feign humanitarianism, to pretend to care about the poor, the disadvantaged, etc., then to sow discord and political confusion on the way to autocratic power. If you’re sufficiently old and observant you’ll have noticed that Leftists never actually solve problems. They thrive on the persistence of deep societal problems. Consider Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore . . . any big American city whose ‘disadvantaged’ voters are stuck in a multi-generational scam of falling for politicians who never ‘help them.’ Conservative messages of individual responsibility, self-reliance, hard work, savings, investment, family stability, sobriety, etc., are always scoffed at.

Popper cuts Marx some slack because Karl wrote during the worst abuses of the unfettered industrial capitalism of the 19^th century. A British medical doctor of the period wrote “that the average age at death of the Manchester upper middle class was 38, while the average age at death of the labouring class was 17; while at Liverpool those figures were represented at 35 against 15.”

Marx: “Within the capitalist system, all the methods for raising the social productivity of labour . . . are transformed into means of domination and of exploitation; they mutilate the worker into a fragment of a human being, they degrade him to a mere cog in the machine, they make work a torture, . . . and drag his wife and children beneath the wheels of the capitalist juggernaut . . . The accumulation of wealth at one pole of society involves at the same time an accumulation of misery, of the agony of toil, of slavery, ignorance, brutalization, and of moral degradation, at the opposite pole.”

Marx’s intents may have been genuine, despite his deep personal flaws, abusing and taking advantage of those around him. But his ideas on economics, politics, and history were deeply flawed, out of touch with reality, and useful only for those who want to grab power for themselves. Popper: “Unrestrained capitalism is gone. Since the day of Marx, democratic interventionism has made immense advances, and the improved productivity of labour – a consequence of the accumulation of capital – has made it possible virtually to stamp out misery.”

Most of the miserable places in today’s world are caused by corruption and tyranny, certainly not by democratic capitalism. Nevertheless, Leftist con artists preach like we all live in 19^th century Liverpool. If employment and wages and confidence are all up, they’ve got to find a way to stir up trouble.

Popper sees Marxism as a purely historical theory. Lenin admits, “There is hardly a word on the economics of socialism to be found in Marx’s work – apart from such useless slogans as ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.’”

No, Marx was deterministic about future history, but why should social ‘science’ be prophetic? Predicting orbits in astronomy or the enthalpy of reactions in chemistry are a world apart from predicting what people will do in ten or a hundred years, whether individually or collectively.

Interestingly, Marx denounced ‘utopianists’ who looked at institutions with the eyes of social engineers, hoping to establish a rational plan for change. Rather, Marx sought to make people conscious of the impending changes in future history so that they could find their parts to play. It seems, then, that Stalin, Lenin, and Mao, among others including today’s Left, have perverted pure Marxism. The Soviet 5-year plans and Mao’s ‘Great Leap Forward’ are horrific examples that Marx would not have endorsed.

What Socialists and Leftists have done is to take Marx’s vision of a classless world, used his 19^th century rhetoric against evil money-grubbing capitalists, extolled the virtues of a classless society, and then created a new scheme wherein a leadership elite grabs the horns of power and keeps everyone else subjugated in a single lower class. This is much more like Plato than Marx in its execution.

Marx’s foundation, though, was atheism / secularism / humanism – the autonomy of man with no one above. More so, he denied individualism and, particularly, psychologism – the foundation of the industry of psychology. As Popper explains, “all laws of social life must be ultimately reducible to the psychological laws of ‘human nature.’”

Atheistic psychologists, of course, happily hold to psychologism as a basis for man’s autonomy with no God above. But for Marx: “It is not the consciousness of man that determines his existence – rather it is his social existence that determines his consciousness.” Marx’s collectivism is clearly in opposition to the Biblical principle that man is made in the image of God, with free will, and thereby accountable.

Extending the pre-eminence of sociology to political life, Marx sees no value in incremental change via legalities or policies. It is only a social revolution that can uproot one set of rulers, giving way to another set. The modern Marxist, indeed, wants to overthrow and take over.

Marx, from a 19-century viewpoint, expects revolution to be triggered by expanding capitalism. The means of production grow until they conflict with legal and social relations, until they burst. “Then an epoch of social revolution opens. With the change in economic foundation, the whole vast superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed.”

Marx believed that capitalistic competition forces the capitalist to accumulate more and more capital. Accordingly, he works against his own long-term economic interests, since spending money on capital (equipment, infrastructure) works to reduce profits. He squeezes more labor per dollar out of his workers, increasing their misery. They put up with it to a point because the capitalist can always fire and hire at will. Power gets concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer until it all crashes down in revolution. The new proletariat ruling class, somehow, can proceed to do no wrong.

Marx expected his proletariat revolutions to occur in the industrialized West. This never happened, of course. The revolution occurred in Russia, a czarist feudal state. Later, Mao, under the guise of Communism, established the most brutal tyranny in the history of the world. But China in the early 20^th century was nothing like the industrialized West.

So Marx was completely wrong. In the West capitalism developed and was moderated by laws that restricted abuses. What Popper misses is that a measure of Christian culture and morality in the West has also moderated abuses and motivated legal intervention. It was Wilberforce and Bible believing Christians in Britain plus a host of Christians in America that fought to abolish slavery.

In the West a true middle class arose which dominates the wealth and economies of free states. In 2019 we see more wealth, more health, more prosperity, and more personal freedom everywhere in the world, except for Communist and Islamic states.

Are there problems in the West? Always. And they are addressable by a voting public and laws and policies that restrain abuses from unethical profiteering. Note, for example, that during hurricanes, gasoline price gougers can get prosecuted. Also, freedom of speech is critical in that it enables a residual Christian conscience in the public square.

The Left wants to destroy the middle class and establish a wealthy ruling elite and a huge class of politically powerless workers. Just consider who the Left panders to . . . the ‘Masters of the Universe’ technocrats and bankers, on the one hand, and the welfare state on the other. (They also throw in any victim group that they can cleverly create.) Additionally, they try to destroy national sovereignty anywhere possible, so that when the ‘revolution’ occurs, it will be global, just in time for the Antichrist.

Identity politics has a strong root in Marx: “The history of all hitherto existing society is a history of class struggle.” Marx’s history is driven by the war of classes and not by the war of nations, as opposed to Hegel’s view and that of the majority of historians.

The interest of any class, then, “exerts a decisive influence on human minds.” An individual becomes class-conscious and acts in sync with his fellow travelers. His consciousness is determined by his class. If you’ve been stereotyped as a member of a victimized class, then woe unto you if you don’t conform. Black conservatives had better keep their mouths shut!

To Marx it is vain to hope that circumstances may be improved by improving men. The system must be transformed to make the environment better. Only then will men improve. This kind of thinking seems to dominate secular conservatives, pundits, and politicians, too. Nobody at the national level in politics or media identifies the true root of big problems – sin. The Christian perspective is to put the issue on the table and shine light on it. Call a sin what it is. The ‘me-too’ movement, for example. Are not these moral problems? Shun fornication – sex outside of marriage (man/woman marriage, that is) and adultery. Treat people with respect. Speak graciously and keep your hands off. Problem solved. At least, the moral message must be preached. If you’re a Christian, don’t just preach morality, though. Explain the reality, that God is there and created man, woman, and marriage, and wired our conscience in accord with sexual fidelity.

Marx was out of touch with reality in that he failed to realize the danger in increasing state power. He thought power bad only in the hands of the bourgeoisie. As Popper observes, all power is dangerous, whether economic or political. Large-scale politics is institutional. Institutions grow and labor to acquire more resources, more power. At some point, certainly, bad guys will grab the helms of power.

Popper sees intervention by the government as a necessary evil, but dangerous. Citizens must be watchful. America’s founding fathers did what they could to balance political powers, tripartite at the federal level, and a big divide between state and federal responsibilities. Indeed, at the state level, we see the same pattern in executive, judicial, and legislative institutions, along with divisions between each state and its local communities. Yet political power grows and grows, increasingly centralized at the federal level.

Popper: “If freedom is lost, everything is lost, including ‘planning.’ For why should plans for the welfare of the people be carried out if the people have no power to enforce them.”

The paradox is that we need government to insure freedom, but too much power, too much intervention, too much government planning will result in the end of freedom, and that will be the end of planning, the end of helpful interventionism.

Yes, restrict pollution, but don’t get carried away. Yes, restrict children from factory work, but don’t arrest the kid with the lemonade stand.

Popper appeals to citizens to restrict their government to policies that fight concrete evils and NOT to try to establish some ideal good. “State intervention should be limited to what is really necessary for the protection of freedom.” Utopianism, though, kills.

As if fresh out of today’s news, Popper notes that Marxists inevitably conclude that democracy is ‘no good.’ If defeated using the laws and tools of democracy, they say, “We have been too lenient, too humane – next time we will make a really bloody revolution!” Popper: “It’s as if a man who loses a boxing match should conclude:   boxing is no good – I should have used a club.” If you don’t like the election results, find a way, legal or illegal to overturn it. If you don’t like elected officials, harass them or even shoot them, when you find them playing baseball . . . as Republican Congressmen experienced in the Summer of 2017.

In the meantime, use the universities to create courses on ‘white privilege,’ foment hatred of men, white men, conservative white men, conservative Christian white men, etc. Marxists will explain the disagreement of an enemy by his class bias. Have you noticed this in today’s political discourse? If you believe in secure borders or lower taxes it must be because you’re a white supremacist.

As a prophet of future history, Marx had no inkling of what was lying ahead. Popper: “What he called ‘socialism’ was very dissimilar to any form of interventionism, even from the Russian form, for he strongly believed that the impending development would diminish the influence, political as well as economic, of the state, while interventionism has increased it everywhere.” (!!)

Today’s committed Leftist would rather burn the town down than allow his neighbors to live in peace and prosperity. Regardless of what small socialistic demands are granted by a weary electorate, as Popper interprets the mindset, “Something must be done to bring the law of increasing misery into operation. For instance, colonial unrest must be stirred up (even when there is no chance of a successful revolution), and . . . a policy of fomenting catastrophes of all sorts must be adopted.”

I’ll close with a quote that Popper pulls from Bertrand Russell, an old-fashioned liberal of the early 20^th century:

“Rationality, in the sense of an appeal to a universal and impersonal standard of truth, is of supreme importance . . ., not only in ages in which it easily prevails, but also, and even more, in those less fortunate times in which it is despised and rejected as the vain dream of men who lack the virility to kill where they cannot agree.”

We live in such a ‘less fortunate’ time. But Russell, while speaking some truth, falls short. What is the foundation for rationality? It can only be the word of God because, in reality, God is there and He defines standards of truth and justice, that correlate brilliantly with our God-given conscience. Start there and discernment is simple. For those who refuse to start there, give them a Gospel tract and share truth, if they will listen.

 

• drdave@truthreallymatters.com

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136. Why do you believe?
June 1, 2019

One of the most vital concepts in Scripture was expressed at the beginning . . . “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth . . . So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them.” Genesis 1:26-27

Image of God . . . What does that mean? It must mean personhood, choice, free will, rational thinking, the ability to judge between right and wrong, between wise and unwise. The idea of dominion certainly involves discretion and judgment, along with delegation from God to man. For man to have any measure of dominion, he must have the ability and the authority to allocate resources according to his own judgment. In the next few verses God stipulates objectives and boundaries, but clearly leaves the details to man’s discretion.

Similarly, the New Testament is filled with principles, yet the Lord Jesus, almost shockingly, leaves some critical details to our discretion, as in Matthew 18:18 . . . “Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

Scripture is clear that God expects His born again children to be co-laborers, joint heirs, even sons of God. This is not possible unless we are persons, exercising free will and judgment, and are thereby accountable for our actions, particularly whether we choose to repent from our sins and cast all our hope and care on the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation. Indeed the entire Bible is a plea for man to wake up, to recognize our sins, to humble ourselves, to affirm what is righteous, to repent, and to believe; indeed, to make ourselves a new heart and a new spirit (Ezekiel 18:31).

In irrational and blasphemous contrast is an alternative position, expressed by a famous theologian of years past:

“By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God by which he determined with himself whatever he wished to happen with regard to every man. All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation; and accordingly, as each has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestined to life or death.” – John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, III, xxi, 5.

I’ve written a fair amount for this site on the subject of Calvinism, a pernicious doctrine that defines the basic theology of many churches in this country. Many who would deny being Calvinists yet seem to embrace some of the principles. If you haven’t thought about it much, or in a great while, here’s a quick review, using the acronym TULIP(S):

T: Total depravity – Everyone is born totally depraved in the sense that he is totally unable to choose to repent and trust Christ.

U: Unconditional election – Only the elect are pre-ordained for salvation, everyone else for damnation. It’s settled in eternity past and there is nothing you can do to change teams or help anyone else change teams.

L: Limited atonement – Christ died only for the elect, not for the sins of the whole world.

I: Irresistible grace – God gives saving grace only to the elect, not commanding, but giving repentance and faith. It works every time. He does not give it to the non-elect. The elect have nothing to do with their conversion. The non-elect? Tough luck, yet they are somehow responsible for being damned.

P: Perseverance of the saints – Once an elect fellow is converted, he will act the part, living a holy Christian life until the end of his life. If you don’t show enough evidence of holiness in your life, you’re not actually elect. Too bad.

(S): Sovereignty – An overarching principle for most Calvinists, the idea is that everything, every motion of every molecule, every thought, word, and deed, no matter how noble or how disgusting, everything in history is fore-ordained by God and is part of His plan. That would include me typing this right now and you reading it and reacting however you’re reacting to it.

I recently read John Lennox’s book, Determined to Believe? The Sovereignty of God, Freedom, Faith, and Human Responsibility. Lennox is a professor of math and philosophy at Oxford and has written several books in the arena of apologetics, which I have reviewed on other occasions. I couldn’t resist seeing what this smart fellow had to say on the subject of theistic determinism, as he phrases it. I was pleased to find out that Lennox and I are pretty much in sync.

Let’s pull some nuggets out of his book . . . Does the Bible teach the sovereignty of God? Yes, indeed, but it depends on what you mean by sovereignty. The Calvinist sees the concept as divine determinism. Alternatively, as Lennox suggests, “. . . God is a loving Creator who has made human beings in his image with a significant capacity to choose, with all its marvelous potential of love, trust, and moral responsibility. God is not the irresistible cause of human behavior, whether good or bad – otherwise our actions and characters would be deprived of moral significance and it would make no sense to talk of us doing or being ‘good’ or ‘bad’.”

As I have explained in a past essay, Calvinist sovereignty is equivalent, as far as morality and accountability are concerned, to materialistic atheism. Neither the atheist nor the Calvinist believes in man’s free will. Yet they act as if they do and regard others as if they are similarly accountable. As Cornelius Van Til emphasized, all unbelieving worldviews cannot be lived consistently. Lennox calls the atheistic variety “determinism from below, since it regards human beings and their behaviour as nothing but products of the physics and chemistry of the basic stuff of the universe. The theistic form we might think of as determinism from above, since it regards human beings and their behaviour as nothing but predetermined products of an inexorable and all-controlling divine will above them.”

Lennox cites John Polkinghorne who says that atheists “need a covert disclaimer on their own behalf, excepting their own contribution from reductive dismissal.” Specifically, why should we listen to anything from the mouths or pens of Marx, Freud, or Dawkins, since they would insist that everything they say or write is merely the result of brain chemistry?

And why should a Calvinist try to convince me of anything? His every word is fore-ordained. But then I suppose he can’t help it. And I can’t help rejecting his ideas because my rejection is also fore-ordained.

Thus, all of life’s purpose, rationality, common sense . . . is vaporized. Life has no meaning in a deterministic universe.

Lennox proclaims that “one of God’s greatest glories (is) that he invests us with moral significance.” In salvation, we cannot merit it, but we are challenged by the Gospel to use our God-given capacity to recognize truth and trust / believe / have faith in Christ. Advocates of divine determinism, though, deny that we have this capacity.

My two-volume dictionary from World Book Encyclopedia, 1964, defines sovereignty: “1. Supreme power or authority; supremacy: the sovereignty of the sea. State sovereignty was the doctrine that each State was superior to and independent of the United States in power over its own territory. 2. A state, territory, community, etc., that is independent or sovereign. 3. The rank, position, or jurisdiction of a sovereign; royal authority or dominion.”

There is nothing in the meaning of the word which, by the way, is not found in the KJV, that indicates total control in each microsecond of everything happening within the territory. Indeed, every citizen of your state, or the United States, has freedom to do what he wants, while understanding that governmental sovereignty will hold you accountable for breaking the laws of the state.

In this sense, Lennox and I have no issue with the idea of God’s sovereignty! But Calvinists have invented something that makes God the author of every vile sin in history, and salvation something to be doled out in strictly mysterious and arbitrary cases.

Lennox quotes some Calvinists, lest you think that I’m exaggerating:

B. Warfield: “All things without exception, indeed, are disposed by Him, and His will is the ultimate account of all that occurs . . . It is He that . . . creates the very thoughts and intents of the soul.”

Paul Helm: “Not only is every atom and molecule, every thought and desire kept in being by God, but every twist and turn of each of these is under the direct control of God.”

Edwin Palmer: “Nothing in this world happens by chance. God is in back of everything. He decides and causes all things to happen that do happen . . . the moving of a finger, the beating of a heart, the laughter of a girl, the mistake of a typist – even sin.”

Gordon H. Clark: “I wish very frankly and pointedly to assert that if a man gets drunk and shoots his family, it was the will of God that he should do so.” (Yet Clark maintains that God is not responsible for sin!)

John Piper: “God is more glorious for having conceived and created and governed a world like this with all its evil.”

In short, you and I are not persons, in any meaningful sense of the word.

Yet all of Scripture is written as if we are persons, choosers, moral or immoral, accountable. And every day of your life you live as if human freedom is real. God is so awesome that He still gets His will done despite the spectacularly free will that He has granted each of us. He is “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9) His will is for “all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.” (1 Tim 2:4) Accordingly, Jesus “is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” (1 John 2:2) (Not to mention John 3:16, 5:24, 6:37 and hundreds of other Scriptures.)

Lennox asks, “Is God’s foreknowledge causative?” The Biblical answer is, “No.” A simple example: In Acts 2:23 we see that Christ’s crucifixion was foreordained, and yet the men involved were wicked and morally responsible. They chose. God knew they would – freely.

In 1 Samuel 23, David is on the run from Saul. David asks God if the men of Keilah will turn him over to Saul if he stays in town. God replies, “They will deliver thee up.” So David leaves town and escapes Saul. The way history unfolded there was dependent on David’s choice.

God dwells in eternity. He created time and space for us. We are locked into linear time. Do I know what tomorrow brings? No, but God is already there. Yet I have genuine liberty to make decisions that affect tomorrow. Despite such spectacularly free will, mine and that of seven billion others on the planet, God is so brilliant as to insure that prophecies (2^nd Coming, etc.) will certainly come to pass. Even while we’re all exercising our free wills – freely.

Another example: In Matthew 11:20-24, Jesus teaches us that if his miracles had been done in Tyre, Sidon, and Sodom, they would have repented. In fact, that Sodom would have remained until that present day. The details are up to us. God will get His will done as revealed in Scripture regarding the grand sweep of Biblical history. But most of the details are up to us!

While worth reading, I’ll skip past Lennox’s section on the relevant Biblical language – elect, election, chose, predestined, etc. He points out with many Scriptural references that these words rarely have anything to do with an individual’s salvation. They typically refer to people groups, the Israelites, Christians. They also refer to the purposes God has for His people.

For example, one of my favorites is Ephesians 1:5 . . . “Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will.” In short, God has predestined those who have repented and trusted Christ to be children of God by adoption. We aren’t just saved from Hell, from the penalty of sin. Our destiny is to be adopted sons and daughters! We get a bonus beyond eternal life. The choosing and predestining we see througout Ephesians chapter 1 is about the purposes God has for those of us who have believed in Him. In Eph 1:4 we find that we are chosen to be “holy and without blame before him in love.” There is nothing about unconditional election there. Rather, it’s what God has in store for believers.

Lennox: “Faith is a universal God-given ability.” I’ve heard Calvinists argue that if you are able to believe and choose to do so, that would be a ‘work’. But it’s clear that when the Bible says that we’re saved by faith and not by works, such ‘works’ relate to religious practices or in keeping the moral or ceremonial laws (perfectly) or in performing good deeds.

Lennox illustrates the issue by imagining that a relative leaves him a considerable inheritance. He has done nothing to deserve it. He is notified in a letter from her solicitor. What Lennox must ‘do’ is decide whether he trusts the solicitor and whether he trusts his relative. He could reject it. Yet to receive it he must do something, but that does not mean he has merited the inheritance in any way.

I see another side of this coin. In John 6:28-29, the Jews ask Jesus, “What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?” Jesus answers, “This is the work of God, that ye believe on him who he hath sent.” Effectively, Jesus defines belief as the first and principal work. Indeed, saving faith – uprooting your worldview, humbling yourself, repenting from treasured sin, and casting all your care upon Him – is the greatest and most difficult work of all.

At a more basic level, consider whose salary is greater, the automotive mechanic, working skillfully with his hands, sweating under a greasy car, or the automotive engineer who designed the car in an air-conditioned office? Intellectual work is often rewarded more than physical work. How much more challenging is the willful overthrow and re-establishment of your worldview in salvation?

And yet salvation is all of God. Jesus died for my sins, rose from the dead, draws on my heart through His Spirit, forgives me, regenerates me, and promises me a home in Heaven and on the New Earth. My part – trust and receive the inheritance which I in no part deserve and can in no way earn.

Lennox rebukes the Calvinist notion that God has two wills: a prescriptive will, by which God told Adam to not eat of the tree; and a decretive will, by which God determined in His sovereignty that Adam would eat. Similarly, God commands us not to sin, but in His sovereign decretive will, He determined that He would get more glory if His plan included much sin.

When Scripture declares that God is willing to save anyone, that allegedly reflects His “public will of disposition,” but then there is that “secret” or “decretive will” whereby most are damned without recourse. So God is disingenuously play-acting on the most important issue – by far – for every human being in history.

This isn’t, what some Calvinists would call it, a ‘mystery’ or a ‘paradox.’ Rather, it is blatant contradiction, both logical and moral. Our own God-given conscience cries out that this is contradiction. Lennox: “How can God, whose love and justice are impeccable, hold guilty those who were incapable of doing what he commanded them to do?” Calvinism, therefore, goes beyond heresy into blasphemy, accusing God of deceit and unfairness on a scale beyond any human experience.

In John 1:9 we are taught that Jesus is “the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” To see that Light, we must have the ability to see. Many Jews rejected the Light, but all have the ability to see, to see morally, to discern ultimate Truth. In John Chapter 9, after healing a blind man, some Pharisees who challenged the Lord Jesus demanded, “Are we blind also?”

Jesus replied, “If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth.” Clearly, they had the ability to recognize Jesus as Lord, but they chose to reject Him. No excuse. In sharing the Gospel we can have the confidence that the Holy Spirit has lit up the conscience of the fellow we are talking to. And we can know (John 12:32) that Jesus draws all men to Him. Our job is simply to speak truth, speak to the mind and heart. The job of speaking truth has been delegated to us! Tell everyone! Anyone can and might choose to be saved. Jesus is the door to salvation (John 10:9). By Him, “if any man enter in, he shall be saved.”

When Peter spoke at Pentecost, his audience cried out to the apostles, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” Peter could have answered, “There is nothing you can do. You’re either elect or damned.” Rather, he answered, “Repent . . .” Peter’s open air sermon put the responsibility for the Lord’s crucifixion squarely on the Jews in that crowd. And he gave them the choice to do something about it.

I’ll close with some thoughts on assurance. A notable Calvinist author and preacher, R. C. Sproul, once said, “A while back I had one of those moments of acute self-awareness . . . and suddenly the question hit me: ‘R. C., what if you are not one of the redeemed? What if your destiny is not heaven after all, but hell?’ Let me tell you that I was flooded in my body with a chill that went from my head to the bottom of my spine. I was terrified . . . I began to take stock of my life, and I looked at my performance . . . I could not be sure about my own heart and motivation. Then I remembered John 6:68. Jesus had been giving out hard teaching, and many of His former followers had left Him. When He asked Peter if he was also going to leave, Peter said, ‘Where else can I go? Only you have the words of eternal life.’ In other words, Peter was also uncomfortable, but he realized that being uncomfortable with Jesus was better than any other option.”

I agree with Lennox that Sproul has “a very strange interpretation.” Peter wasn’t uncomfortable. He affirmed Jesus’ teaching, concluding with, “We believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God.” No equivocation there!

It’s clear that Sproul’s “P” – Perseverance of the Saints – gave him no assurance of salvation. “P” is not eternal security. Instead, “P” provoked Sproul to examine his own works, his own righteousness, as the condition for his election. Now, we should examine ourselves, as Paul exhorted the Corinthians in 2 Cor 13:5. And John’s 1^st epistle is a good outline for examining false converts.

Yet Sproul had nowhere to go in his doubts! His own ‘works’ would certainly fall short! Where should the believer go when plagued with doubts of salvation? To the Cross, of course! If I were to doubt my salvation, I would simply humble myself, repent from known sins, and trust in the shed blood and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. That is the Biblical ground for assurance. Do what the Lord Jesus said to do. Repent and trust Him. And then stand on His own words. No man, including myself, can pluck me out of God’s hand (John 10:27-30). And Scripture assures me that the Holy Spirit has “sealed” me until the day of redemption (Eph 1:12-13).

If you run into a Calvinist, ask him how he knows that he is one of the elect. Ask him if he cares about those around him regarding their election – about which he can do absolutely nothing in his worldview. And do witness to the Calvinist. His heresies may have kept him from understanding his own very personal and willful responsibility to humble himself, repent from his own willful – not sovereignly ordained – sins, and trust in Christ. And that he can live for Christ . . . in assurance.

drdave@truthreallymatters.com

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137. 1776 or 1789?
July 1, 2019

The stark contrast between the American Revolution of 1776 and the French Revolution of 1789 portends the choice Americans face today. In 1776 the focus was on truth, and in 1789 the focus was on power. For the Americans freedom was viewed as personal freedom from government control, but for the French freedom was viewed progressively through government control.

So writes Os Guinness in his 2018 book, Last Call for Liberty: How America’s Genius for Freedom Has Become Its Greatest Threat. Guinness carefully distinguishes between negative and positive freedom. Negative freedom is freedom from; it means that others, particularly government, cannot tell me what to do. Positive freedom is freedom for; it focuses on what I choose to do constructively with my life. Of course, you must start with freedom from in order to have the opportunity for freedom for.

Guinness also distinguishes inner freedom from outer freedom. The victors of 1789 were utopian about human nature, and therefore attempted to structure their society from the outside in, with confidence in the elite’s powers of reason to coercively transform society from the outside in. The leaders of 1776 were more in touch with reality, standing on the Biblical principle that man’s heart is sinful; therefore constructive revolution must begin in the heart. Inner freedom, individually, is necessary for man to live peaceably with man. Government’s role must be limited.

Government is not an inanimate institution. Government is filled with people. I’ll comment that those who lust for powerful positions in government are more likely those to be least trustworthy of such power.

The Biblical precedents are clear, as Guinness explains. Both the Old Testament and New Testament Scriptures focus on man’s relationship to God as prerequisite to man’s relationship with his fellows. In the Old Testament we see God’s desire for the Hebrew people to be ruled at the local level, with a modest set of laws as boundaries, but with immense individual freedom. Note that Israel’s desire to have its own king, to be just like the other nations, was contrary to God’s will. Yet He allowed it, warning the people that kings are quickly tempted to tyranny.

Similarly, I’ll note, that the New Testament plan for the churches is all about local, minimal governance, with a group of local elders leading by example and by exposition of Scripture. God’s plan for governance of His churches knows nothing of hierarchy, nothing of popes, cardinals, and priests; indeed, nothing of Senior Pastors and Associate Pastors, or any division between clergy and laity – a practice condemned as Nicolaitinism. But even Christians lust for kings to rule over them, to put someone between them and God, to avoid their own terrible responsibility for spiritual growth and for doing their duty in the Great Commission.

The Christian worldview is clear about positive freedom. It’s about the individual and his purpose in life. In Titus 2:11-14, Paul teaches that the grace of salvation enables us to abhor ungodliness and worldly lusts so that we can live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world, with an ever present and assured hope that the Lord Jesus will return to establish a righteous kingdom on Earth.

In 1^st Peter chapter 2 we see the ultimate example of someone suffering for doing right – Jesus – who bore our sins on the cross, while innocent Himself, “that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.” The point of freedom is to shun evil and to do right. Not ‘right’ as defined by whims and feelings and cultural constructs, but right as wired into reality by the God who determines reality and made us in His own image to know what’s right.

Regarding Guinness’ title, Last Call for Liberty, a call to Americans to wake up, he quotes Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai:

A man in a boat began to bore a hole under his seat. His fellow passengers protested. “What concern is it of yours?” he responded. “I am making a hole under my seat, not yours.” They replied, “That is so, but when the water enters and the boat sinks, we too will drown.”

Guinness, although distressed and even depressed at America’s internal conflict, self-hatred, self-destruction, and dysfunction, clearly hopes that enough will awaken to the danger before liberty disappears completely. And so his mission is to call America to reexamine the causes and the virtues of freedom. I agree with much of his analysis, but as a Bible-believing Christian, and with a pre-trib / premillennial eschatology, which he apparently does not have, I see current trends as spiraling toward the Rapture and the Tribulation. Accordingly, my priority must be to try to save souls before the American ship sinks.

Even if I were sanguine about America’s prospects, the only road to genuine revival for America must necessarily be through 1-2-1 evangelism. A retired pastor recently commented to me that he firmly believes that God gave America a brief respite, a breathing space, with the 2016 election. I don’t disagree, but my assessment is that American Christians have totally wasted that breathing space by ramping up their political activism, rather than seeking God’s blessing by pursuing the Great Commission, and speaking publicly and loudly about absolute Biblical truth as the necessary basis for public policy.

Guinness cites David Goldman’s book, How Civilizations Die: “Democracy only gives people the kind of government they deserve.” Conservative economist Thomas Sowell notes, “The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is. He confuses it with feeling.”

We see the fruits of Sowell’s analysis in every American institution, in education from Kindergarten through graduate school, in news and entertainment media, in politics, and even in evangelicalism, which embraces the world’s culture, including so-called social justice, more every year.

In Exodus when God gave the Israelites His laws to define boundaries in the relationships between God and man, and between man and man, he offered His covenant voluntarily. The people responded voluntarily, freely. Guinness observes that “there is no legitimate government without the consent of the governed, even if the governor is creator of heaven and earth.”

The Jews were not to obey blindly, as in the Islamic sense of submission. The Scriptures, rather, are filled with admonitions to hearken, to heed, to listen. God appealed to their conscience, expecting gratitude and admiration / worship . . . justly deserved. Furthermore, God expected Moses and his delegated leaders to rule by law, not by fiat. God’s laws are based on His character. They are not arbitrary. God’s laws conform to the reality of human conscience and rationality, designed in God’s image. Societies must bind together by moral principles that are God-breathed, or else suffer because they fight against reality.

God’s precepts include loving the stranger – we are responsible for our fellows. This contrasts with the Left’s identity politics – if you’re not part of their tribe / ideology / race / gender, then you’re the enemy.

Guinness comments on the exaltation of politics today. Everything is politicized. Yet politics is so small, in reality, so limited in what it can accomplish. Accomplish for good, that is. Politics has no limits for accomplishing evil. “How small, of all that human hearts endure, that part which laws or kings can cure.” Most of life, if life is to be fulfilling and happy, has nothing to do with Washington, D.C. We live our lives locally, in our families, businesses, and communities. The state of the union is determined far more by the character of its citizens than by the character of its president or the size of the military or the corporate tax rate. As the family goes, so goes the community and the nation. The political and cultural forces are in continual attack on families. God instituted the family as the core unit of society. Satan’s forces hate God and so work to destroy the family. Only the Gospel can fight back. There are no political solutions.

If we’re honest and care for one another, we come nowhere near legal boundaries. As Scripture teaches, laws are for the lawless, the ungodly. By the time you’ve broken even man’s laws, you’ve gone far down a wicked path. We are meant by God to have enormous freedom, positive freedom, to do good with our lives.

Why don’t American Christians see this? Why is the Great Commission so despised in lieu of political activism? Americans, including American Christians, are obsessed with the political horse races, and who is saying what about whom today. Think about this . . . there is very little political news. Very little actually happens day to day or even month to month. Most of the news is about what people are saying about each other, about what might happen, with anything rarely happening. Who cares?

The Bible is rich in instruction to teach our children, to help them to know and to serve God, to love Him, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Yet American Christians turn their children over to state schools, where they are indoctrinated in Marxism, atheism, evolutionism, transgenderism, etc. This is insane!

Promises, oaths, covenants . . . “So help me, God” . . . have no meaning without Biblical foundations. The atheist and the postmodernist have no foundations for covenants. As a university professor, I once taught a unit on ethics to electrical engineering students. There are codes of conduct (as promulgated by the IEEE, for example) for engineers that are published widely. Most engineers would say they agree with the principles of such codes. Yet these codes cite no foundation. They assume a God-informed conscience while carefully avoiding any hint of a foundation to undergird the codes. I asked my students to consider whether they would rather trust an atheist who professed fidelity to a code with no foundation, or rather a Christian who believed that God was watching him even when no one else was.

Guinness sees a number of parallels between the American Left and the revolutionaries of 1789. The latter won through violence, while the former fights a cultural revolution, after which the elite imposes its will through regulative and legal acts. Both worship the state and depise religion, Christianity in particular. Why don’t they despise Islam? Why aren’t feminists and gay rights activists in continual outrage about Islamic atrocities, especially atrocities against gays and women? Well, the enemy of their enemy must be their friend. Leftists hate Christians far more than they hate any other group. That makes no sense except in light of the Bible’s teaching on spiritual war. Jesus taught that the world would hate His followers above all others.

Other parallels, 1789 vs. today’s Left, include isolating public from religious life, the control of language (hate speech) to redefine reality and intimidate free speech, appeals to envy rather than liberty, and a utopianism that inevitably leads to repression and bloodshed.

Guinness sees 1917 and 1949, the Russian and Chinese communist revolutions, as in the same cabal as 1789. Over a hundred million deaths resulted from those oppressions. Modern leftists eagerly embrace the state-control and propagandistic tactics of Lenin / Stalin and Mao, while despising the legacy of 1776.

Guinness defines human freedom: “Freedom is the capacity to exercise the will without interference or restraint as the genuine expression of who you are. Freedom is the ability to decide what you want to choose, and do what you want to do.”

For society to exist and survive, let alone thrive, free people must make promises and keep them. This includes marriage and service in public office. When I accepted my commission as a 2^nd Lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force, I swore an oath to uphold the Constitution, which I took seriously. Breaking promises erodes trust. Trust is essential for orderly and peaceful communities. Trust is breaking down in our country, replaced by grievance, anger, and continual social conflict. All quite deliberately.

Guinness observes that in post-truth America, promises are broken lightly and without accountability. The last three generations have been raised and schooled to see truth as whatever they feel strongly about, today . . . tomorrow it may be the opposite. As truth becomes irrelevant, responsibility decays, so does freedom. It’s all about feelings and who has the power to enforce them. And so the Left strives to take over all levels of government to enforce whatever dogma awards them more and more power. In post-truth America it’s only power that counts.

In 1776 the focus was on truth. In 1789, 1917, 1949, and in America today, the focus is on power, with all the power and all the guns owned by government. By the way, gun confiscation in Venezuela enabled the tyranny there. The same policies were implemented in Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, and Mao’s China.

America’s founders largely saw truth as rooted in the Bible. They weren’t all born again Christians, of course, but many were. The others (Jefferson, Franklin) were quite aware that a Biblical worldview must undergird a free society. The fight for freedom in 1776 arose from the hearts and minds of the people. In contrast, 1789, 1917, and 1949 were led by elites grabbing power and exercising it ruthlessly to crush all dissent. These elites were determinedly anti-Biblical. Their overriding goal was state power, in their hands.

Friedrich Nietzsche would be pleased at America’s internal chaos. The will to power has produced a political culture that cares nothing about open borders, homeless camps on city streets, massive drug addiction, infrastructure decay, and the destruction of stable families. Journalism is all political advocacy and the sports industry is quickly following. Conspiracy theories abound and social / sexual relationships are fraught with triggered offenses, bullying, and accusations. And the Left is trying hard to start a race war. They might succeed.

Guinness mentions a star athlete who has a dozen(+) children by as many women. He asks, “Does such behavior demonstrate America’s enhanced degree of liberty and virility, or does is represent America’s serious deficit in personal and social responsibility for life?” Hey, I thought the Left was always concerned about ‘the kids’. Sexual licentiousness and the breakdown of Biblical marriage doesn’t help kids. Freedom and responsibility work together, or society crumbles and freedom disappears.

Booker T. Washington was freed from slavery by Lincoln’s proclamation and the bloodshed of America’s Civil War. (By the way, with talk of reparations springing up again, should there be reparations for the descendants of Union troops who lost their lives in battle?) He resolved that he would permit no man, of any color, to degrade his soul by making him hate. Further, “I pity from the bottom of my heart any individual who is so unfortunate as to get into the habit of holding race prejudice.”

Guinness: “Activism that is not free in the heart only compounds hate even as it claims to fight hate.”

One small practical thing that Christians can do individually to fight against racial tensions is to share the Gospel with everyone. When we lived near Chicago I loved spending time downtown, working especially to give tracts to and to engage 1-2-1 with black folks. I had wonderful encounters, especially with inner city gang members some of whom, I could tell, were surprised to see an old white guy approach them and talk about spiritual issues. Great fun. Some of the best witnessing encounters I’ve ever had.

So, Christian, what are you doing with your freedom? Come visit me sometime and we can hit the street together.

I knocked on a fellow’s door recently who told my grandson and me that he is a genuine Christian. I asked him what he’s doing for the Lord. He stumbled a bit, then said that he is “living his life.” Yeah, for himself. Impressive. I was compelled to challenge him on whether he had truly been converted. The Christian has a new worldview that aims life to follow Jesus. How can you follow Jesus and not try to do what He did . . . and what He told us to do?

America is enamored with negative freedom – Don’t tell me what to do! Guinness notes that our “land of the free” is “the land of a thousand compulsions, addictions, and recovery groups, deep financial indebtedness, and constant eruptions of rage, resentment, and accusations of hate . . . the people are not as free as they think they are.”

It’s not complicated. Sin enslaves. Reject God, reject Biblical truth, and you reject the reality of human existence. You can scream defiance at the law of gravity as you jump into the Grand Canyon. You might even enjoy the trip for a few moments. But reality crushes. Only the Gospel frees. Only the Gospel enables internal freedom. With true internal freedom, there is no need for external freedom. Laws, lawyers, courts, and police forces are not for the internally free, free to love, to help, to build, to respect, to encourage, to befriend . . . to enjoy positive freedom.

Guinness insists that for freedom to thrive there must be structures for freedom (a wise constitution, laws, checks and balances) and, critically, a spirit of freedom . . . “habits of the heart” as Alexis de Tocqueville called it, attitudes, convictions, character. This spirit must be taught to each succeeding generation. At times Guinness is vague about the grounding for a proper spirit of freedom. It must be Biblical. Christians may as well proclaim the reality of God’s truth. If there is any hope of turning the country around, it won’t be driven by the secular conservatives.

That’s the big disagreement I’ve got with Os Guinness. He writes the book hoping that America might just turn around, that the Titanic can still be saved, after being gutted by multiple icebergs. I’d rather grab a lifeboat and save someone about to drown. Individuals can certainly be saved. That’s where I want to invest my life. But the ship is going down. America and the world, in oh so many ways, are preparing for the global tyranny of the Antichrist. What I can do, little though it be, is to find some people to give Gospel tracts to, to find some people to share the Gospel with. I did that yesterday and I’ll do it again today.

Living free is exhilarating, but hard work. America slouches toward tyranny by embracing politicians who offer free stuff, who turn morality upside down by legalizing and celebrating all kinds of wickedness, by making victims and dependents of people who should be free citizens eager to build their own lives. This makes the Gospel less and less palatable to a me-centered culture.

A Syrian poet named Adonis was asked why Arabs were so prone to submit to dictators. He said, “Some human beings are afraid of freedom . . . Being free is a great burden. When you are free, you have to face reality, the world in its entirety. You have to deal with the world’s problems. Slaves can be content and not have to deal with anything. Just as Allah will solve all our problems, the dictator will solve all our problems.” I see no difference in the temptations and deceits of American politics.

Joseph de Maistre: The American founders were not “poor men who imagine that nations can be constituted with ink.” Indeed, the founders did their best to build a structure for freedom, and their pains demonstrated that they knew the frailty of man, yet hoped that sufficient Christian character would undergird the ‘pen and ink’ structure. In 1944 Judge Learned Hand observed that when liberty dies in the hearts of men and women, no constitution, no court can save it. T. S. Eliot: It is folly to dream of “systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.” And John Adams observed that “the foundation of national morality must be laid in private families.” Adams declared, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” John Jay predicted that if Americans shed their responsibilities in favor of licentiousness, then “this great experiment will surely be doomed.”

Benjamin Franklin: “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.” Edmund Burke noted that the elites of 1789 despised “that class of virtues which restrain the appetites.” Alexander Hamilton decried the French elite’s attempt to “pervert a whole people to Atheism.” Atheism has never produced a free and lasting civilization. It can’t.

Secular utopias are unachievable and bloody in the attempts to build them. But man tries because he despises the idea of a kingdom under the Lordship of Jesus Christ . . . which will come when Jesus decides, on His timetable. In 1789 an oppressive monarchy and a corrupt Roman Catholic Church were seen as a unified enemy. When they overthrew that state / church, they tried to build a new state on atheistic principles, with men as gods. Napoleon Bonaparte rose to the top of that mess.

As a side note, how can the American government be so foolish as to imagine that constitutional republics could be built in Islamic states like Iraq and Afghanistan . . . by pen and ink? Considerable American blood and treasure have been lost to maintain such foolishness.

Os Guinness calls for liberals, genuine historic liberals, to stand against the oppression and tyranny that the modern Left is spewing. He doesn’t understand that the real battle is spiritual. The ‘principalities and powers’ driving the chaos toward lawlessness and globalism are not flesh and blood. It’s not a question of classical liberals making a rational choice to reject their own fringe. The Left, including classical liberals, have always despised Biblical Christianity. It’s just in recent times that the gloves have come off completely, the mask has been stripped away. Guinness is not going to come up with reasonable arguments to turn liberals around. The issues are deeper. They’re spiritual.

The battle is not symmetrical. Christians don’t want to oppress liberals. Christians are happy to engage in dialogue. Indeed, most secular conservatives would be thrilled to simply have open, non-violent debates on all kinds of topics. Just tune in to Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox (or any other). When do you ever see a ‘liberal’ guest actually answer questions honestly? It’s always spin, lies, distortion, filibusters. No symmetry.

Guinness, like most conservatives, yearns for a civil public square, a vision of public life where people of all faiths (or none) can enter peaceably for discussion and debate, where all respect the rights of others to be free in both conscience and speech. That is precisely what the Left abhors, though, from Plato to Hegel to Marx to Lenin to Mao . . . to today’s leftist leaders.

Guinness observes, brilliantly, that America’s 1^st Amendment was a titanic wager against history, “an audacious gamble.” America was founded, deliberately, without a national orthodoxy in religion, in worldview. The founders assumed that the best beliefs would prevail in open debate, believing in their hearts that reality is rooted in Biblical truth. If anti-Biblical worldviews prevail, freedom disappears, along with the 1^st Amendment. Today, the Christian worldview is being crushed and free speech suppressed. It will become illegal to speak truth.

Naively, though, Guinness asserts that a vital partnership must be forged between secularists and religious believers, in order to build a free and open society. It’s impossible. Secularists despise the Gospel. The only partnerships we see in work today are between secularists and post-modernist ‘Christians’ and among secularists, post-modernists, and Muslims. No road to freedom there.

The secularist teams up with the Muslim because “My enemy’s enemy is my friend.” Guinness gets that point just right. Their common enemy is the Gospel. The ghastly irony is that the secularist doesn’t realize that he will be the target once the Christians are obliterated. Guinness suggests that the West’s coddling of jihadists is, perhaps, the gravest threat to Western civilization.

I agree with Os regarding the Biblical principle that man is created in God’s image, and that the most poignant aspect of that is man’s built-in freedom to choose and to act in accord with his choices. Freedom is the area in “which we most resemble our Creator.”

How will we use our freedoms? You and I can’t do anything about national issues, but we can freely choose to help those around us. You can freely encourage someone. You can freely offer a Gospel tract to a complete stranger. You can freely encourage a lost fellow to wake up, recognize his mortality, and repent. Don’t neglect the freedom you enjoy today. Make the day count, at least a little.

• drdave@truthreallymatters.com

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138. The Fountainhead
August 1, 2019

Ayn Rand, an atheist, saw herself as a ‘man-worshiper,’ one who claims to see man’s highest potential and how to achieve it. She saw ‘man-haters’ as “those who regard man as a helpless, depraved, contemptible creature – and struggle never to let him discover otherwise.” She viewed Marxists / collectivists / political liberals as man-haters, along with those who use religion to delude and oppress.

In her 1943 novel, The Fountainhead, still a classic, she reveals her optimism in the introduction to the story: “It is a sense of enormous expectation, the sense that one’s life is important, that great achievements are within one’s capacity, and that great things lie ahead . . . whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man’s nature and of life’s potential.”

I find Ayn Rand interesting, in that she was more in touch with reality than her atheistic / socialist adversaries; she recognized the value of the individual, the joy of freedom, and the intrinsic rights of individual men and women to enjoy the fruits of their labors. All of these are Biblical values, of course, evinced in God’s declaration (Genesis 1) that man was made in His image, a rational person with a moral conscience, enjoying spectacularly-free will. Also that man was “crowned with glory and honour,” given “dominion over the works of (God’s) hands,” and made just “a little lower than the angels.” (Psalm 8)

But Rand’s individualistic atheism is but a small niche market today, with the world quickly yielding to collectivistic atheism, enforcing a small-minded and vicious group-think over politics, media, university life, and K-12 education. Necessarily, because she was an atheist, she misses the true potential of man in that each of us can only achieve our greatest potential, both on this Earth and throughout eternity, by getting in sync with our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He made each of us particular individuals, our uniquenesses complementing one another.

Do consider, God is infinite in knowledge, wisdom, love . . . every virtue imaginable. The more I am in sync with Him, the more my individually unique character can grow.

What we can achieve in this present fallen world is but a shadow of the riches (in achievement and satisfaction) that God has for us in a future and a new creation (New Heaven and New Earth) over which His born again children will be co-inheritors.

In The Fountainhead, Rand’s principal character is Howard Roark, an extraordinarily talented architect who doesn’t fit in, whose designs are optimized in form and function and beauty, who therefore will not participate in a group-think that demands compromise with others. Roark’s antagonists are critics, collectivists, and social-climbing architects who pander to the mob, who insist on paying homage to traditional architectural styles, who play the game inclusively so that everyone gets to participate, no one will be offended, no one stands out.

Rand’s philosophy was expanded in her later, more famous novel, Atlas Shrugged, and in writings that explicitly laid out her belief system, which she labeled Objectivism. In this essay I’ll pull some nuggets from The Fountainhead that I find interesting. She gets some things right in attacking socialistic group-think, but she consistently falls short of a Biblical perspective.

Howard Roark gets kicked out of architectural school because he won’t conform. The Dean insists that the architect’s only purpose is to serve the client, to yield to his aesthetic wishes. Roark, however, doesn’t work to serve or to help anyone. He sees clients as a necessity in order to build, to build his own visions.

The Dean asks, “How do you propose to force your ideas on them?”

Roark replies, “I don’t propose to force or to be forced. Those who want me will come to me.”

The Dean observes that Roark doesn’t sound as if he cares whether the Dean agrees with him or not. Roark replies, “That’s true. I don’t care whether you agree with me or not.”

Throughout the novel, Roark never tries to convince other architects to see life his way. If they want to pander, to strictly serve the interests of clients and the perceptions of the critics and society at large, that’s their business. He just wants to do laissez-faire capitalism. In his career to follow, he succeeds in exceeding client expectations by employing his sterling talent within the functional constraints any client would provide him. Clearly, a gas station has unique functional requirements, along with a house for a family of a given size, and an apartment complex is targeted for residents of a certain economic niche. But if Roark were to (additionally) constrain himself to the aesthetic whims of clients or critics who know nothing of architectural and aesthetic possibilities, of what use would Roark’s talent be?

Roark simply wants the liberty to make his own choices. If they sell, that’s great. If they don’t, he’ll live with it.

Roark’s antithesis is Peter Keating, a classmate, wholly establishment in mindset, wholly committed to success, whatever it takes. When Keating graduates he is offered a scholarship to attend a prestigious graduate program in Paris. But he has also been offered a job at an established architectural firm in New York. Keating asks Roark for advice to decide.

Roark replies, “If you want my advice, Peter, you’ve made a mistake already. By asking me. By asking anyone. Never ask people. Not about your work. Don’t you know what you want? How can you stand it, not to know?”

Keating expresses admiration for Roark’s decisiveness, and asks him how he always manages to decide . . . decisively. Roark asks in return, “How can you let others decide for you?”

Rand’s point is clear. Life is too short to waste. Don’t let others dictate what is yours alone to decide. Roark’s shortfall (and Rand’s) is that the ‘smartest guy in the room’ is not the decisive individualist. She’s right in that it’s not the next-door neighbor, either, or the buddy, or the critic, or the pundit or the celebrity or the politician. Since God is real, and He’s really there, and He is smarter than anyone by far and knows the future, God must be consulted by the rational individualist. If the issue is one of principle, the Bible will have a clear answer, since Biblical principles are fully in touch with God’s reality. If it’s a discretionary matter within the bounds of a well-understood principle, then prayer will elicit the answer. Yes, really.

One of Rand’s other characters, Keating’s boss Guy Francon, revels over a critic’s favorable review of his latest building . . . “No work accomplished had ever made him as happy as these words from another man on a printed page to be read by other eyes.” Most people spend much of their lives seeking approval from other people, rather than enjoying contentment for knowing that they’ve done something well. Rand’s caution is right, but falls short. We’re also wired so that deep satisfaction cannot be derived from mere self-assessment. The Christian, however, has the Audience of One, the Savior, whose Spirit affirms a good deed, a true accomplishment. Indeed, the indwelling Spirit shares the joy of accomplishment, and the Christian knows that an eternal record endures and that rewards are attached.

Yes, Rand is right about the small-souled approval seeker. But how much richer to recognize that man’s soul is not alone?

“Men hate passion, any great passion.” Rand suggests this is a prime reason for the obstacles faced by pioneers. Presumably, ‘great’ includes visionary, substantive, and worthy, not just extreme emotion.

Over my lifetime I’ve observed various trends within American Christendom. Within fundamentalism, specifically the IFB (Independent Fundamental Baptist) culture, extreme emotion is valued, particularly in the pulpiteer, but also among the church members during altar calls and so-called ‘revivals’ . . . scheduled on an annual cycle in most churches. It is evident that Pentecostalism suffers the same. Yet extreme emotion during a Sunday night service does not typically affect fruitfulness or productivity on Monday morning, when it’s time to get the kids off to school and go to work. That ‘revival’ emotion is not the sustained passion that we see in the lives of the prophets or the apostles. It’s ginned up quickly and dies even faster.

In evangelicalism, the trend is more toward a superficial platitudinous pleasantness – entertainment from the stage and feigned friendship in the small groups. If someone joins the fellowship group who takes the Bible too seriously, or has too much fervor regarding the Great Commission, well, that guy just doesn’t fit in. Words like repentance and holiness, sometimes even sin, are shunned. As fundamentalism ages out and disappears, Western Christendom is dominated by a comfortable, passionless, and spiritually dead megachurch culture.

Rand’s collectivist enemies are embodied in the character of Ellsworth Toohey, a newspaper columnist / critic, who also operates as a gadfly, stirring up unions and societies – a model of today’s leftist community organizer. Toohey writes of a better world to come, all men will be brothers, the masses of men will move with one accord. Architects must not assert their little egos, must not be leaders, but rather servants, striving to express the heart of the masses, seeking the common denominator, the so-called ‘common good.’

Toohey is a committed Marxist who, like many today, insists that he loves democracy. Marx decried the individual, supposing that even your consciousness is determined by your class. Marx prophesied that history would lead to one workers’ class, who would take charge of a proletarian state. Toohey is personified as Marx’s idea of a Great Man, someone is sync with the times, who understands the soul of the masses and can articulate its desires, in order to acquire power. Just watch the politicians today on both sides work at becoming such a Great Man, trying to sense and to drive the mood of the electorate, not for virtuous ends, but only for power.

Toohey privately admits the kind of world he wants . . . “A world of obedience and of unity. A world where the thought of each man will not be his own . . . All must agree with all.” A world, he continues, where everyone is desperate for the approval of his fellows, “their good opinion, the opinion of men who’ll be allowed to hold no opinion.” Perfect group think. The final victory of political correctness.

Toohey will do anything, say anything, lie and flatter and praise, all for the sake of total ‘equality,’ a word which, in practice, means universal slavery. Divide and conquer, exploit class warfare, identity politics or any technique that wears the individual away. Fascism or Communism, national socialism or global communism, it’s all the same, leading to tyranny.

You see, it’s a lie to say that conservatives are ‘right wing,’ and therefore akin to Nazis. No, Hitler and Stalin were both socialists. The one wanted to rule the world by dominating Germany first and then taking the rest. The other wanted to sow socialism worldwide from the beginning. The end is the same – tyranny. The real choice is between tyranny and freedom. The Christian conservative is for freedom, especially for the sake of the Gospel. Christians see so-called white supremacists, the KKK, etc., as part of the same crowd as Antifa, or Black Lives Matter, or Democrats, or socialists, or even many establishment Republicans – who want more control, more government, whose end is tyranny.

All such groups are playing the old Marxist game of class warfare, identity politics. The names change, the groups morph into different forms, but they’re all on the same team, generating chaos that leads to tyranny. They’re all ‘leftists’ in that they are all playing Marx’s game. When Christians stand for freedom in sync with Biblical principles, we stand apart and we invite others to join us . . . freely.

Roark develops a friendship with Mike, an electrician. Mike travels with his tools from one construction job to another. He cares little for people, but much for their performance. He loves experts, those who seek and achieve mastery of their craft, and has no tolerance for the willfully incompetent.

It’s clear that Rand loves the qualities in Roark and Mike that detach them from the people around them. Yet God didn’t design us that way. When we insist on not loving our neighbor, on not helping someone out . . . someone who wants and needs help . . . simply so we can focus on our own projects, our souls shrink. Rand despises both the Greatest Commandment and the second (Matthew 22:34-40). Because she denies the very existence of God, she can’t love Him. And so her favorite characters care little for God’s image-bearers. Yes, the Marxist is wrong, but Rand misses the mark, too.

Roark builds a house for a client, Austen Heller. As it nears completion Heller asks Roark why he (Heller) loves it so much. Roark explains that every shape, the relation of the masses, the materials – everything – serves the needs of the house. Of course, Heller provided his family’s requirements up front, but it was up to Roark to turn specs into form, function, and beauty.

Roark comments that his competitors build to impress . . . an audience. Heller thanks Roark for his insight in satisfying his needs with regard to the study, the living room, the library, etc. He says, “You were very considerate of me.”

Roark replies, “You know, I haven’t thought of you at all. I thought of the house. Perhaps that’s why I knew how to be considerate of you.”

This is a metaphor for a military unit devoted to a clearly defined mission, to a company who understands its products and customers well, a metaphor for what a church should be, and for how a Christian should live. If the heart of the Lord Jesus is aimed at evangelism and discipleship, the two sides of the coin of the Great Commission . . . and it is, by the way . . . then how must a Christian balance his life? How must a church prioritize its resources and activities to help the individual and the family? I’ve written much on this subject in the Discipleship and Evangelism sections of this site. I’ll leave it for now as an exercise for you to analyze how much evangelism and discipleship – how much of the Lord Jesus’ mission – is wired into the structure of your life, your family’s life, and your church’s weekly activities.

In the novel Roark’s brilliantly innovative designs are often ignored or panned by critics. The awards from the world go to others. And so it is for the Christian. If you truly get it right the world will despise you. See Luke 6:26 and John 15:20. You’ve got to know which team you’re on.

A rich lady approaches Roark, wanting him to build her a Tudor house. He refuses, explaining that he doesn’t do that sort of thing. He asks her why she came to him if all she wanted was a cookie-cutter Tudor house. She admits that she wanted to tell her friends that she had employed Austen Heller’s architect.

Roark spends a little time to try to convince Mrs. Wilmot to reconsider her motivation, but “knew, while he spoke, that it was useless . . . There was no such person as Mrs. Wayne Wilmot; there was only a shell containing the opinions of her friends, the picture postcards she had seen, the novels of country squires she had read.”

This may be a perceptive way to evaluate our own motivations at times. How much of you is involved? Is it really you that is reacting to a situation? Just who is making decisions? For the Christian, is it me and am I in sync with reality, namely am I in sync with Biblical principles and attitudes? Or am I responding to perceptions, to vague pressures?

Roark was commissioned to build a temple to the human spirit, something to exalt man as heroic, wise, fearless, proud, joyful, but especially guiltless, seeing the truth and achieving it, and living to one’s highest potential. Roark’s nemesis, Toohey, led a movement to destroy the structure, claiming that the temple showed a hatred for humanity, and that the essence of exaltation is to be scared, to fall down, to grovel, to realize that man is worthless and to beg forgiveness.

Both viewpoints miss the mark, Biblically. Man’s greatest potential is achievable, but only in redemption, resurrection, and glorification in the ages to come, under the direction of and in sync with the Lord Jesus Christ. Getting in touch with reality is to recognize both righteousness and unrighteousness, to know when we do right and when we do wrong, when we need forgiveness, and when we can thank God for leading us in the paths of righteousness.

The Left mimics Toohey’s point, demanding humility, demanding that men grovel for historical slights against this victim group or that. In today’s culture, when some celebrity misspeaks and offends some class of supposed victims, they invariably cave, begging forgiveness. But forgiveness is never granted to a political enemy, or to a white male, or to a conservative, not to mention an actual Bible-believing Christian. In the Left’s atheistic exaltation of man’s autonomy, there is no God to grant forgiveness, but forgiveness must be sought. The cultural leaders then refuse to forgive. It’s somehow a righteous act to disdain forgiveness and work to destroy the life of the poor sucker who was stupid enough to ask forgiveness for something that wasn’t even wrong in the first place.

Roark’s love interest and eventual wife, Dominique Francon, testifies during the lawsuit against Roark. She proclaims that she agrees that the temple must be destroyed, but “not to save men from it, but to save it from men.” She insists that the destroyers be honest. “Let us destroy, but don’t let us pretend that we are committing an act of virtue. Let us say that we are moles and we object to mountain peaks. Or, perhaps, that we are lemmings, the animals wo cannot help swimming out to self-destruction.”

Indeed, the destroyers in today’s culture claim virtue for destroying the God-designed family, for destroying the simple biological sense of the difference between males and females. They make a virtue out of murdering millions of babies in the womb, and they revel in lying openly to destroy political opponents. They destroy sexual boundaries and unleash plagues of STDs across the world. They worship trees and unleash wildfires that destroy lives and homes. They make cuss words out of God’s name and threaten your livelihood if you misspeak a pronoun. I could go on.

The character Gail Wynand represents big media; he owns a newspaper conglomerate. He opines that “men differ in their virtues, if any, but they are alike in their vices.” Accordingly, he sees himself as virtuous by giving the public what they want . . . crime, scandal, murder, arson, rape, corruption, and a dash of pop morality and sentimentality. “Sex first,” said Wynand. “Tears second. Make them itch and make them cry – and you’ve got them.”

His newspapers are happy to stretch truth, taste, and credibility, but not the brain power of the readers. No need for reason to intefere. The goal is to create the greatest excitement for the greatest number.

I don’t need to expand on these points. Ayn Rand’s commentary is timeless.

We get a little insight into Wynand’s motivation as a big media guy. Sitting at his desk he daydreams about the row of colored buttons at his fingertips, each attached to a circuit stretched to some part of the building, each controlling a man on the other end, each of those men controlling minions, who in turn fashion the words of his newspapers that go into millions of human brains. POWER! That’s what it’s all about.

Why do men want to so utterly control others? Rand’s critique is on the mark here, but she misses the Satanic connection. Satan wants to rule. Our culture’s uber-leaders see themselves as powerful in their own right, but they are only minions themselves, under the principalities and powers organized by the Adversary himself.

Wynand eventually has a crisis of conscience, though, wondering why so many people yearn for meaning, who must ‘find themselves,’ who open up with self-confessions hoping that someone will tell them what it’s all about. Wynand concludes, however, that the meaning of life is what he can build or do or publish any given day, namely, his work.

This is the existentialist solution, expounded by Nietzsche, Sartre, and others. Just focus on your projects, that’s who you are. You are what you do, nothing more. I see this as a (poor) solution by distraction. Stay in the moment so you don’t have to think about life, death, Heaven, Hell, etc.

God didn’t wire us to be utterly autonomous, mere busybodies. We’re wired to find Him and, in so doing, to learn how to relate to others. (The two greatest commandments.) Now, the Christian’s life work is the Great Commission which embraces both evangelism and discipleship – fully. The GC is not a distraction but rather a mission with everlasting consequences. We literally build our eternal family in this work, embracing past truths, present effort, and an assured prophetic future.

Rand admires and exalts the thinker, the artist, the scientist, the inventor, especially those who move the world forward against opposition. What is the source of the achiever’s vision, strength, and spirit? “A man’s spirit, however, is his self.” Self is the source of all that’s good. Each man is his own god. Every man does that which is right in his own eyes. His ‘reasoning mind’ is the apex of creation.

Yet the ‘reasoning mind’ only exists if the non-material person exists, along with the non-material qualities and virtues of logic, wisdom, integrity, and free will . . . none of which are found within a materialistic worldview, none of which can be found in the periodic table or the laws of physics. Man’s reasoning mind and those necessary qualities require personhood, and make sense only if you start with God as revealed in Scripture. Rand’s world is so small.

She is right in proclaiming the sanctity of the individual, that creativity starts in the individual’s mind, that there is no such thing as a collective brain or a collective thought. But she denies the Source of thought, the Source of creativity, the Source of creation itself, the Source of man’s individuality / personhood.

Ultimately, Rand’s description of politics, business, and culture is rather depressing, reflecting the reality of life under the sun . . . without God. Her solutions, though – her philosophy – has no remedy in sight. If she succeeded in convincing the mass of humanity to be self-absorbed, self-righteous, individualists who have no need of man or God, the world might be even more frightful than it is.

But no matter . . . the Antichrist and his regime will certainly rise out of collectivism. The trends are clear. What can you do about that? Individually and in teamwork with other Christians, get the Gospel to lost individuals around you. You cannot save the culture. But you can save some one whose ears are open. You may have to sow a lot of seed . . . a whole lot . . . to find one with open ears. But that’s the only remedy that has eternal significance.

• drdave@truthreallymatters.com

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139. What We Can’t Not Know
September 1, 2019

Is morality arbritrary?   Can each of us define our own morality? Does God establish moral laws for us? Are God’s laws arbitrary? Does ‘goodness’ transcend God or does God define ‘goodness’?

Does God command us to do moral good because it is good, or is it morally good because it is commanded by God? That is the ‘Euthyphro dilemma’ posed in Plato’s dialogues. In other words, do moral good and moral evil transcend God, do they have an intrinsic existence apart from Him? And so God would command us to do what the cosmos deems to be good. Or, does God arbitrarily decide what is good and what is evil? Could he have created a universe and human beings with different moral laws, wherein lying is noble, adultery is universally encouraged, and murderers are exalted?

The dilemma is false because the issue is not a coin constrained to those two sides. The Biblical perspective is that morality is wired into God’s nature, His person, His character. His creation reflects His person, particularly in the moral conscience of His image-bearers, human beings with cognitive souls and spirits that can connect with Him via redemption through Jesus Christ.

The world, then, cannot be any other way. Man’s free will enables him to defy moral laws as in the three examples above, wherein politicians are lauded and rewarded for lying, where marriage is corrupted and disrespected for profit on TV and in movies, and where abortionists and their supporters make profit from killing infants.

Atheists, of course, have no ground at all for morality. If the universe is merely molecules in motion, then murder is merely clumps of particles in collision, and lying is only a vocal sound effect derived from random brain chemistry. There are no persons and no personal obligations and therefore no morality, which is contingent upon personhood. For us to even have a discussion about morality, we must stand on Biblical ground. Or, rather, to frame it presuppositionally, if we stand on Biblical ground we make sense of all moral experience, and I defy you to stand on any other ground and explain the reality we live in.

So, are moral principles universal? Is right right for everyone and does everyone really know what is right? That’s the question posed by J. Budziszewski in his 2011 book What We Can’t Not Know. JB is a professor of government and philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. He is, apparently, a Roman Catholic, but his perspective often resonates with a Biblical worldview on the subject of natural law. Let’s pull some nuggets out of his book and polish them up.

JB cites a 1931 work by John M. Cooper, who observes that people throughout the world hold certain principles of morality in common – universally – including respect for God (or what some hold to as their god), and so ‘Do not blaspheme.” Also, care for children, and abhorrence of murder or maiming, stealing, ‘black’ lying, adultery, and incest. Cooper notes that “this universal moral code agrees rather closely with our own Decalogue taken in a strictly literal sense.”

What about Margaret Mead’s tales of a ‘free love’ paradise among the Samoans and Colin Turnbull’s analysis of the Ik people in Africa, who each supposedly saw every man as his enemy as a moral imperative? JB: “But Margaret Mead was wrong about the Samoans, and Colin Turnbull was wrong about the Ik; the former turned out to be fierce defenders of chastity, the latter to have a strong sense of mutual obligation.”

In short, there are no ‘new moralities’ . . . just rejections of the God-given morality wired into the conscience of man. Societies are always trending toward the lawless, as in God’s condemnation of Israel at the end of the book of Judges – “every man did that which was right in his own eyes.”

Cultures vary widely in detail, of course, especially in adherence to Biblical morality. JB argues that the variance “is not because nothing is universal, but because two universals are in conflict: universal moral knowledge, and the universal desire to evade it.” The first came in Genesis chapter 1 at creation. The second arrived in Genesis chapter 3 with the Fall.

Many on the subject of ‘natural law’ write as if there is a distinction from God’s laws written on our hearts. I dislike the very term ‘natural law’ because it implies a natural origin, as opposed to a created cause. As if moral laws just happen to be. But it’s clear that in a materialistic view of the universe, morality has no physical meaning, along with justice, integrity, virtue, evil, or even ‘meaning’ itself.

Let’s look briefly at the 10 commandments. In the 1^st and 2^nd commandments we are to worship only God and shun idolatry. It’s not that God needs our devotion; rather, we owe it to Him. As rational and moral creatures – a good description of what it means to be made in the image of God – we have a built-in capacity to recognize that God exists and that He is worthy of our gratitude. Animals don’t have this capacity. It demeans us to rebel against this responsibility, even more so than an ungrateful child who benefits from the loving care and provision of his parents yet openly rejects their authority.

JB cites the atheist (“God is dead”) philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who said that at times he was overcome by gratitude. To whom? Gratitude is necessarily an other-regarding attitude, not a self-indulgent feeling.

The 3^rd commandment entails a proscription of ‘empty God-talk,’ empty, or worse, disrespectful use of His name. No man cusses by the name of Adolf Hitler or Charles Manson. To use the name of the Lord Jesus as an epithet . . . how wicked, and stupid, is that?

The 4^th commandment, regarding the Sabbath, is not explicit for the New Testament church (see Exodus 31:16 along with a lack of exposition in the NT), yet clearly teaches a principle. Whatever value our labors have, our Creator is more important still, and time should be set aside. Also, our world was designed to run in cycles. A day / night cycle that corresponds to a wake / sleep cycle, a monthly cycle based on Earth’s solitary moon, and an annual cycle with seasons based on Earth’s orbit around the sun. What is the astronomical origin of the weekly cycle that man has lived by since creation?

There is none. The weekly cycle is from God’s decree, culminating in a Sabbath of rest. Various attempts in human history to alter the 7-day week have met with miserable failure.

The point of the 5^th commandment is for children to honor God’s representatives to them while they grow up and learn their responsibilities to God and to others. How vital is it for Christian parents to recognize that they are God’s stewards charged with the moral and spiritual development of their children? Who else is going to model God’s love, in the context of law, sin, judgment, mercy, grace, redemption, and every other aspect of the Gospel. Many children who grow up to despise the Gospel have been provoked by parents who neglected godly instruction, including discipline, who failed to properly balance love and justice in the family’s daily life.

The 6^th commandment prohibits the murder of a fellow image-bearer. Human life is sacred from the womb to old age. Yet capital punishment and warfare do not fall into the category of murder. The Bible is clear on this and man’s conscience recognizes this, too.

The 7^th commandment guards the sacred covenant of marriage, which is a type of the eternal bond Christ promises for His church. Breaking this covenant and defiling this Biblical typology ruins society. Extending sexual relations outside of marriage contributes to this ruination. JB points out that where concubines are recognized in a culture, they do not have the status of a wife. Casual pickups do not have the status of a concubine.

The 8^th commandment presupposes the principle of personal property, of enjoying the fruits of one’s own labor. No one is pleased to have his property stolen, no matter what part of the world you dwell in.

The 9^th commandment goes beyond mere lying (which is also condemned in Scripture, Lev 19:11, Eph 4:25), to lying to get someone into trouble, especially legal trouble. Public justice is impossible where this is widespread. Consider the present upheavals in America, including the Kavanaugh hearings. JB discusses some interesting quandaries at the margins, whether, for example, he might lie to a would-be murderer who is looking for a man he is hiding. Such extreme examples are, actually, fairly easy to work through. But the basic principles are clearly in the realm of ‘what we can’t not know.’

The 10^th commandment forbids lust regarding another’s wife or another’s property. This regards mis-directed lust or desire. I recall sharing the Gospel with a fellow on the streets of Chicago. He confessed that he was addicted to sex and he couldn’t see how he could possibly repent. I told him to get married and have all the sex that he wants. Concerning the house or car or whatever your neighbor owns, it’s appropriate to work hard to enjoy such luxuries – without crossing boundaries of greed – but your neighbor’s stuff is his. Coveting is always a big step on the road to other sins. You won’t commit adultery, either, if you don’t camp on lust. Coveting isn’t a passing whim; it’s camping out there.

JB points out that we have more control over our inward life than we like to admit. An unwanted guest may enter the house of your thoughts, but you don’t have to invite her in, or to sit down with her and admire her, or to invite her to play with your imaginations. Along that road, at some point that guest will burn down your house.

JB: “How profoundly our politics, economics, and everyday life would change if the Tenth Commandment were taken seriously.” (!!)

On the summary of the law in the two greatest commandments, JB observes that the unbeliever may say that he loves his neighbor, but without loving God – the God of the Bible – he knows neither love nor who is in his neighborhood. The Good Samaritan comes to mind as Jesus asked who of the three was the neighbor of the fellow beaten by the thieves (Luke 10:29-37).

C.S. Lewis wrote that each man has two clues to the meaning of life. One is his knowledge of laws that he did not make but has obligation to keep. The other is that he knows that he cannot keep these laws. The debt exceeds more than we can pay, particularly when we realize Whom we have offended. The law is written into our hearts, the Bible declares; as JB writes, “woven into the deep structure of our minds. We rationalize, lie to ourselves that we are good. We dare not face the law straight on.”

But if forgiveness is possible, then each of us sinners can face reality and respond with humility. The Gospel enables us to be honest with ourselves and with each other . . . and with God. The moral law, what we can’t not know, drives us to find God. Many, sadly, fight this their entire lives and die lost. In my experience, people will much more likely repent from fornication, lust, greed, anger, selfishness, drunkenness, etc. Much, much harder is to admit that one is wrong, that the sins you commit are wicked enough to condemn. Humility is tough. But once humbled, each of us can repent and trust Christ, and trust Him to know what is best for the rest of our lives here on Earth, not to mention eternity.

Historically, pupils were educated that there is a universal moral code and the task was to articulate it, embrace it, and refine it. Modern education, however, coerces pupils to distance themselves from an absolute morality and denigrate such ideas as mere belief. When the Bible, the foundation of truth and morality in the real world in which we live, is ripped out, there is nothing to stand on. When the Bible is used as the foundation, then human life makes sense.

Human design is not just at the cellular or tissue level. Our minds (not just random brain chemistry) enable us to deliberate and know; fear serves to warn; anger has the positive function to motivate protection of life and property; love bonds us in marriage and in the family . . . and enables a civil society. Courage isn’t about avoiding fear, but fearing rightly.

We are designed to depend on each other for food, and for material needs beyond our invidual capacity. We are accountable to others in ways that generate economic and governmental systems. Farmer and trucker and grocer and the engineer who designs bar code inventory systems – all depend on each other. Our moral conscience enables culture and society to exist at all. Culture deteriorates when God’s laws are despised. Sexual sins, for example, destroy families, produce addiction, and generate violence. I shouldn’t need to elaborate.

The greatest attack on reality in our culture today is to defy the reality of male and female, which starts with biology, but goes far beyond. The woman is designed ideally to bear, nurture, and raise children. The man is designed to build, to protect, to train and to model God’s authority to a Biblical standard that equates his commitment to his wife with that of the love of Christ, who gave Himself (on the cross) for His church (Eph 5:25-27). The cultural breakdown via gender confusion and sexual licentiousness is not about diversity . . . it’s about defiance of God’s reality with a direct attack on His created image-bearers and the institution of the family as the core unit of human culture and society.

There is a personal price to pay for violating natural law, rather, God’s deeply woven moral truths. “Those who cut themselves bleed.” JB defines guilty knowledge as the penalty suffered “because deep down we can’t help but know the truth.”

Consequences are both external and internal. Give offense and you will be hated. Betray your friends and lose them. Neglect your children and suffer loneliness in old age. By the way, this last one requires sin in both directions. Unforgiveness seems highly esteemed in our culture, but it is typically a greater sin than the act which precipitated the offense.

The Biblical precept is that of sowing and reaping (Galatians 6:7). Reaping is occasionally prompt, sometimes deferred to the long term, but always subject to God’s judgment . . . no escape except via the Gospel.

These last few sex-crazed generations continue to defy reality. Violate God’s law for sex as part of a lifelong marriage and we get cultural disaster plus innumerable personal tragedies . . . sexual addiction, unwanted pregnancies, neglected children, abortions, broken marriages, STDs, a miserable life for a single mother, hardened consciences among unwed fathers, adolescent violence among fatherless children, child abuse, and anger and bitterness within life patterns that God never intended.

And no one seems to learn. The destructive trends only accelerate. If you’re an unbeliever, though, conscience is merely brain chemistry – meaningless. Yet our conscience corresponds so closely to reality that it must be designed. In Romans 2:14-15, Paul shows that the pagans of his day, the ‘Gentiles’, showed the law written in their hearts, accusing each other and self-accusing.

Paul doesn’t blame the Gentiles for not having the truth, but for suppressing and neglecting it. This puts the lie to the specious objection to the Gospel that the judgment of isolated pagans is unfair. No, God has written His law in their hearts. There are many recorded missionary accounts where God has sent a missionary to a tribal group (or to an individual), to find that someone had responded to their own conscience and was seeking God. God looks for that and does His part. Of course, we must do our part in this, too, in the Great Commission.

Deep conscience cannot err, but it can be corrupted at the surface. It has fascinated me how the most wicked liars and despots in this world, from the Left in this country to the oppressors and torturers in Communist China or North Korea, knowingly lie when, according to their professed ideology, they should be proud of their vile acts. The Chinese leadership labels Christians in their country as terrorists in order to justify imprisonment, beating, torturing, and even executing. Why not just be proud of oppressing Christians because the Party insists that it is god and demands worship? The Roman caesars were more honest. Even when the wickedest have complete authoritarian power, they can’t stand on principles that defy their deep conscience.

You can also call this rationalization, but the word seems too tame. Typically, as sinners, we don’t flee from wrong; we flee from thinking about it. We find companions who defy and deny reality in similar ways, rather than find someone who loves us enough to rebuke us. “Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?” (Galatians 4:16) “He that reproveth a scorner getteth to himself shame: and he that rebuketh a wicked man getteth himself a blot.” (Proverbs 9:7) You have to be willing to think ahead, to weigh consequences, yes, even to weigh eternal consequences. “He that rebuketh a man afterwards shall find more favour than he that flattereth with the tongue.” (Proverbs 28:23)

Rather, we think that we can violate conscience and devise our own scales. We have seen many scandals recently wherein sexual predators stay under the radar for years because they were publicly pro-abortion, pro-women, or just anti-Trump. I recall meeting one professing Christian years ago who justified sinful behavior on his part by professing that he was diligent to preach the Gospel. I’m not sure which Gospel he was preaching.

More poignantly, JB cites an article by Mary Meehan, who writes about abortionists who left the business. One doctor admitted, “I got to where I just couldn’t look at the little bodies anymore.” Apparently, standard procedure is that body parts must be reassembled to make sure that nothing is left behind in the womb. Many abortionists can’t bear to do this themselves, so they hire staff for the grisly task. One observed, “Clinic workers may say they support a woman’s right to choose, but they will also say that they do not want to see tiny hands and feet.” Deep conscience.

A textbook on abortion practice insists that human pregnancy “may be defined as an illness” that “may be treated by evacuation of the uterine contents.” Why not just admit that the baby is inconvenient? That we’re all just molecules in motion, that there are no persons, and so murder is meaningless? Some workers admit to severe alcohol or drug abuse in order to cope with their “horrible work.”

An unrepentant head nurse at an abortion facility counseled women, before their procedure, that it is a perfectly natural thing to do. But then she marveled at the psychological trauma suffered by so many, after. “Why are they coming back after me now – months and years later – psychological wrecks?”

Regarding fornication, pickups often start at a bar and involve considerable alcohol. JB: “Many young women drink before meeting new men just so that if sexual intercourse follows, they will be able to go through with it.” Nothing has changed over the last few generations. Women still want a committed bond, but corrupt their conscience to try a poor substitute. Men, similarly, profess emptiness for yielding to temptation, and alcohol consumption often increases for those in the singles hook-up culture.

I share JB’s frustration with parents who deliberately avoid giving their children any ‘religious instruction,’ especially those who were raised in some kind of (professing) Christian church. I have met several families like this, in going door to door. These parents are, indeed, teaching their children quite powerfully that God isn’t important, that therefore He probably doesn’t exist, and even if He does, it doesn’t matter.

What if they teach a false religion? JB observes that someone who has been raised in a definite tradition is more likely to examine his beliefs and change his mind if he finds fault, in contrast to someone raised to “make up his own mind.” A habit of taking spiritual things seriously is far more helpful than an attitude of despising religion as ‘myth.’ Certainly in our day, the skeptic tends not to be considerate and thoughtful of opposing views, but rather disdainful, dismissive, and insulting . . . too stubbornly stupid to realize he has nothing but sneer and smirk as a substitute for a coherent worldview.

In the 1992 case Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, the U.S. Supreme Court declared, in order to justify the murder of unborn babies, “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” This declaration, defying God and God’s reality, traces back to the ancient Greek Sophists, where rhetoric ruled, where democracy depended on the most persuasive or the most intimidating, where the mob could be manipulated by the clever and deceitful. Today’s constitutional forms of democracy employ checks and balances to avoid the corruption of Sophism. What is ignored or despised by even the constitutional conservatives in government and media today (Rush, Sean, Tucker, Mark, etc.) is that the foundations of our Constitution and Declaration of Independence are not foundations at all, but rather built on the Biblical premise that God is there and has established morality in the hearts of men and explicitly detailed such morality in His word.

On that Supreme Court declaration . . . if every man does what is most ‘meaningful’ for himself, why not lie, steal, rape, and murder without boundaries? Of course, the unborn child, or the victims of rape, robbery, and murder would see it differently. Worst, the aborted child never gets to articulate his meaning of life.

JB observes that universities are supplying our society with multitudes of modern Sophists in the roles of teachers, pastors, news anchors, judges, Congressmen, and media execs. Accordingly, we live in a day where gender is fluid, where policemen are called terrorists . . . I was about to say where Christians are lumped with Islamic ‘fundamentalists’, but we’ve gone past that. Islam has no public opposition anymore, but Christians are certainly despised.

As a college professor, JB asks his graduating seniors to “formulate an argument.” Many of them don’t understand what he means. They comprehend opinions and tastes, as for soft drinks. Other professors affirm their attitudes, that self-defined tastes are all that matters. Visual media amplify the problem. Images cannot develop arguments; they impress, emote, astonish, mesmerize, distract. Arguments need words. God gave us His ‘arguments’ in words.

The idea of the common good is even more remote. One young woman needed repeated explanations to grasp it. She had been taught that politics is about self-interest.

Consider marriage statistics. Young people today delay getting married until their late 20s or early 30s. Why? They are choosing to extend adolescence. You don’t get mature before you decide to accept responsibilities. Just the opposite. Historically, people have married young and their new responsibilities mature them quickly. But extended adolescence makes such a transition so much the harder, if it ever occurs. A man and woman who get married at 20 will be ‘different people’ at 25. Single 25 year-olds, however, are not much different than they were at 20.

Also, it’s obvious that these 30-year olds making vows are not virgins. Extending adolescence results in promiscuity. A marriage of two sexually experienced 30 year-olds is inherently more fragile than God designed. Their children, if they have time to produce any (urban birth rates are in severe decline in the West), are not likely to be taught sexual purity as they grow up.

JB suggests our “entire culture is caught up in a Peter Pan syndrome, terrified of leaving childhood.” We are continually exhorted to trust our feelings, to get in touch with our feelings. JB: “This is like trying to revive a drunk with vodka.”

Our Western Christian culture is enamored with religious feelings. The megachurch culture is designed accordingly. Our feelings become exalted as the voice of God (the Holy Spirit). We now worship our feelings. It’s so much easier than studying the Bible. (Even ‘Bible studies’ often focus on “How do you feel about that?”) It’s a short step from there to full-blown New Age . . . self is god and you both define and create your own reality. See Psalm 2 for God’s opinion on this.

I’ll close with an insight JB pulls from C.S. Lewis. Communists (think Lenin, Stalin, Clinton, Pelosi, Sanders) preach a fundamental duty to end human need. They could not know about the moral imperative of feeding the hungry and clothing the naked without drawing from the well of natural (God’s) law. But they reject other vital laws regarding liberty, honesty, fair play, etc.

Similarly, fascists (think Hitler, Mussolini, Farrakhan, Xi Jinping) see a moral imperative in advancing one’s own nation or people. The natural law they draw from is that of duty to our own kin. But the fascist despises justice and the truth that we are all sons of Adam, and your neighbor includes the Jew, even if you are a Samaritan.

In either case, God’s laws – the reality of God’s creation – are despised and tyranny results. There is no ‘right’ or ‘left’, but rather right or wrong. Freedom with justice and love, or tyranny with oppression and hatred. Whether on the national or global scales, or in your individual life, family, and community.

There are no new moralities, only perversions of the old, God-ordained one.

A pro-abortion speaker grew impatient during the debate. “Don’t you people understand that you’ve lost?” she demanded. “The fat lady has sung.”

Her opponent replied, “It’s not over when the fat lady sings, but when the angel blows his horn.”

I liked something I heard Tucker Carlson say yesterday (as I draft this), as he lamented our ongoing cultural self-destruction. He said that each of us could choose to speak truth into our culture every day. I agree, but which truth is most vital? We handed out over 100 Gospel tracts yesterday and shared the Gospel verbally with one fellow. You should do the same . . . and write to me about it. It will encourage me, too.

• drdave@truthreallymatters.com

 

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140. Some Practical Advice Toward Happiness
October 1, 2019

Animals seem essentially happy if they are healthy and have enough to eat.   Human beings want more. Bertrand Russell, in his 1930 book, Conquest of Happiness, suggests standing on a busy street corner to carefully observe the expressions and attitudes of those who walk by. What he sees is anxiety, excessive concentration, unawareness of the people around them, and a general discomfort or unhappiness.

When I lived near Chicago I would occasionally travel downtown and spend some hours on street corners, passing out Gospel tracts and sharing the Gospel with anyone who was interested. It was my business to observe and evaluate the countenances of several thousand people during the day. Accordingly, I resonate with Russell’s observations of a century ago. There’s not a lot of happiness out there! This was true even during December, when the city was decked out with Christmas decorations and a good fraction of the crowd was there to do shopping for their loved ones. Nobody was happy! Yet I found it so easy to give someone a cheerful greeting, an encouragement, and be rewarded with a surprised smile, probably their first all day.

I was interested to see what Bertrand Russell, an avowed and famous atheist, had to say about happiness from within his materialistic worldview. Russell was an accomplished mathematician, philosopher, and British academic, quite well known in his day. He wrote this book at a popular level, expressly to offer practical advice. Why the word Conquest in the title? He sees happiness as a quality of life that can be attained by plans and actions. You don’t just have to sit around and hope life works out.

Right up front he assures us that money doesn’t generate happiness. “What is the use of making everybody rich if the rich themselves are miserable?” A careful study of the lives of rock stars and other celebrities often tells a tale of drug addiction, broken marriages, and high suicide rates. Tragic turns of life are quite typical for big lottery winners.

What about education? Russell warns that if the educators teach cruelty and fear, the next generation has no chance at happiness. Today we see the education establishment, from elementary through graduate school, dominated by left-wing propaganda fostering racial hatred, censored speech, destruction of morality, and unbounded fears – climate change for example, where a leading political figure has publicly stated that the world will end in 12 years if we don’t ‘go green’ immediately. Yet Al Gore’s predictions from 20 years ago failed miserably, too . . . but did make him rich!

How to achieve happiness? Russell focuses on the ordinary day-to-day maladies that “most people in civilized countries suffer.” He believes the cause of most unhappiness is due to mistaken worldviews, mistaken ethics, and mistaken habits of life.

Russell professed that he enjoyed life, although as a child he thought that he might be interminably bored when he grew up, and considered suicide as a teenager. But mathematics grabbed his attention; he wanted to learn as much as he could. What he eventually realized was that the less he occupied himself with himself, the happier he was. Of course, this is the prescription of the Two Greatest Commandments – love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself. A focus on others expands. A focus on self constricts the soul.

He was raised with a Puritan education, but rejected all of that to become an atheist. His “sins, follies, and shortcomings,” when meditated upon, simply made him miserable. So he worked on indifference to his own self and “deficiencies” . . . as I see it, he worked on searing his conscience so he could live any way he liked.

Russell saw Christians (of any variety, apparently) as too absorbed with the consciousness of their sins, and thereby distressed at the disapproval of God. Sin and guilt were only psychological issues to Russell, issues to ‘get over.’ He clearly knew nothing of the grace of God, the reality of justified guilt, and deliverance from sin and its addiction through the Gospel. Guilt is like pain – if you ignore it, you get hurt worse.

Russell: “At bottom he still accepts all the prohibitions he was taught in infancy. Swearing is wicked; drinking is wicked; ordinary business shrewdness is wicked; above all, sex is wicked.” The great goal, he asserts, is “liberation from the tyranny of early beliefs.” That leads to happiness, apparently!

Interesting . . . all we need to do is feel good about blasphemy, drunkenness, corruption, and fornication. Let’s just party on!

Yet in other parts of the book, Russell recognizes the addictive qualities of what God calls sin and warns against such excesses. Yeah, that’s a problem. Just how much blasphemy, fornication, etc., is too much?

More wisely, Russell recommends balance in life. Those that seek power over others, for example, whether Alexander the Great, or Napoleon, or politicians we see on the daily news . . . “There is no ultimate satisfaction . . . in viewing all the world as raw material for the magnificence of one’s own ego.” If power is the sole focus of life it leads to personal disaster, Russell warns, at least inwardly. It strikes me that the power-hungry leftist today gives no evidence of happiness. If the message every day is to foster fear and outrage, it can’t be good for one’s own soul. They are miserable and want all of us to share alike at the point of the state’s sword – that’s socialism!

Similarly, a focus on pleasure makes one “less alive.” “Drunkenness, for example, is temporary suicide: the happiness that it brings is merely negative, a momentary cessation of unhappiness.” Namely, substance abuse distracts from the cares of life by destroying thought and rationality. Hey, Bert, that’s why it’s a sin. God knows how he designed us. Sin, in one sense, is fighting reality. That’s stupid.

Moodiness, Russell advises, cannot be changed by argument. Internal change requires external action. If you can do something about whatever situation depresses you, then get to work. At least try. If you can’t, then go work on something else or find some way to encourage another. I find the Great Commission to be the most outstanding activity to ‘get over myself.’ Or just call someone up to encourage them, to tell them you’re thinking about them.

God created man to work. God had work for Adam and Eve to do in the Garden, also in the Millennium and the ages to come. There is much satisfaction in useful work, done well. For the Christian there is no greater work than the sharing of the Gospel. Feel depressed? Grab some tracts and go to your local grocery store. Sure, buy a couple of small items, but focus on handing the tracts out to everyone that crosses your path. I’ve done this for many years and haven’t been shot yet.

Russell faces up to death, after a fashion. He refuses to be depressed by his certain death: “I live and have my day, my son succeeds me, and has his day, his son in turn succeeds him. What is there in all this to make a tragedy about?”

Well, even as an atheist, the prospect of non-existence – you don’t exist anymore – should be distressing. As a young atheist, that idea certainly depressed me. The reality of life-after-death with the Lord Jesus as Judge is even more distressing for the rebel. How much more glorious the hope of a Christian, who in the ages to come will grow intellectually and relationally, exploring all of God’s creation, enjoying fulfilling relationships with other believers, and getting to know the Source of all love and wisdom, Jesus . . . the Creator.

Russell sees the idea of everlasting life as boring. How small, how short-sighted! How much more math might he learn with Jesus as Tutor? How much philosophy, science, art, music . . . galactic ‘geo’graphy . . . might he explore in the ages to come. How tragic that he settled for rebellion, for materialism, for an idiot’s view of reality.

Russell was acquainted with a literary class of people who wanted to write significant works, but had nothing significant to say. He suggested that they stop trying to write; rather, get out into the world and “become a pirate, a king in Borneo, a laborer in Soviet Russia.” Experience life and you’ll have much to write about.

Today he might have similar sentiments about social media, wherein everyone is ‘writing’ all the time with nothing to say. They haven’t lived, they haven’t thought, yet they write.

On money, Russell’s desire is to use it to secure leisure and security. He sees most modern men as too greedy for success, and to use money to make more money, “with a view to ostentation, splendor, and the outshining of those who have hitherto been his equals.” If you’re rich, you’re thought to be smart. If poor, you’re a fool, and nobody likes to be considered a fool.

In academia, the lust is usually for prestige more than money. Having spent some years as a university prof, I’ve observed that the most capable folks labor hard to acquire grants so they can hire more grad students, buy more equipment, and generate many peer-reviewed publications per year. The race never ends. There is never enough prestige to be had. It’s a fool’s game, though. They yearn for admiration from fellow academics, not realizing that their peers are thinking only about themselves. The most successful may be envied a bit, but true satisfaction isn’t found at some lofty number of grants, grad students, and pubs.

Russell notes that even in his day, men and women seem incapable of enjoying the more intellectual pleasures. Amen to that. My wife and I have searched widely for churches or even individual Christians who want substance in fellowship, with serious discussions that stretch the understanding . . . people who are interested in learning and sharing. The menu of American church life, however, is a one-liner: pablum.

Russell recommends that parents teach their children to learn to cope with boredom. Parents today seem pressured to fill their kids’ day with all kinds of stimulations, in entertainment, in activities, in food and snacks. Yet childhood is really the training ground for adulthood. Adult life is filled with routine and duty-driven responsibilities – we have to do many boring things in adult life.

He suggests that the child be responsible to be inventive, to make his own efforts to explore, to learn, to think, to relate. There are many more passive entertainment or diversionary activities available today than a century ago. Russell likens passive entertainments like the theater (today, TV, internet, social media, games, apps . . .) to drugs which offer brief excitement, but demand more and more over time. Indeed, modern studies indicate cognitive impairment among children who glue themselves to a screen for hours each day.

The short term trains the mind and character to avoid the long term. But it’s only in the long term that proper growth and achievement are possible. In my own professional life I’ve noted two extremes in allocating time: (1) days filled with many interactions, emails, meetings, phone calls, and (2) blocks of hours where I did serious planning, writing, equation solving and computer coding, studying, and thinking. Type #1 happens and can’t be avoided. But proper skill development and accomplishment demand days of Type #2. Boredom never needs to happen. Even children should have some big projects to fill the hours when no one demands their time.

Russell: “A generation that cannot endure boredom will be a generation of little men.”

Excessive fatigue, Russell observes, wrecks happiness. Short sleep, poor (or excessive) appetite, and exhaustion kill zest for the pleasures of life. Much of human history involves subsistence-level living, with short, overworked lives. Capitalism has enabled leisure time. Industrialization and technology, specialization in training and education, and free markets (at least some degree of freedom) have enabled light physical work for most in the West and an abundance of leisure time.

The irony is that many of the smartest and most capable still work themselves to death. For the Christian, balance must be an imperative. I recall one Christian friend who had no time for spiritual development or the Great Commission in his life. His plan was to make millions over the next ten years so that he could ‘really accomplish something for the Lord’ at that point. I don’t know how that worked out for him, but I don’t think that he was going to outsmart God.

Russell notes that “most moderns lead a nerve-racking life and are continually too tired to be capable of enjoyment without the help of alcohol.” Things to watch out for . . . Don’t take your worries to bed with you. (Matthew 6:33-34) Be decisive. Indecision is exhausting. Think, pray, study, seek counsel, if necessary. Then decide! And trust the Lord. (Prov 3:5-7, 1 Pe 5:7, Phil 4:4, Ps 23)

Let’s pick up the pace a bit . . .

Don’t envy. Enjoy and rejoice in the talents and accomplishments of others.

Be content with what you have. Paul did while in a Roman dungeon. (Phil 4:4)

Love those around you. By thought, word, and deed. Don’t fantasize that you are with someone else or in someone else’s club.

Russell: “Envy is the chief motive force leading to justice as between different classes, different nations, and different sexes; it is at the same time true that the kind of justice to be expected as a result of envy is likely to be the worst possible kind; namely, that which consists rather in diminishing the pleasures of the fortunate than in increasing those of the unfortunate.” Somehow, Russell the socialist doesn’t see the irony here.

Transcend yourself. For the Christian, embrace the Biblical worldview in every area of your life, in family life, in business, in friendship, and even in politics. Don’t let the world drive your perspective. Let Biblical truth drive your interpretation and relationship with the world.

Satisfying work contributes much to happiness. Russell knew “a man bursting with happiness whose business was digging wells.” He was tall and massively strong, but could neither read nor write. When he learned that he was eligible to vote for Parliament, it was the first time he had learned that such a thing as Parliament existed. His life was invested in overcoming rocks and he was good at defeating his adversaries.

Russell finds ironic the notoriety of scientists. When an artist paints a picture that the public doesn’t ‘get’, people conclude he’s a bad artist. But when Einstein develops the theory of relativity, that the public doesn’t ‘get’ at all, he becomes a hero. So even if you love your work, you may not be appreciated, or even earn much of a living. Sigh.

Companionship and cooperation are vital elements of happiness. God designed the New Testament church to satisfy these inbuilt desires. When modern churches despise God’s design, with massive facilities, paid professional staff, and a passive experience for members, they defy the reality of God’s design for the human soul.

Belief in a cause works toward happiness for many people. I find that pursuing the Great Commission in America today is both satisfying and frustrating. The satisfaction of giving people a chance and occasionally – but oh so rarely – seeing someone respond is a great motivator to continue to work at it. Yet the cold, hard mission field of the West is a great frustration.

Russell’s advice is to make your interests as wide as practicable, and let your reactions to people and things that grab your attention be consistently friendly, rather than hostile. In this regard I have often advised Christians to calm down when they observe or experience some unbeliever behaving in an outrageous way. How should you expect rebels – rebels against God almighty – to behave? Rather, witness to them and pray for them. Don’t get mad. Go on offense with the Gospel. Give them a chance. If they don’t like the message, they might, at least, give you some space after that.

Don’t get consumed with your primary interests, Russell encourages. Your conscious mind needs rest from the big problems of your career. Making decisions is fatiguing, and so white collar workers tend toward stress, irritability, and loss of perspective. “Sleep on it” for big decisions is wise counsel. The brain needs time to process difficult choices. “The man who can forget his work when it is over and not remember it until it begins again the next day is likely to do his work far better than the man who worries about it throughout the intervening hours.”

Additional interests, hobbies, entertainments, etc., help. We need some activities and patterns of thought that are entirely different from the main press of our lives.

Don’t let sorrow wreck your life. Sorrow, grief over loss . . . these things happen, but don’t wallow. Russell suggests seeking distractions, but not such things as alcohol or drugs, of course. Better, from a Biblical perspective is to find somebody else to encourage, or even a complete stranger to witness to.

You see, Russell does his best to offer wisdom from within his atheistic worldview, but ultimately there is no hope whatsoever if God is not there and death ends it all. Biblical advice on happiness is rich and ubiquitous in both the Old and New Testaments. Psalm 23 for comfort and Psalm 24 for perspective, for example. But if you’re a Christian, I don’t need to point out the thousands of passages that connect our hearts and emotions to the reality of God’s person and His creation.

The one piece of practical advice that I’d offer regarding happiness is to consciously seek, find, and relate to the SOURCE of happiness . . . the Lord Jesus. Get in sync with Him by studying His word, praying and praising Him, and doing something every day that has a chance for eternal value. I’m not talking about ‘going to church,’ but rather specific and willful acts of truth, encouragement, and kindness to others in the context of who you are as a child of God. When you ‘go to church’ don’t settle for the canned program. Go early, stay late, speak up while you’re there, and find people to befriend and encourage. It’s a tragedy that’s not in the ‘program’, but life is too short to neglect opportunities.

• drdave@truthreallymatters.com

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141. The One Thing Christians Won’t Do
November 1, 2019

This essay can be found in the Discipleship section of this site by clicking on . . .

The One Thing

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142. Is Faith Enough?
December 1, 2019

In the midst of extraordinary personal tragedy, Job laments, “Oh that I knew where I might find Him! That I might come even to His seat! . . . Behold, I go forward, but He is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive Him.” (Job 23:3,8) Then, in extreme distress, Job pivots quickly, “But He knoweth the way that I take: when He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold. My foot hath held his steps, His way have I kept, and not declined. Neither have I gone back from the commandment of His lips; I have esteemed the words of His mouth more than my necessary food.” (Job 23:10-12)

So, was Job ‘good’ from that point? Not at all. He continues to agonize, to suffer unwarranted criticism from his ‘friends’, and never does get his questions answered. But he does get his perspective transformed when God breaks up the pity party. Even at the end of the historical account, when Job’s health, wealth, and family are restored (doubled, in fact), Job may not fully appreciate what was behind all of his experiences. But he didn’t have to, did he? And while we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we won’t comprehend it all, either.

But that’s OK. We know the One who does, the One who knows the path ahead, the One who has prepared a better country wherein our citizenship is already established.

In 1997, Kelly James Clark, a professor of theology, wrote the book, When Faith Is Not Enough, a remarkably honest examination of the doubts, the agonies, and the frustrations of the self-aware Christian life. I see his work as a counterpoint to the typical plastic-smile persona oozing from evangelical or fundamentalist clergy, always on top, bubbling over with confidence . . . or bravado . . . never admitting to frailty.

My short answer to the cry, Is Faith Enough?, is YES . . . if your faith’s object is the Lord Jesus Christ, if your faith is grounded in the Bible, if your faith is refreshed by the disciplines of prayer, Bible reading, and 1-2-1 evangelism – even when you don’t feel like it, and if you act according to your faith on a daily basis, whether you feel like it or not.

Even so . . . your saving, grounded, acting faith will not always keep you from frustration, grief, sickness, death, or doubts as to whether you’re accomplishing anything of real value in this life. I’m not talking, of course, about the ‘mountain top’ here, when things go well, when it makes sense, when you wake up rarin’ to go. I’m talking about the valley, in the fog, at night, when you’re alone and weird sounds come from the woods surrounding you.

Mountains are nice, but valleys abound. The Lord Jesus and the apostle Paul both promised travail and persecution for those who set out to follow the Lord. When you do that, you attract Satanic opposition. In this fallen world, while the battle rages, there is no avoiding distress. If it’s smooth most of the time for you, you’re on the wrong team.

I discovered the author, Kelly James Clark, when I read the book, Five Views on Apologetics, wherein five authors debate each other on the relative merits of competing approaches to defending the faith. (I reviewed that book elsewhere on this site.) Clark was the author I resonated least with. It wasn’t that I disagreed with him, particularly, but rather that he doesn’t think in the same way that I do. Eventually I decided that in Clark’s internal boardroom, Mr. Heart and Mr. Emotion are the dominant characters. In my own boardroom, Mr. Mind and Mr. Will are clearly dominant. Accordingly, I decided to read and ponder When Faith Is Not Enough.

As usual, I’ll sample a few nuggets that caught my attention, and make my own comments . . .

Clark asks, Do you know your great-grandparents? Can you remember the names of their parents? Legacy evaporates quickly, doesn’t it? If the world plods on for another century, will any of your descendants remember your name?

Clark: “The half-life of our memories is desperately brief. We are slapped into life with a scream and ushered out in a box and a whimper.” Life stories are compressed into paragraphs at best, then a sentence or two in the next generation, and then silence.

To make a name for ourselves, Clark suggests, infuses everything we do in life. We don’t want our lives to be trivial. Hmm. I resonate with him, myself, but my experience tells me that this isn’t true for most people. Most people, even Christians – tragically – seem content to plod along, drifting moment by moment from job duties to chores at home to the necessities of family relationships to minutes or hours of distracting TV / movies / social media / reading / whatever.

I have often marveled at how young adult Christians act as if their current lives go on forever, that there is always time ‘later’ to get serious about God, to worry later about their lost relatives / friends / co-workers / neighbors – and the multitudes of lost people in their community who will never hear a clear Gospel witness because that’s just not a priority in American Christian life. There’s no sense of eternity, the days become decades, and life is soon a dissipating vapor.

Clark remembers feeling special as a ‘Top Ten’ student sitting on stage at his high school graduation. The ‘ordinary’ students sat up on the balcony. Nobody looked at them. The graduation speaker uttered some platitudes about his generation changing the world and he and his buddies were sure they would accomplish that soon.

In college he finished a double major in Philosophy and Religion, with high honors. He was destined for great things, as others assured him, and so it must be so. In grad school, however, Clark was shocked at how smart his peers were. Maybe the department made a mistake in admitting him. As he finished the Ph.D., Clark was impressed (depressed?) at the brilliance of his professors, just hoping that he might achieve mediocrity in his academic career. There were just too many gifted people in his chosen field.

Expectations had cratered. He’d been conned. He’d worked two and a half years on a 200-page dissertation read only by his committee’s four professors, and destined to collect dust on a shelf in the college library.

How would he make a mark?

I can identify. I’ve suffered similar angst along life’s path. I graduated at the top of my high school class and then was surprised to see all the talent around me in college. In grad school I wondered whether I’d reached too far. After doggedly finishing my Ph.D. I soon realized that as a research physicist I would be roughly average, at best.

The Air Force clued me into talents I hadn’t thought about before. As a 2^nd Lieutenant, 1^st Lieutenant, and even as a Captain, I discovered that I could create and lead teams of researchers (many smarter than me in their particular fields) to accomplish ‘great’ things. But looking back, how many of those R&D projects make a difference to anyone now?

Promotion to Major (and later, Lt. Colonel) gave me an unexpected shock. All those annual Officer Effectiveness Reports I had received earlier had spoken much about my potential. Potential – that was the big thing for the young officer! But as a Major it was totally about what I was doing with that potential. Put up or shut up. Do or die. It’s crunch time.

Far more important, along the way, was the realization (Thanks for being so patient, Lord) that eternity counts . . . BIG. So I got invested in the bus ministry, junior church, teaching Sunday School classes, learning how to share the Gospel, to step outside of my comfort zone and knock doors to give people a chance, to greet complete strangers with a Gospel tract, then to design some of my own tracts, start a web site with as much content as my God-given talent would allow, and to encourage fellow believers when we meet, or by phone, or by email. We started a house church as best as we knew how to work at discipleship on a Biblical model, something that’s essentially impossible in facility-centered, pulpit-centric modern ‘churches.’

We’ve seen some folks saved. I believe that a number of the kids who rode our bus will greet us in Heaven some day, too. I’ll never claim that I’ve done well with the gifts and the opportunities God has given me. But I’ve tried, albeit poorly at times. And I’ll keep trying. There’s no Plan B.

Why aren’t more Christians trying? I mean, this week? If you will ever do anything for the Lord, there ought to be some effort this week. Maybe you won’t do much, maybe you won’t see much, but the Lord will see you . . . and walk with you when you’re about His work.

Standing out, being exceptional – that’s tough. Clark observes what we’ve all seen, that great high school football players go to large universities and sit on the bench. Similarly, an honors student finds out in college that her high school teachers were easy graders.

Yet even if you do stand out in the world, so what? It’s all vanity if it has no eternal value. Ask Solomon if he thought he’d made it. No, you don’t have to ask. His self-critical analysis is the book of Ecclesiastes. Leo Tolstoy also despaired when he looked back at his work: “Why work when my greatest accomplishments will shortly be forgotten?”

Only what’s done for Christ, the gold, silver, and precious stones, will last.

Clark is a fan of the 19^th century Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard. His ground for hope is that the constructed self must die so that the real self can come to life through faith in God. The constructed self is what the world, the culture, and even our parents have done to influence the way we deal with life. Much of that, analyzed Biblically, has to die in order to find out how God designed us to be. The real self is our design point, our image-of-God self. Even the born again can miss it if self is not built on Biblical truths.

I don’t get the impression, though, that either Clark or Kierkegaard are committed to entirely orthodox interpretations of the Bible as their philosophical foundation. But we must be. God’s reality is the only reality and His communication to us is found in Genesis through Revelation.

To Kierkegaard’s credit, he insists that authentic human beings see themselves as they really are. That requires us to thoughtfully transcend our unregenerate self, painful though it may be. Admitting our insignificance (without God) is agonizing, humbling, difficult. The Holy Spirit’s big job is to help us with just that. But He doesn’t force.

If we want to embrace the trivial, “How ‘bout those Cowboys?” or “Did you hear what happened on _____ (TV show) last night?” . . . we can do that. Clark says that to return to such a ‘Philistine life’ requires massive self-deception, that “one’s trivial life really does amount to something deep, abiding, and significant.”

Clark: “Our haughty, consuming ego is a burden that must be discarded before genuine existence can take place. Our most potent enemy is our self-centered ego, masquerading as a tyrannical king, which requires human victims for its magnification.” Human victims? A focus on the trivial self inevitably exploits those around us.

Clark: “If pride is the chief sin, then humility is the chief virtue.” Humility can be defined through what it is not. It’s not trying to increase self-esteem at others’ expense. It’s not envying or resenting others’ success. It’s not criticizing or gossiping about others to diminish them. Note that 1 Corinthians 13 defines love, in part, in terms of what it is not. Love is possible only if we are humble.

Humility faces reality about ourselves, both our inferiorities and our superiorities . . . namely, gifts and actual accomplishments. On the accomplishment side of the coin, we must be honest within ourselves about what good we’ve done, or else how shall we know to aspire to do more? False modesty hurts, too.

Deep satisfaction, deep contentment (let’s not call this ‘self-esteem’) . . . comes only from knowing the Lord Jesus as Savior and . . . following Him. Here’s where I wonder about Clark and Kierkegaard. They make that point, properly, but they don’t seem too concerned about the lostness of the multitudes around them. Yet this is the current state of evangelicalism. Many professing Christians speak to humility, love, knowing God, etc., but where’s the burden? It ought to be evident.

The burden’s got to be there for your children, too, growing up in the wickedest phase of Western history. Your children must know about law, sin, judgment, repentance, faith, the new birth, and the authentic Christian life. You cannot trust the church to do it, nor the school, nor relatives nor friends. The culture will destroy them, so you must teach your children the differences between good and evil. Daily. Carefully. Humbly.

The best possible me is the me who grows under the instruction of the Holy Spirit via the word of God. The best possible me is a growing individual. Kierkegaard sees that in faith, “the pupil of possibility gains infinity.” Clark: “We find our identity grounded in the infinite, eternal, and creative God who can fill our otherwise petty lives with significant value.”

We are designed to know and love God, to love each other, to grow in knowledge and wisdom, to steward the present creation, and to inherit the world to come.

The committed rebel, the lost fellow, embraces the world’s culture, whichever worldly niche that appears most enticing, and dwindles, shrinks. The me fades away and conformity to the world produces only a collective identity. Isn’t that what identity politics is all about? Group think, group victimhood, group anger. Conformity. Destruction of responsibility, accountability, individuality.

God knows us by name, not by melanin concentration, nor by popularity metrics.

Clark cites the Jewish teacher, Rabbi Bunam: “A man should carry two stones in his pocket. On one should be inscribed, ‘I am but dust and ashes.’ On the other, ‘For my sake was the world created.’ And he should use each stone as he needs it.”

Kierkegaard’s experience with Denmark’s state-sponsored church engendered a distrust for institutions, which tend to absorb or disdain the individual. Churches then and now tend to structure around the program, the activity list, the formalized informalities. The church ought not to be designed to hinder the individual’s relationship with God.

Start with that one principle, that the local church should be designed to enhance the individual relationship with God. (Which is, actually, the Biblical pattern.) Now use that principle to design the weekly life of a church. I double-dog dare you. You won’t come up with today’s popular pattern.

Faith is a lifelong project, Clark insists. The religious fellow who misses the simplicity and beauty of the Gospel . . . our sins condemn us, Jesus died for us and rose again, our part is repentance and faith, the Holy Spirit indwells the repentant, trusting sinner and saves, and life changes dramatically as we follow Jesus – Biblically . . . ought to be scared. If your performance determines your salvation, you’re toast. The Roman Catholic, the Mormon, the Pentecostal, the Campbellite (Church of Christ), who believes he can lose his salvation should be scared. One sin condemns and no one makes it through a day loving God with all his heart and loving others as himself.

The truly saved individual is free, free to live, love, help, enjoy, encourage, learn, and grow . . . with an assured hope. The future of God’s child is infinite in time, possibilities, and potentialities. I like having potential again.

In Buddhism, to get bliss you must lose your personal identity. The self must be extinguished! You ‘win’ when you cease to desire, even the desire to exist. That’s a win?

In Hinduism, everything is illusion. Self is an illusion. The highest truth is that Brahman is everything and is One. So I am Brahman, part of the One, and no individual at all. Practically speaking, that’s no different from atheism . . . no values, no truths, no meaning, no hope.

The early Hebrews often understood salvation in political and economic terms. Modern Jews often see the focus of their ‘religion’ in strictly temporal terms . . . it’s all about your best life now. To paraphrase Joel Osteen.

Some consider Sufism to be the heart of Islam. In Sufism, the purpose of praying, fasting, pilgrimage, and other external formalities is to effect an internal transformation, to deflate the ego and establish Allah’s supremacy in the individual, ‘giving up’ everything including the self. The self must be annihilated. There must be a cessation of being.

We find the truth only in Scripture, that God offers us sonship, inheritance as a co-heir, love, fellowship, and unlimited growth . . . while retaining our individuality.

History has an arc. God controls destiny. I’ve long observed that in sci-fi worldviews, the arc is ultimately depressing. In Star Trek the farther you journey in exploring the galaxy, the more nasty aliens you run into, whose sinful characteristics match humanity’s quite well. In Voyager the starship gets transported across the galaxy. Journeying home is just one battle after another. Where’s the hope? Only the Klingons seem to have any hope of Paradise, and that hope is based on their bloody warrior culture. Sad.

Our earthly homes, today, Clark pleads, “should provide a glimpse of the divine home; they should be places of security, trust, openness, and compassion.” The church, too, should be a respite on the way to our heavenly home. If it’s not . . . FIX IT!

At least do something today, this week, that is a step in that direction.

• drdave@truthreallymatters.com

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