Both fiction and reality are filled with examples of characters who justify their heinous actions because \u2018they had no choice.\u2019\u00a0 Perhaps they were under threat, or their loved ones were, or perhaps money or reputation were at stake.\u00a0 So \u2018no choice\u2019 is relegated to particularly unpleasant consequences.<\/p>\n
What happens when you\u2019re pressed between the god of this world \u2013 the state \u2013 and God?\u00a0 When God\u2019s law comes into conflict with the power of the state, what do you do?\u00a0 A notable example is found in the history of Rome\u2019s hatred of Christians.<\/p>\n
In 286 A.D. the Roman commander Maurice received an order to direct a persecution of Christians throughout the Rhone Valley.\u00a0 He promptly handed his insignia to his deputy in order to join the Christians.\u00a0 As a believer, himself, he was killed.\u00a0 The Swiss town of St. Maurice is named in his honor.\u00a0 Did Maurice have a choice?\u00a0 Indeed.\u00a0 He could die, assured of a better life to come.<\/p>\n
We act based on how we think, what we believe.\u00a0 Who we are is grounded in our worldview.\u00a0 Our political views, corporate actions, and our relationships flow from our core.\u00a0 As Francis Schaeffer writes, \u201cThe results of their thought-world flow through their fingers or from their tongues into the external world.\u00a0 This is true of Michelangelo\u2019s chisel, and it is true in a dictator\u2019s sword.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s true for the surgeon who saves the unborn baby\u2019s life while yet in the womb, and it\u2019s true for the abortionist.\u00a0 It\u2019s true for the terrorist, and it\u2019s true for the teacher who puts her body in the way of the bullets aimed toward her students.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re going to read just one book by Francis A. Schaeffer, my recommendation is to read his 1976 piece, \u201cHow Should We Then Live?\u201d\u00a0 Schaeffer is a presuppositionalist; indeed, he insists that everyone is.\u00a0 \u201cPeople\u2019s presuppositions lay a grid for all they bring forth into the external world.\u00a0 Their presuppositions provide the basis for their values and therefore the basis for their decisions.\u00a0 \u2018As a man thinketh, so is he.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
If you get your presuppositions wrong, then you will make foolish decisions, even if the world judges you brilliant.\u00a0 Much of Western foreign policy over the last few decades is based on the fantasy that \u2018democracy\u2019 \u2013 rather, this should be taken as \u2018a constitutional republic with individual freedoms secured\u2019 \u2013 can be planted anywhere.\u00a0 No, such government requires Christian foundations, which justify the rule of law by the absolute standards of God\u2019s laws, coupled with the rights to life and liberty of all individuals, commensurate with the Biblical principle that we are all persons made in God\u2019s image.\u00a0 Therefore, attempting to implant \u2018democracy\u2019 in an Islamic country is doomed to failure.\u00a0 Just look at any Islamic country, including Turkey, once lauded as an Islamic democracy, as it spins madly into tyranny, with a bent toward anti-Christian, anti-Jewish oppression.<\/p>\n
Schaeffer observes that most people \u201ccatch their presuppositions from their family and surrounding society the way a child catches measles.\u201d\u00a0 Yet we don\u2019t have to lock down on what we catch in our youth.\u00a0 I was raised Roman Catholic, but ingested enough evolutionism and secular humanism to convert to an atheistic worldview as a teenager.\u00a0 Thinking through and living out the consequences, however, especially the utter hopelessness of a materialistic worldview \u2013 we\u2019re all just clumps of molecules in motion \u2013 opened me up to the truth of the Gospel.<\/p>\n
My worldview since has been grounded in the Bible, for about 50 years now.\u00a0 The more I learn, the more I see that God\u2019s word makes sense of creation, science, people, history, consciousness, culture, morality, meaning, beauty, love, and \u2013 most poignantly for me in the early days \u2013 hope.<\/p>\n
Schaeffer\u2019s book begins with several chapters tracing the impact of various worldviews throughout history, in the West, from ancient Rome to the present.\u00a0 I\u2019ll only touch some of his points briefly, hoping to whet your appetite enough to read the book yourself.<\/p>\n
One element from Rome\u2019s persecution is this:\u00a0 Christians were not killed because they worshiped Jesus.\u00a0 Rome tolerated a wide variety of religions.\u00a0 Nobody cared who worshiped whom as long as the state was sacrosanct, centered in the worship of Caesar.<\/p>\n
The Caesars would not tolerate anyone who claimed that only the infinite-personal God, through the Lord Jesus Christ, could be worshiped.\u00a0 That claim, those thoughts, and any words that expressed them were counted as treason.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo totalitarian authority nor authoritarian state can tolerate those who have an absolute by which to judge that state and its actions.\u201d\u00a0 Nothing has changed since Rome.\u00a0 Communist states persecute Christians today because the state is god.\u00a0 Leftists in America persecute Christians who refuse to do artwork on a wedding cake that is an abomination in the eyes of a believer.\u00a0 Teachers who challenge the religion of evolution are disciplined or fired.\u00a0 A Christian professor who is vocal about his faith will not receive tenure in most academic institutions.\u00a0 Indeed, in many disciplines, you will be refused the opportunity to earn a Ph.D. if you admit to Bible belief.<\/p>\n
What explains the animosity, the visceral hatred of the Left towards Christians, and even non-Christian conservatives who have the sense to subscribe to some measure of Biblical values?\u00a0 It\u2019s spiritual warfare.\u00a0 It makes no rational sense otherwise.\u00a0 The Christian, at least, should discern accordingly.\u00a0 The weapon the Christian has in his arsenal is not political activism.\u00a0 It is not conservative rhetoric.\u00a0 And it is certainly not political compromise.\u00a0 Rather, it\u2019s the sword of the Spirit, the Gospel of Jesus Christ.\u00a0 Why aren\u2019t Christians out there<\/em>?\u00a0 Why aren\u2019t they in the face of the lost, pressing truth home?\u00a0 Yes, compassionately, but without hesitation.<\/p>\n In Schaeffer\u2019s historical survey, he covers some of the same ground we see in his other books, which I have written on.\u00a0 He concludes those chapters with this:\u00a0 \u201cNow having traveled from the pride of man in the High Renaissance and the Enlightenment down to the present despair, we can understand where modern people are.\u00a0 They have no place for a personal God.\u00a0 But equally they have no place for man as man, or for love, or for freedom, or for significance.\u201d<\/p>\n When we kick God out, we kick man out, too.\u00a0 Personhood and everything that entails, including love, significance, morality, and respect for personal freedom, depends on the Ultimate Person, who created us as persons.\u00a0 In modern philosophy man is only a machine, \u201cbut those who hold this position cannot live like machines!\u201d\u00a0 Everyone yearns for meaning, and so the modern fellow must make an irrational leap for meaning in his life, all the while denying his existence as a person.<\/p>\n The oh-so-relevant modern philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 \u2013 1980), is a good example.\u00a0 He signed the Algerian Manifesto (1960), declaring the Algerian War a dirty war.\u00a0 He made a value judgment<\/em>, destroying his own philosophy, which insisted that man cannot use reason to judge some things right and some things wrong.\u00a0 Yet that manifesto used reasoned arguments to judge the morality of the war.<\/p>\n Karl Jaspers (1883 \u2013 1969), the German existentialist, suggested that a \u2018final experience\u2019 may give meaning to life, that even though we must see life as absurd, a huge experience may give us encouragement to plod along with some measure of contentment.<\/p>\n A young Dutch man who followed Jaspers came to study with Schaeffer in Switzerland.\u00a0 He had an experience one night at a theater, an emotional experience provoked by a play that gave him the hope of some meaning to life that had not been there before.\u00a0 He could not describe the experience because it was emotional, and to the existentialist reason is excluded from such experiences.\u00a0 Eventually he left Switzerland in despair because there was no content he could stand on.<\/p>\n I have met a number of such fellows over the years as I\u2019ve shared the Gospel.\u00a0 One fellow claimed that he had died for four minutes and saw things that were indescribable.\u00a0 He was immune to my Gospel presentation because, to him, no reasoned argument, no matter how grounded in history, in experience, in conscience, could trump his experience.\u00a0 It occurs to me that demons know this about human psychology and they will use it to lock the door against a Gospel witness.<\/p>\n Even though existentialism as a formal philosophy might seem outdated to many academics \u2013 \u201cThat\u2019s oh-so-20th<\/sup>-century!\u201d \u2013 the work of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus (1913 \u2013 1960) survives as a dominant mindset in today\u2019s culture, reflected in over-emphasis on self-esteem, flexible morality, and disrespect for absolutes, particularly the Biblical.<\/p>\n Aldous Huxley (1894 \u2013 1963) proposed drugs to provoke the \u2018final experience\u2019 and for finding truth \u2018within.\u2019\u00a0 Many rock and roll groups extolled the hallucinogenic drug culture which still infests our culture.\u00a0 Political activism today is certainly a \u2018drug\u2019 for seeking experiences to give life apparent meaning.\u00a0 Without God, government serves as the god of the Left, and acquiring governmental power elevates activists as little gods, controlling, annoying, and punishing those who disagree.\u00a0 I\u2019d love to ask some of these activists whether their religion provides comfort on their deathbed.<\/p>\n Look at politics today.\u00a0 It\u2019s all propaganda, lying, and dirty tricks.\u00a0 There is no moral foundation.\u00a0 Even secular conservatives have no foundation to make moral arguments.\u00a0 It\u2019s clear that they have a conscience that helps, but superficially.\u00a0 What ground do they stand on?<\/p>\n New Age lifestyles in the West, derived simply from old-fashioned Hinduism and Buddhism, enable acolytes to grasp for nonrational meaning.\u00a0 It\u2019s difficult to get through to these folks, because no matter what truth and reason you provide, their vague pantheism promotes a \u2018whatever\u2019 attitude that\u2019s hard to penetrate.\u00a0 \u2018Whatever\u2019 is deadly.\u00a0 Far better for someone to argue that the Gospel is wrong.\u00a0 At least then they\u2019ve got a chance to get in touch with reality and reverse course.\u00a0 But \u2018whatever\u2019 kills.<\/p>\n The occult is also on the rise.\u00a0 Occult activities offer some meaning, for someone who can\u2019t bear the idea of man as machine, but the meaning is horrendous, following devils as if they are benevolent aliens or interdimensional spirits.<\/p>\n Existential methodology<\/em>, Schaeffer explains, is the core of modern humanistic thinking.\u00a0 People come to believe that they can arbitrarily put different concerns of life into two separate categories, reason and nonreason.\u00a0 Evolution and man-as-machine go into reason, but meaning and morality go into nonreason.\u00a0 On the one hand, you see yourself as a clod of molecules in motion, but on the other hand you make moral judgments, condemning those who disagree with you politically.<\/p>\n The Christian worldview sees everything<\/em> as built on reason, built on the Biblical God and His word as foundational to origins, philosophy, science, morality, politics, etc.\u00a0 The existentialist doesn\u2019t worry about internal contradictions.\u00a0 He just stays busy.\u00a0 Immerse yourself in projects that serve for meaning in life and don\u2019t think too much about whether life has any point.\u00a0 Certainly don\u2019t think about what happens when you die!<\/p>\n Over the last several centuries, theology and church culture have been gradually corrupted by rationalism<\/em>, the idea that you start with man as judge over everything, including whether God exists and \/ or whether you find parts of Scripture trustworthy or not.\u00a0 In the Renaissance both Roman Catholics and Protestants tried to synthesize Plato and other ancient philosophers with \u2018Enlightenment\u2019 rationalism and institutional Christianity.\u00a0 The result is religious liberalism, which essentially denies Biblical authority and focuses on making man\u2019s material life better . . . now.\u00a0 Don\u2019t think about what happens when you die!<\/p>\n Consequences are huge and varied, including textual corruption, which has generated all the corrupt \u2018popular\u2019 translations of the Bible; also, theistic evolution which, in my view, is less respectable than blatant atheistic evolution.\u00a0 Theological liberalism, furthermore, weakens the Gospel, promoting an \u2018easy believism\u2019 void of repentance, producing multitudes of false converts populating the churches.\u00a0 A weakened Gospel leads naturally to universalism and denial of judgment, denial of the existence of Hell.\u00a0 And, since everyone is ok now, regardless of commitment to sin, worldliness and licentiousness run rampant in Western Christendom.<\/p>\n Consider how many churches accept anyone into membership and even leadership positions without simple queries about conversion or conduct.\u00a0 I recently had a long talk with a middle-aged fellow who had just joined a local megachurch.\u00a0 He had already signed up for leadership training so he could take on some volunteer (unpaid) responsibilities.\u00a0 But it was clear in our conversation that he had never been born again.\u00a0 He ultimately admitted as much, but was reluctant to embrace the idea of repentance and the new birth.\u00a0 Certainly his new church would never be so bold as to find out whether he is actually a Christian.<\/p>\n Schaeffer was prescient in identifying a trend we hear much about in today\u2019s culture.\u00a0 Theological liberalism has led many to identify themselves as \u2018people of faith.\u2019\u00a0 A popular morning show co-host on Fox News has referred to herself as a \u2018person of faith.\u2019\u00a0 I don\u2019t think she was aware that she was thereby distinguishing herself from her two co-hosts, who apparently aren\u2019t.\u00a0 More significantly, the modern idea of faith is faith without an object.\u00a0 What they mean is \u2018faith in faith.\u2019<\/p>\n Liberalism does not allow faith based on absolutes, faith that presupposes Biblical truth.\u00a0 In contentless religious experience, reason has no place.\u00a0 It\u2019s all about feelings.\u00a0 How many times after a tragedy have we heard a media personality say,\u00a0 \u201cOur hearts and minds and prayers go out to . . .\u201d\u00a0 No, they don\u2019t.\u00a0 You\u2019re not really praying when you utter such platitudes.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve noted how this co-host, who also refers to herself as an evangelical Christian, sees no distinctions within Christendom . . . Mormonism, Roman Catholicism, evangelicalism, hey, they\u2019re all just \u2018flavors,\u2019 it\u2019s all just a matter of personal preference, a matter of feeling.\u00a0 And she has shown her affinity for all varieties of secular worldly culture, including drinking beer at London pubs when she went across the pond to cover the royal wedding.<\/p>\n I cite her particular case as just an example of how squishy \u2018Christianity\u2019 becomes when it is not grounded on the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ.\u00a0 Hey, lady, those folks you\u2019re drinking with in that pub are not merely nice guys and gals.\u00a0 They\u2019re sinners in need of a Saviour.\u00a0 She can\u2019t see people that way, though.\u00a0 How can someone be truly saved and not see that judgment or salvation is the destiny of everyone she meets?\u00a0 (That\u2019s a rhetorical question, by the way.)<\/p>\n As a counterpoint, it\u2019s interesting that in the Welsh rivival of 1904 \u2013 1905, pub owners were converted and put signs on their doors:\u00a0 \u201cOwner Converted, Closed Forever.\u201d<\/p>\n New Age beliefs take hold because there are no absolutes.\u00a0 Cruelty is equal to non-cruelty.\u00a0 Hindus see Kali as a manifestation of God, a feminine deity with fangs and skulls hanging about her neck.\u00a0 Everything that exists now, including all the pain and cruelty and death, is simply part of what has always been, and everything that is, is part of \u2018God,\u2019 so don\u2019t worry about right vs. wrong, good vs. evil, and don\u2019t fuss about those 10 commandments, either.<\/p>\n Nietzsche analyzed the despair of modern man.\u00a0 God is dead, but man yearns for more than his pointless machine-like life.\u00a0 The Christian knows, as a person<\/em>, that meaning is found only in knowing the infinite-personal God, who gave us personhood.\u00a0 Nietzsche said that without God all we can do is develop projects, make systems, construct game plans.\u00a0 Just don\u2019t look outside your game plan or you\u2019ll get depressed.\u00a0 Your game plan might focus on pleasure seeking, but even Nietzsche knew that \u201call pleasure seeks eternity \u2013 a deep and profound eternity.\u201d<\/p>\n We all yearn for happiness, peace, rest, fulfillment . . . salvation.\u00a0 Observe how Satan works in our modern tech-based culture to distract with media and provide an infinite variety of ways to seek pleasure.\u00a0 But I don\u2019t see a lot of happiness out there.<\/p>\n So, Schaeffer notes, the activist devotes his life to an ideal he resonates with, like government policies that produce the greatest good for the greatest number.\u00a0 Utopia won\u2019t happen, though, this side of the 2nd<\/sup> Coming.\u00a0 A scientist devotes his life to some precise measurement or some brilliant model that addresses some bit of physical reality.\u00a0 His focus allows him to avoid thinking about the big questions, like why things exist at all.\u00a0 Or, \u201cit can be a skier concentrating for years on knocking one-tenth of a second from a downhill run.\u201d<\/p>\n Schaeffer:\u00a0 \u201cThat is where modern people, building only on themselves, have come, and that is where they are now.\u201d<\/p>\n His analysis of newsmakers is oh-so-relevant to today . . . \u201cthe ideal of objectivity in the news columns in contrast to the editorial pages is increasingly diminished.\u00a0 Thus, the loss of a philosophic base for truth and the certainty of knowing has the practical result of making for a sociological science <\/em>and a sociological news medium <\/em>\u2013 both available for use by manipulators.\u201d<\/p>\n Science is dominated by evolutionary fantasies which feed the narrative of no God, no sin, no judgment, and people are animals to be manipulated.\u00a0 The education, media, and political establishments are perfectly in sync here.<\/p>\n Schaeffer analyzes the movies of his era which, he says, are the cultural expressions of man-centered philosophy.\u00a0 In Antonioni\u2019s Blow-Up<\/em>, the ads proclaimed, \u201cMurder without guilt, love without meaning.\u201d\u00a0 The story had no hero.\u00a0 Indeed, there seem to be a lot of movies with no hero, unless the hero is deeply flawed.\u00a0 Even in the current craze for superhero movies, we see the Ironman character as flawed \u2013 although not so much, perhaps, from the world\u2019s point of view.<\/p>\n In a Blow-Up <\/em>scene Schaeffer cites, clowns play tennis without a ball.\u00a0 At the end of the movie a reverse zoom shot shows the central character disappearing entirely \u2013 all that remains is the grass.\u00a0 Man is gone.<\/p>\n \u201cIf people begin only from themselves and really live in a universe in which there is no personal God to speak, they have no final way to be sure of the difference between reality and fantasy or illusion.\u201d<\/p>\n Such radical changes in worldview are the reasons why it is unsafe to walk city streets at night.\u00a0 \u201cAs a man thinketh, so is he.\u201d\u00a0 In the suburbs it\u2019s rare to see children playing outside without supervision, particularly away from their own house.\u00a0 When I was growing up in the 50\u2019s and 60\u2019s, we roamed far and wide by foot or on our bikes.\u00a0 And that was on the South side of Chicago.\u00a0 No more.<\/p>\n In our day, the Marxist \/ socialist resurgence in the West, including America, is horridly fascinating.\u00a0 The Left in our country is openly anti-American, anti-Constitutional, anti-capitalism, anti-free speech, anti-Christian, pro-abortion, pro-violence, pro-immorality, and pro-indecency.\u00a0 It\u2019s like history never happened.<\/p>\n Schaeffer cites Alexander Solzhenitsyn\u2019s The Gulag Archipelago<\/em>, in which the Soviet dissident details the lawless oppressions of Lenin and Stalin.\u00a0 In Volume 2 of his work, he reported that the Soviet prison camps held 15 million inmates and that from the Revolution to 1959 at least 66 million prisoners died.<\/p>\n Yet the Left drives us right back toward Stalinism.\u00a0 The current leader of China recently acquired dictatorial powers and so China looks more and more like it did under Mao. \u00a0(You might review my recent blog on a Mao biography.)\u00a0 None of these stories end well.\u00a0 My only hope is that we\u2019re on the final death spiral toward the rapture, the Antichrist, and the Tribulation.\u00a0 The Christian\u2019s only rational response in this climate is to offer the Gospel to as many individuals as possible.<\/p>\n Solzhenitsyn observed that by 1966 some 86,000 Nazi war criminals had been convicted, in large part due to a huge effort in West Germany to track them down.\u00a0 But there was no such effort in communist East Germany.\u00a0 In Russia, many of the huge crimes and atrocities of Stalin were eventually condemned.\u00a0 But the perpetrators walked.\u00a0 Molotov, for example, was \u201ca man who\u00a0 has learned nothing at all, even now, though he is saturated with our blood and nobly crosses the sidewalk to seat himself in his long, wide automobile.\u201d<\/p>\n He further reflects, \u201cFrom the most ancient times justice has been a two-part concept:\u00a0 virtue triumphs and vice is punished.\u201d\u00a0 But in Russia, \u201cYoung people are acquiring the conviction that foul deeds are never punished on earth, that they always bring prosperity.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet America is already well down this path.\u00a0 Look at the unpunished crimes and the coverups among our national leaders, and the rampant corruption over the last several years at the highest levels in government and law enforcement.<\/p>\n Schaeffer:\u00a0 \u201cMaterialism, the philosophic base of Marxist-Leninism [or the Left\u2019s socialism today], gives no basis for the dignity or rights of man.\u201d\u00a0 It claims to be for the people, but destroys everything and everyone it touches.\u00a0 Socialism always oppresses, while lying that its leaders care for people.\u00a0 Once in power, the elite do what they want, and will persecute, prosecute, intimidate, imprison, and even murder anyone in opposition.\u00a0 Why shouldn\u2019t they?\u00a0 There is no God above them, no foundation below.<\/p>\n Schaeffer notes that in the pagan Roman Empire, abortion was commonly practiced, but Christians stood up against it and prevailed.\u00a0 Our modern Supreme Court does not care to see an unborn child as a person<\/em>.\u00a0 The only way they can justify that is to deny God and His declaration that all persons are God\u2019s image-bearers.\u00a0 The Black Lives Matter movement also does not care that most American abortions are murders of unborn \u2018black\u2019 persons.\u00a0 Although the Biblical view is that there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, male or female \u2013 in God\u2019s sight \u2013 and certainly no distinction between black and white, which are mere percentage differences in skin melatonin, because we are all descendants of Adam . . . one race.<\/em><\/p>\n As the Christian consensus disappears in the West, Schaeffer sees just a few alternatives.\u00a0 Hedonism is popular \u2013 everyone does his own thing and don\u2019t you dare judge someone else.\u00a0 This is chaos in society, however.\u00a0 \u201cConsider two hedonists meeting on a narrow bridge crossing a rushing stream:\u00a0 each cannot do his own thing.\u201d<\/p>\n Another societal possibility is the absoluteness of the 51 percent vote.\u00a0 In a Christian culture, a lone man (or woman) with the Bible can judge and warn, because there is an absolute above society.\u00a0 But without God and God\u2019s laws, a Supreme Court majority sanctions baby murder.\u00a0 Once Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany, he did whatever he wanted.<\/p>\n If the majority votes for it, why not refuse medical treatment for the elderly, or just kill them outright?\u00a0 Why not declare as nonpersons those who are inconvenient, like the \u2018insane\u2019?\u00a0 Why not let a family vote to withhold terminal care from their wealthy dad or mom so they can obtain their inheritance more quickly?<\/p>\n The secular conservative pundits and politicians are content to let majority rule dictate.\u00a0 Or to invoke economics in place of morality.\u00a0 Recently in the news there have been quite a few instances of vile insults against political enemies by reporters, pundits, and comedians.\u00a0 It seems the best that the secular conservatives can do is invoke the power of the marketplace to decide whether the foul-mouthed media personality should lose his job, or her show should be canceled.\u00a0 So absolute morality is replaced by mere economics.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll conclude my too-short review of Schaeffer\u2019s book with his analysis of our nation\u2019s future.\u00a0 He believed that the majority of Americans, whom we would consider fairly conservative, \u201cwill sustain the loss of liberties without raising their voices as long as their own life-styles are not threatened.\u00a0 And since personal peace and affluence are so often the only values that count with the majority, politicians know that to be elected they must promise these things . . . or at least an illusion of them.\u201d<\/p>\n Edward Gibbon (1737 \u2013 1794) in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire<\/em>, said that five attributes marked Rome at its miserable end:<\/p>\n Schaeffer:\u00a0 \u201cIt all sounds so familiar.\u201d<\/p>\n Why do I write on such depressing subjects?\u00a0 If you\u2019re at all like me, I hope that we might be like the children of Issachar (1 Chronicles 12:32), \u201cwhich were men that had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do.\u201d<\/p>\n In our day, the Christian\u2019s mission is the Great Commission.\u00a0 That\u2019s what we ought to do!<\/em>\u00a0 Do get upset, but transform your outrage into Gospel fervor.\u00a0 Come on!\u00a0 Life is short.\u00a0 Get out some Gospel tracts this week.\u00a0 Witness verbally to ONE PERSON.\u00a0 Or a few.\u00a0 Or many.\u00a0 Do something out of gratitude for the grace of salvation in your life!\u00a0 If that idea doesn\u2019t grab you, then get saved.<\/p>\n Both fiction and reality are filled with examples of characters who justify their heinous actions because \u2018they had no choice.\u2019\u00a0 Perhaps they were under threat, or their loved ones were, or perhaps money or reputation were at stake.\u00a0 So \u2018no choice\u2019 is relegated to particularly unpleasant consequences. What happens when you\u2019re pressed between the god […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":56,"menu_order":500,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3615","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/truthreallymatters.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/truthreallymatters.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/truthreallymatters.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/truthreallymatters.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/truthreallymatters.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3615"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/truthreallymatters.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3616,"href":"https:\/\/truthreallymatters.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3615\/revisions\/3616"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/truthreallymatters.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/56"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/truthreallymatters.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\n