THE TOWER OF BABEL REVISITED

The nations had been united by one language. However, with their unity, they were becoming more and more jaded and corrupt. Therefore, God deprived them of their common language, and they dispersed across the earth.

We too are being deprived of our common language and are becoming increasingly alienated from one another.

There is little left of our common glue. Just take the concept of justice. We cannot agree about things that had formerly been so uncontroversial – guilt and innocence. We used to agree that a murderer was guilty of his crime and deserved punishment. No so anymore! For example, a friend reasoned that he could not even hold ISIS accountable for their horrible acts:

·       If we were born in a their environment, we would probably do the same things. It’s just the throw of the dice. I agree that ISIS must be stopped, but not because they deserve to be stopped, but because their acts are destructive.

I cite this example, because it reflects what so many people now believe, especially the highly educated. According to them, we are merely the product of our nurture and nature – our genome and our social influences. Some will add an extra twist – that we do not even have freewill, and, therefore, we couldn’t have acted otherwise.

If this is so, then punishment is unjust. Why? Because none of us deserve it! However, we must punish. We must stop ISIS if we are concerned about justice and the welfare of humanity. However, we have rejected the only rationale for justice.

What had made the Christian West excel in justice? Well, we believed in justice. Why? We had derived our wisdom from the Bible, which held us all to account for our sin. Well, aren’t we just a product of our environment?

While the environment plays a powerful role in our development, we still know better. How so? Because the moral law has been written on our hearts:

·       For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. (Romans 2:14-16; ESV)

We are a walking legal code. Therefore, when we violate our imprinted legal code, our conscience assaults us, as it should. This means that the jihadist’s conscience is also telling him that he deserves God’s condemnation, unless he repents.

The West is on a suicidal course. If it no longer has an adequate rationale to stand against injustice, it won’t.

ARE WE BORN CHIDREN OF WRATH, GUITY OF ADAM’S SIN, AND UNABLE TO CHOOSE GOD?

Are we free to choose God? A number of verses suggest that we are not:

·       No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. (John 6:44, 65; 3:3; ESV)

Why can we not choose God? Is this evidence of the Original Sin of Adam – that as a result of the Fall, we were born as children of wrath with a nature that can only hate and reject the Light? Is this why we cannot come to the Lord?

This is a weighty theological issue. It not only says a lot about humankind, is also says a lot about God. On the one hand, if we were born without the capacity to choose God, then our culpability is either reduced or entirely eliminated. After all, how can we blame people who reject God, when they never had the possibility of doing otherwise? It is like kicking our cat because he cannot speak to us. However, in our case, it is even more than a kick; it is hell.

Even worse, if God punishes us for something we were never able to do – to come to Him – it calls into question His righteousness and love, His very character. This also brings derision upon the Biblical revelation. Skeptics dismiss Christ, saying:

·       God will throw us into hell if we do not believe in Him, but it was never possible to believe in Him. Your god is the worst monster ever invented.

Is this an accurate Biblical assessment? I want to argue that it is not. Why then cannot we come to God on our own? Indeed, numerous other verses claim that God had hardened people so that they cannot come. Paul had quoted one such verse from Isaiah 29:10:

·       What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened, as it is written, “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear, down to this very day.” (Romans 11:7-8)

When did God give them a “spirit of stupor?” At birth? Certainly not! Let’s look more closely at the context:

·       For the LORD has poured out upon you a spirit of deep sleep, and has closed your eyes (the prophets), and covered your heads (the seers)… And the Lord said: “Because this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment taught by men, therefore… the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the discernment of their discerning men shall be hidden.” (Isaiah 29:10-14)

Israel was blinded, not because the Fall had made humanity blind and at enmity to God,  but because of Israel’s sins and rejection of God. In fact, we never encounter one prophetic word against Israel based on the addumption they were born children of wrath.

Paul quoted David next:

·       And David says, “Let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them; let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see, and bend their backs forever.” (Romans 11:9-10)

Once again, in this Messianic Psalm, the hardening of Israel is not attributed to the Fall but to their own sins:

·       Let their own table before them become a snare; and when they are at peace, let it become a trap. Let their eyes be darkened, so that they cannot see, and make their loins tremble continually. Pour out your indignation upon them, and let your burning anger overtake them. May their camp be a desolation; let no one dwell in their tents. For they persecute him whom you have struck down, and they recount the pain of those you have wounded. (Psalm 69:22-26)

Israel could not see because they didn’t want to see. They loved the darkness rather than the light (John 3:19-20). Consequently, they received the very thing they wanted. God merely allowed them to pursue the very thing that they had wanted – to have things their own way. Paul related the same message:

·       Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. (Romans 1:24-28)

Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, we find that Israel’s hardening and subsequent inability to come to God as a product of their own sins, and God withdrawing from them:

·       “Hear this, O foolish and senseless people, who have eyes, but see not, who have ears, but hear not. Do you not fear me? declares the LORD. Do you not tremble before me? I placed the sand as the boundary for the sea, a perpetual barrier that it cannot pass; though the waves toss, they cannot prevail; though they roar, they cannot pass over it. But this people has a stubborn and rebellious heart; they have turned aside and gone away.” (Jeremiah 5:21-23)

Israel’s problem was born out of their own stubbornness. God had given Moses a song to teach to the Israelites. This song was to testify that Israel had been the problem and not their righteous God:

·       “The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he. They have dealt corruptly with him; they are no longer his children because they are blemished; they are a crooked and twisted generation.” (Deuteronomy 32:4-5)

How did Israel become “blemished?” There is never a hint that they were born with a blemish, an adversity towards God. Rather, the blemish was the result of their rejection of God.

We encounter many verses where God claims that He had done everything that He could for Israel, but this was never enough for His people:

·       He [God] dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; and he looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes… What more was there to do for my vineyard, that I have not done in it? When I looked for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes? (Isaiah 5:2-4)

Israel had often complained against their God. However, they never once complained that God had created them without the ability to choose Him. This indictment never seems to have ever entered into their thinking. Why not? It would have sounded entirely ludicrous to them. Instead, God always asserted that Israel had had absolutely no justification to reject their God:

·       “Yet I planted you a choice vine, wholly of pure seed. How then have you turned degenerate and become a wild vine? Though you wash yourself with lye and use much soap, the stain of your guilt is still before me,” declares the Lord GOD. (Jeremiah 2:21-22; Micah 6:3-4)

Nor did Israel’s Prophets ever suggest that there were mitigating circumstances, that Israel had been birthed with a fatal flaw. Nor are we doing anyone any favors by cutting them this kind of slack.

Well, shouldn’t we be compassionate? Certainly, but not by mitigating our guilt before God! Instead, compassion should arise from these two facts:

·       We are no more deserving than others.

·       God had mercy on us, and we must have mercy on others.

We all had gone astray, and this didn’t take place before we were born:

·       All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:6)

It is we who have actively turned from God, not God from us:

·       The LORD looks down from heaven on the children of man, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one. (Psalm 14:2-3)

To claim that we were His enemies from before birth is to muddy the entire Biblical revelation and to call question to the nature of God, clearly set forth in Scripture.

However, there are verses that seem to suggest that we are born sinners. David had confessed:

·       Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. (Psalm 51:5)

This entire Psalm is penitential – David confessing his sins. Therefore, we cannot take it literally that it had been David’s mother who had been the problem, that she had conceived David in sin. Nor should we think that David is making an excuse for himself, claiming that he was a sinner even before he was born – no fault of his own. Rather, David is taking full responsibilities for his sins.

Instead, we should regard this verse as hyperbole. John W., Haley termed it:

·       An Oriental hyperbolic way of saying that he had begun to sin at the earliest practicable period. This language is no more to be pressed literally than is Job’s. (Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible, Baker House, 1977, 161)
 

Job had boasted hyperbolically:

·       For from my youth the fatherless grew up with me as with a father, and from my mother’s womb I guided the widow. (Job 31:18)

Certainly, Job was not able to provide for the widows while he was still in the womb. Instead, he was saying that, as soon as he was able, he cared for them. We should regard David’s statement similarly and not an endorsement of the notion that we are born sinful.

Here is a similar hyperbole:

·       The wicked are estranged from the womb; they go astray from birth, speaking lies. (Psalm 58:3)

Certainly, they couldn’t speak lies at birth. Instead, this Psalm tells us that the wicked gave indications of their wickedness early on, from the get-go.

In contrast to the idea that we are sinners before birth, Solomon declared:

·       See, this alone I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes. (Ecclesiastes 7:29)

Therefore, it is wrong to blame God for our sinfulness. It is we who have sought out our sinful schemes. Instead, James has warned us that we must take full responsibility for our sins:

·       Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. (James 1:13-14)

God has not coerced us to sin by implanting sinful desires within us before birth. Instead, these are our own sinful desires. We therefore, cannot say, “God (or the Fall) made me do it.”

Instead, it seems that these sinful desires grow within us over time as we harden our hearts to God and become more accountable. Therefore, Israel’s infants were not held accountable for the rebellion at Kadish Barnea:

·       And as for your little ones, who you said would become a prey, and your children, who today have no knowledge of good or evil, they shall go in there. And to them I will give it, and they shall possess it. (Deuteronomy 1:39)

No mention of them being guilty of Adam’s sin! This is why Jesus was able to talk about children as exemplars of the Kingdom:

·       [Jesus] said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18:3-4; Luke 18:16-17)

It is hard to understand Jesus’ teachings if we believe that children are guilty of the sin of Adam from before birth and are vessels of condemnation.

Paul also doesn’t give any indication that children had been guilty of Adam’s sin:

·       Though they (Esau and Jacob) were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls— (Romans 9:11)

Evidently, Paul didn’t regard the children as having sinned with Adam. Nevertheless we do bear the consequences of Adam’s sin. For one thing, we all die (1 Corinthians 15:22).

However, Paul also regarded us as “children of wrath”:

·       And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. Ephesians 2:1-3 (ESV)

However, these verses do not claim that we were born “by nature children of wrath.” Instead, the context argues that we were dead in our own “trespasses and sins” in which we “once walked.” We were not dead by virtue of Adam’s sin, but by virtue of our own. Therefore, we became in nature children of wrath.

If, instead, we were birthed “children of wrath,” this would also make Jesus so:

·       Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. (Hebrews 2:17)

However, Jesus was without sin. This suggests that we too were born without the guilt of Adam’s sin, only its consequences.

Why then are we unable to come to Jesus on our own? This inability does not seem to be the result of the Fall but our own sins, which have hardened our hearts against the Light.

This means that we are as guilty as sin and rightfully deserve the wages of sin (Romans 6:23). It also means that our righteous God is just in His condemnation of those who reject Him (Romans 1:18-20).

Besides, this understanding should enable us to see His free gift of life as what it is – the sheer mercy of God upon those not at all deserving.

THE DEATH OF MODERN SECULARISM

According to the modernist (atheism, humanism, evolutionism), the only reality or truth is physical. Spiritual or moral reality is non-existent. According to the postmodernist, all truth claims are mere human inventions. Consequently, reality is either non-existent or unknowable.

When these two came together, they produced the perfect storm of modern secularism (MS), which believes that truth and justice have no independent reality. At best, they are no more than ideas that evolve as society evolves. Consequently, justice doesn’t truly exist. It is merely a concept we need to keep society going.

If you listen closely to what people say, you will see indications of MS all around you. For example, the pastor preached that because perfect love casts out fear, as the Apostle John had written, we shouldn’t listen to the hate-mongers who warn us about Muslim refugees.

Afterwards, I asked her whether or not we should listen to those who warn about swine flu, the bubonic plague, or radiation leaks. Well, of course, that was a different matter, but why? Plagues and radiation leaks come up on the radar of the secularist, but a group victimized by the West does not. A different set of rules applies here. This reflects MS’ leftist leaning that there are groups who are worthy of preferential treatment. Just look at Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s demand that the courts give preferential treatment to people of color!

Forget the ideal of color-blind justice! And why not forget if, for MS, “justice” is no more than a social construct. It is an institution to be manipulated according to need and ideology.

To the pastor, I brought up the fact that only 1% of asylum seekers that President Obama has brought over were Christians, as opposed to 99% Muslims, most of whom, according to surveys, want to impose shariah law. Without dealing with the threatening implications of this disparity, the pastor interjected that we have to be equally concerned about all groups of people.

I didn’t bring up the obvious fact that the huge imbalance among asylum grantees did not reflect equal concern. Nor did I mention verses that require love to begin with our own households – both spiritual and biological. Instead, I objected that:

·       “Muslims refuse to integrate. The Koran even prohibits them from being friends with non-Muslims (Koran Surahs 3:27; 5:54; 60:1; 60:4), except to deceive to promote Islam.”

She fired back that it is all a matter of interpretation. I responded:

·       “Some things are so clear that they are no longer a matter of our personal interpretation. When the police pull me over for driving 50 MPH in a 25 MPH zone, I cannot claim that it’s all just a matter of interpretation. “25 MPH” means just what it says. I cannot say that I thought it was only a suggestion or a ballpark figure.”

I could have mentioned how the Muslim authorities interpret their Koran on the subject of friendship. One commentator writes (www.koranqa.com; fatwa 59879):

·       “Undoubtedly the Muslim is obliged to hate the enemies of Allaah and to disavow them, because this is the way of the Messengers and their followers.

·       “Based on this, it is not permissible for a Muslim to feel any love in his heart towards the enemies of Allaah who are in fact his enemies too…”

·       “But if a Muslim treats them with kindness and gentleness in the hope that they will become Muslim and will believe, there is nothing wrong with that, because it comes under the heading of opening their hearts to Islam. But if he despairs of them becoming Muslim, then he should treat them accordingly.”

However, the pastor continued:

·       “The Bible also includes such verses. You cannot just point the finger at Islam.”

I challenged her to provide just one such verse. She responded that Jesus claimed that He came with a sword to separate families.

I responded that this verse was a far cry from instructing us to not have non-Christian friends. Instead, Jesus had been pointing to the impact we would have on others, even friends, as His children. He was preparing us for the fact that we would be hated:

·       “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.” (John 15:18-20)

The pastor was struggling to come up with another verse, but she was rescued by the intervention an onlooker.

Why was she so ready to equate with Christianity and Islam, the Bible with the Koran – two sets of very different teachings, one highly violent, the other peaceful? She had embraced the prevailing worldview, MS, which eliminates the possibility of discerning any real differences.

In opposition to multi-culturalism, which holds that we cannot judge other cultures, wisdom requires discernment and making critical distinctions. Wisdom requires us to distinguish the victim from the victimizer and to treat them appropriately. It requires us to distinguish the student who is struggling to learn from the one who is disrupting the others. We also need the wisdom to discern real help from enablement, genocide from self-defense, and the innocent from the guilty.

However, MS is slowly eroding away the principles essential for the advancement of society. MS refuses to see and to even acknowledge the basic principles of justice – that there are truly the innocent and the guilty. How does MS do this? It denies the existence of objective moral absolutes. This relegates justice and truth to mere evolving human creations.

My next conversation made this painfully clear. She was a sensitive and caring woman. These are qualities that I greatly admire.

She admitted that she was totally comfortable with the sermon. After challenging her, she responded with passion:

·       “I don’t feel comfortable with what you are saying. You are making hateful divisions among the religions. You are pitting us against them. You are saying that you are better than they are. You are looking down on them and marginalizing them. I cannot go along with any of this.”

Of course, I wasn’t saying these things, but she accurately discerned that I was drawing out some differences between Islam and Christianity. I asked her whether we should have pitted ourselves against Hitler. She could not answer this question directly, but insisted that love could conquer all, even in the case of Hitler.

This is what justice looks like on the streets of MS. It has now become non-existent in the minds of many. It has been eliminated by an overly indulgent form of “love.”

How did this happen? First, the concept of justice has been overturned in favor of pragmatism, what works, what bring desired results, even at the expense of the innocent. This means that we cannot judge in any objective sense. Meanwhile, she was judging me!

Second, many atheists/materialists deny the existence of freewill, and if freewill doesn’t exist, then we couldn’t have acted other than the way that the forces had determined we would act. It also means that we are not deserving of punishment or even criticism.

Third, even if MS does acknowledge freewill, it is only a mere shadow of what we usually regard as freewill. Instead, we are overwhelmingly products of our upbringing, culture, and genetics – nature and nurture. Once again, we are pre-programmed to do what we do. Judging individuals and cultures is therefore regarded as unfair.

Yes, MS is self-contradictory. While it claims that judging is unfair, it is just as judgmental as most other belief systems. However, only a coherent worldview can provide a compelling vision to inspire a nation and human thriving. Meanwhile, MS has left us vulnerable to every pathogen. Oops, there I go judging again. After all, I am suggesting the forbidden – that humanity is somehow superior to the pathogens.

Nevertheless, I did grieve after these conversations – not that I had said the wrong things, but if I was going to offend, perhaps I should have allowed the centrality of the Gospel to offend. God lead me!