It’s not enough to Merely State “I don’t Like Hitler!”

What happens when we reject the possibility that there are moral absolutes? I posed the question, “If you deny that genocide is absolutely wrong, on the basis of what would you resist a Hitler?” One moral relativist responded, “It doesn't matter whether or not Hitler objectively wrong, I would still defy him because I don't like him.” Here’s my response:

In taking this position, you are reducing morality to a visceral reaction. This is inadequate for a number of reasons:

1. Reducing morality to a visceral reaction deprives you of any objective basis by which you can work out interpersonal differences. To what higher, more sure principle can you appeal?

2. Such an orientation places you at odds with yourself. While your heart tells you that certain things are wrong, your mind and reason aren’t in agreement. They are telling you there are no objective moral absolutes and therefore everything is morally relative. Thus, you are at odds with yourself.

3. Such a schizoid position will render you ineffective in confronting evil. It is inevitable that you will be internally torn in two. Feeling that genocide is wrong, but not having any objective rationale against it. What will you be able to say to the murderer apart from, “I don’t like what you are doing?” He can simply respond, “Well, I do!” Without any objective standards to appeal to, society will not be able to mediate between the two positions, and our legal systems will erode.

4. Without supportive intellectual objective framework for morality (which you reject), your visceral judgments are no more than electro-chemical reactions and/or arbitrary social conventions. (“Murder is wrong because I simply feel that it’s so! Or because society, at least for now, has deemed it so!”)

5. While moral absolutes are unchanging, our feelings about things are in constant flux. You might be repulsed by the Nazis, but the next morning the repulsion will be replaced by fear for you and your family. If subjective feelings exclusively determine our moral responses, what happens to our moral responses when the feelings change? Capitulation to the fear! Courage is not a matter of not experiencing fear. It’s a matter of having something even greater than the fear.

6. How can society punish its miscreants if it’s all just a matter of changing tastes? What can we pass on to our children if everything is subjective? What right do we have to pass on our own subjective tastes to them? Perhaps they are inclined otherwise? What right do we have to impose our tastes on them?

7. If there are no moral absolutes, then there can’t be any meaningful discussion about law, legislation, and morality. It’s all just a matter of taste. We state our tastes and that’s the end of it. Such an intellectual vacuum will inevitably be filled by might-makes-right. This is what happened in communistic/atheistic societies. Lenin was asked, “What is moral under the communist system. He answered, “Whatever promotes the Revolution is good; whatever hinders it is bad!” Consequently, many millions of their own people were slaughtered to promote their revolution.

In contrast to your position, Bible not only states that there are unchanging moral absolutes, but that we all know what they are:

• Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them. (Romans 2:14-15)

Indeed, today we know that we are neurologically wired for moral truth and moral judgments. Although we may deny the reality of moral absolutes with our mouth, we violate this denial with the very way we live our lives. Who then can take this denial seriously!

Evolution and the Fate of the Church

I was impressed by Bruce Malone’s DVD, Explosive Geological Evidence for Creation. He starts by citing some statistics about the direction of the church. Sadly, 81% of church youth do not believe in moral absolutes. From 65 to 95% of these youth leave the church entirely by the end of their fourth year at college. Perhaps even worse, 63% of the youth attending Christian schools do not believe that Christ is God; 58% believe that there are many ways to God; 65% don’t believe in Satan! Malone understandably laments:

• “By not emphacizing the creation, the Fall, and the Flood as real historical events; the Bible [and ultimately the Church] has lost all credibility to the world when it relates to anything dealing with the physical world.”

This is exactly what Christian evolutionists (CE) are not doing. However, you might question, “What does this have to do with the falling away of Christian youth from the traditional Christian teachings?” Well, in order to make room for Darwin, CEs have purposely gutted the Bible of what it teaches about the physical world and insist that the Bible doesn’t care about the physical but only the spiritual realm. If Darwin is just about the physical world and the Bible is just about the spiritual, viola!!! They can reside comfortably together without contradiction!

As a result of this retreat, the Bible only concerns the private areas of our lives and therefore can find no support for its beliefs from the physical world. However, our proofs and evidences of the unseen arise from what is seen – what we can see, hear and taste! Proofs for the existence of God based upon His creation or the proofs for the Bible based upon prophecy fulfilled in this physical world or miracles are disdained. Therefore, faith can no longer be supported by tangible reasons to believe but by our personal experiences and intuitions alone! Forget about the confirmatory miracles that God performed in Egypt, manna, etc!

In fact, because of their zeal for Darwin, CEs often advise humility and tentativeness regarding our interpretation of Scripture. I certainly don’t want to minimize the need for humility. However, it is noteworthy that the CEs do not seem to be equally humble about their commitment to Darwin. This imbalance creates nasty fruit. The certain always dictates how we understand the uncertain. Therefore, it’s the uncertain Bible that must suffer compromise.

Ironically, CEs are regarded as “compromised” even among the scientific community and are restrained to peddle their wares among conflicted Christians. I have never heard of a CE speaking in favor of his worldview to a group of non-Christian evolutionists. (Francis Collins is an exception.) Interestingly, the atheistic evolutionists seem to have more contempt for this form of compromised, insipid Christianity than they do for creationists. It's an incoherent Christianity that says, "God is in charge, but He made it all through RANDOM mutation and NATURAL selection! Malone summarizes CE stance very succinctly:

• “When you throw out what the Bible has to say about the physical world, the world will throw out what the Bible has to say about the spiritual world.”

And this is just what the world is doing!

U.S. Federal Hate Crimes Act

The U.S. Federal Hate Crimes Act passed in 2009 not only criminalizes hate crimes but also speech that could be construed to possibly contribute to a hate crime. Some Congressmen had proposed an amendment exempting religious teachings against homosexual acts. However, this amendment had been struck down, allowing passage of the bill without the religious exemption. However, according to LifeSiteNews.com (12/10/10),

• An appeal was filed [Ann Arbor, Michigan] earlier this week with the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals over a lower court’s dismissal of a lawsuit challenging the Federal Hate Crimes Act passed in 2009.

• According to a brief filed by the Thomas More Law Center (TMLC) “This statute is all about elevating certain persons (homosexuals) to a protected class under federal law based on nothing more than their choice to have sex with persons of the same gender, while marginalizing strong religious opposition to this immoral choice,”

• Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of TMLC adds, “Under the guise of enforcing ‘niceness’ and promoting ‘tolerance,’ homosexual advocacy groups have mobilized their financial power to purchase political clout which they now use to shut down any criticism of their deviant lifestyle. The truth is they are one of the most intolerant groups in our society and viciously attack anyone who opposes their point of view.”

Are the concerns of this hate crimes bill misdirected?

• “The Thomas More Center says that even statistics compiled by their own “gay rights” advocacy groups show that the greatest threat of violence to homosexuals comes not from Christians, but from other homosexuals. They also show that during the period from 1999 to 2003, a homosexual was 244 percent more likely to commit an act of violence against another homosexual than was a heterosexual.”

Does the social price-tag of the cure (the hate crimes bill criminalizing speech that can be construed to possibly lead to a hate crime) out-weigh the possible benefits? According to Robert Muise, the senior trial counsel for TMLC,

• “This new federal law…creates a special class of persons who are ‘more equal than others’ based on nothing more than deviant, sexual behavior. And secondly, it creates ‘thought crimes’ by criminalizing certain ideas, beliefs, and opinions, and the involvement of such ideas, beliefs, and opinions in a crime will make it deserving of federal prosecution.”

This is reminiscent of shariah’s anti-blaspheme laws. Among other things, these laws create social imbalance, empowering one group over another, thereby causing social alienation. However, the intolerance directed against sincerely and traditionally held religious beliefs will only engender social breakdown.

And what is being achieved by this new and radical law? Beyond the immediate protection of the feelings of the LGBT community, it is hard to say. It is even difficult to argue that even the best interests of the LGBTs are being served by it. To demonstrate the absurdity of this contention, a new proposal by IPPF is instructive. On December 9, 2010, C-FAM.org, is illuminating:

• “A new campaign seeks to eliminate disclosure laws which require HIV positive individuals to inform their sex partners of their potentially deadly infection. The campaign is led by the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and UNAIDS, an umbrella group of UN agencies. Notably absent from this campaign is any recognition of the danger posed for the possible victims of a willful refusal to disclose HIV status. As part of the campaign, IPPF released a collection of interviews entitled 'Behind Bars', which implies that such criminal laws fuel stigma against HIV persons. Proponents of criminal laws assert, however, they are designed to help protect and prevent sexual partners from contracting a potentially deadly virus.”

Does such a proposal promote the welfare of LGBTs? The diagnosis, treatment, and containment of a contagious disease might bring stigmatization, but what is the price of failing to do so? Why should the legal structure be changed to shield LGBTs from negative comments, while putting their lives in further jeopardy?

The Spirit World

How do I know that there’s a God? Well, I know that there are lying spirits (demons). This firsthand knowledge is important, especially for someone like me, a skeptic by nature, imbued with the Western prejudice against the world of spirits in general.

I have two cousins who used to do the Ouija board when they were 10 and 12. It terrified them, but we adults pressured them to do it at a family event. The results were nothing short of amazing. The disk raced around the board, as the girls placed all four hands upon it, spelling out words as fast as we could record them. The words became sentences, and then thoughts and stories, communicating things that the girls were incapable of knowing, even beyond their ability to express them.

We skeptics then blindfolded them. This didn’t impede their performance in the slightest. Even today, my family has no natural explanation for what we saw.

I had been so impressed, that I persuaded my girlfriend into doing the Ouija with me. The spirits that we conjured were very liberal in their use of profanity, but answered all our questions. I had naively assumed that they could be trusted, assuming that these spirits were ascended, enlightened beings who had evolved past any interest in lying. We asked them the big question – “Is there a God?” To this, they answered “Ouija!”

My parents had also been burglarized, and so we asked the spirits to disclose the identity of the perpetrators. They gladly identified neighbors of my parents. Immediately, I decided that I would take revenge upon them, but fortunately, the police apprehended the real perpetrators before I could take action.

I mention these things because many are as naïve as I had been. Young people especially are attracted to spiritism. It offers the quick-road to power and prestige at what seems to be a minimal price. Recently, a student told me of her own experiences:

• As a teenager I often hung out with large groups of people varying in age, some my age and some adults and little children. One week, during the winter, we decided to perform séances for 3 nights. Incidences occurred, but for the first 2 days, I was stuck babysitting the little ones, so I couldn’t see what was happening. I was usually told the next day by someone in the group of by a boyfriend of mine at the time. He would tell me that he couldn’t remember because as soon as the praying or chanting started he would fall asleep and when it was over he would wake up to find that his cross hanging around his neck would be broken and on his lap. When the séances were on although I was in a closed room but I could still hear a lot of commotion going on and even some screams. I had to be at one of these things to see what was going on, so the last night of the séances I decided to speak up and say I didn’t want to take care of the kids that night. I sat with my boyfriend and the chanting/praying started. We were all in a circle sitting around the room I don’t remember holding hands. The person who was the medium was the same for all the nights of the séances. It was a woman and she would sit at the head of the circle in a chair and start the chanting and we all listened. Right away my boyfriend fell asleep and I knew something was going to happen. I looked at the woman and her face seemed darker so I left my chair and approached her out of curiosity. Why was it I could see her body but by her head it looks like a dark shadow was there, so when I came close I noticed her eyes seemed crooked and were looking straight ahead as if she didn’t know I was there. I called her name and she didn’t answer. Someone from the group told me to stay seated and they proceeded to talk to this woman but the voice that came out of her was a man’s voice and very deep. I was a little scared and tried to wake up my bf, but he wouldn’t wake up, so I sat next to him. All of a sudden out of nowhere, the woman started screaming and ran toward the kitchen. Some of the men that were there including her husband ran after her to try to calm her down but the voice kept saying he had to throw her out of the window. Finally after she was pulled to the floor and she was restrained one of the other people started praying over her. After that I decided not to partake in any of those things again, it was too scary.

Evil is real. If you haven’t had these types of experiences, don’t simply dismiss it. Its ability to disguise itself as something pleasant, even moral, has duped many people, as the Bible warns: “Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light” (2 Cor. 11:14).

Evil is alluring; it promises quick results. Meanwhile, it asks you to turn off your critical faculties. Sandra Ingerman, a shaman, writes:

• “As you read this book and wonder whether or not what I am talking about is real, I ask you not to enter into a battle between the right brain [reason] and left brain [intuition]. Simply read the material and experience it...Does the information that comes from the shamanic journey work? Does the information make positive changes in a person’s life? If so, who cares if we are making it up?” (Soul Retrieval, 3)

Immediate results trumps reason or any consideration of the costs further down the road. Nor is education any guarantee against naïveté. In “Mama Lola; A Voodoo Priestess in Brooklyn,” Anthropologist Karen McCarthy Brown explains how and why she took a leap into Voodoo”

• “Although the Iwa [spirits] who possess Alourdes [the Voodoo priestess] are often called sen-yo (saints), they are not saintly types in the traditional Christian sense. For example, in stories about the soldier spirit Ogou/Saint James, he not only liberates his people but also betrays them. Ezili Danto/Mater Salvatoris, the mother, cradles and cares for her children but also sometimes lashes out at them in rage. The Voodoo spirits are not models of the well-lived life; rather, they mirror the full range of possibilities inherent in the particular slice of life over which they preside. Failure to understand this has led observers to portray the Voodoo spirits as demonic or even to conclude that Voodoo is a religion without morality—a serious misconception.” (pg.6)

However, McCarthy doesn’t explain why this is a “misconception.” It is amazing that while knowing that these spirits aren’t “saintly types,” she would subject herself to them. Nor does she attempt to think through the philosophical implications of her ill-conceived leap. If the spirits are the highest form of being and they aren’t very moral, then it would be pure hubris to try to be more moral. This might even be offensive to the spirits.

What happens to societies who have made this leap into spiritism? In the short run, they might find some immediate benefits. The spirit world is real and powerful. However, there is the fine print. It is no accident that we have no examples of spiritistic societies that have advanced, having hospitals, justice systems, and charities. Instead, these societies are horribly violent – a testimony to the type of beings that spiritism invokes.

Nevertheless, our mysterious God allows them a degree of sovereignty. Why? Well, for one thing, skeptics like me delight over tangible evidence of the spirit world. And if there are demonic spirits, there certainly must be a benevolent God who keeps them in check.

Hallelujah! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXh7JR9oKVE&feature=player_embed

Have you seen the video of the food court where suddenly people begin to sing Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus with instrumental accompaniment? It transforms the scene from a very earthly mundane portrait of people stuffing down their cokes and burgers, bought from the surrounding fast food stands – a scene as American and secular as you can find – into heavenly worship. The video is so uplifting that already five people have forwarded it to me, and I watch it each time with tear-filled eyes, praising the Lord. It has also gone viral – almost 12 million have already viewed it. Why?

Indeed, it’s surprising to be sitting in a food court, thinking about how much you’ve spent, wondering how much you have left for your next purchase, to find yourself caught by the unexpected. However, surprise isn’t enough to explain our reaction. We’re often surprised – sometimes by very unpleasant changes – and it’s seldom uplifting.

Nor is it merely a matter of hearing the Hallelujah for one more time, however lofty this score might be! There is something more to this experience, something that elicits some of our deepest feelings.

Let me take a stab at it, although it’s not easy to truly identify the logic – the meaning behind our deepest feelings. We were designed with feelings that serve as pointers to the transcendent. However, before you dismiss this idea, let me just point out that our everyday feelings serve us in this way. When we needlessly hurt someone and then feel guilty, our guilt notifies us about a transcendent moral law that has been violated. It serves as a fire alarm to alert us that something is wrong, and a response is required. On the other hand, when we perform a sacrificial act that truly helps someone, once again we experience something that elevates us to a higher plateau and tells us that walking in love is what life should be about.

I think that there are also feelings that bring us even closer to an awareness of the presence of the Divine. Could it be that, in that very ordinary food court, while eating a very ordinary dog with chips, a taste of the Divine was also made available, perhaps even a tangible sense of the glorious return of our Savior Jesus? Could the Father have planted within us emotions that would give substance to Biblical assertions?

I think it was C.S.Lewis who had argued that God had implanted deep emotional responses to certain Biblical narratives like “child as Savior,” or “the return of the one everyone thought had been decisively defeated,” or “the unlikely rescuer,” or “the triumph of the underdog.” Perhaps in accord with the implanted narrative, this prosaic food court was suddenly “heavenized” by an “incarnated” hope that we struggle to experience, but too often fail to allow to trump concerns about bills and the ketchup smeared on our mouths – “The glorious return of our long awaited Messiah!”

We leave wondering how we can make this experience real in the various food courts of our lives. How can we joyously see Jesus in all circumstances? Perhaps it exceeds our ability to be able to generate this awe at will, but we can remember and consider. The Book of Hebrews tells us how:

• “…let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. (Hebrews 12:1-3)

Forming a Workable Worldview

People take strong issue with me, not so much because of my positions – this also is an issue – but because I express a high level of certainty and claim that these issues can be proved. One respondent stated, “I hate it when anyone claims that they can know something for certain!”

Although few will be so transparent about their inclinations, I sense that this cultural bias has been deeply instilled into our corporate Western consciousness. Even Christian scholars will write in very couched and carefully formulated terms to avoid the charge that their faith directs their scholarship and that they are over-stating their case. Others go further and disdain any talk of proofs and certainty. In “The Myth of Certainty,” Daniel Taylor writes,

• “When people defend their world view, they are not defending reason, or God, or an abstract system; they are defending their own fragile sense of security and self-respect.” (25)

According to this statement, it’s all about personal mushy stuff, and questions of truth don’t seem to matter very much. Many postmodern philosophers claim that assertions of truth are no more than our own subjective constructions, employed to exert power and influence. This assertion represents a dismissal of any defense of truth, including the defense of the Biblical faith as mandated (Jude 3; 1 Peter 3:15).

We might conclude that Taylor also wrote his book to support his “own fragile sense of security and self-respect.” However, he explains that the reason is not to convince anyone of the Christian faith, but instead to reassure those who, like himself,

• “Have found in God, and in Jesus Christ, a proposed solution to the human dilemma to which they have made, with varying degrees of confidence, a commitment. At the same time they have been blessed and cursed with minds that never rest. They are dissatisfied with superficial answers to difficult questions, willing to defend faith, but not its misuse…Their relationship to this [church] subculture is complex, and only partly conscious, and they are both indebted to it and victimized by it.” (11)

Is Taylor’s problem the result of “difficult questions” or the wrong presuppositions, the wrong starting point? Has he started buttoning his shirt with the wrong button, finding that every subsequent button is in the wrong hole? Of course, the mind is experienced as a “curse” whenever our worldview fails to congeal, leaving us in confusion and resenting the professed assurance of others. Sometimes the resulting dissonance represents a failure in reconciling the “dissonant” elements of the faith; sometimes it’s a matter of failing to reconcile our faith with the prevailing culture. Which way do we go? Do we reconcile the Bible with itself and then find ourselves even more at odds with the culture? Or do we try to reconcile those most central and important parts of the Gospel with our public lives and leave aside some of the harder edges of Biblical revelation?

A common strategy emphasizes the “spiritual” and personal aspects of the faith, those parts that can be reconciled with our public lives and secular culture. Often, this conceptualization divides life into two non-overlapping or non-competing orbs of influence. The spiritual orb pertains to what I do at home and in church. It’s about faith and worship. The other orb is the public one, which involves science and provable facts. Since the faith isn’t “provable,” it’s to remain private, until someone asks us about it. Then, our defense largely revolves around sharing our own personal experiences, rather than evidences and proofs. It also entails some degree of conformity to secular norms – evolution is a fact, we can marry whomever we want, and Islam doesn’t pose a threat since they will become secularized as the rest of us.

There is going to be cognitive struggle with whatever strategy we adopt. Although the latter solution is culturally more comfortable, it has its own problems. The conceptualization of non-overlapping orbs of life is highly artificial. For one thing, in both orbs, value judgments are part of every decision we make – whether we’re conscious of them or not – and Christian values and beliefs aren’t the same as secular values. When the orbs collide – and they will – this means dissonance. Here are some other costs of this latter option:

1. Peace with the world is enmity with God. By reconciling our faith with the secular world, we heighten the conflicts within our own Christian worldview. This will only cause greater discomfort with the message we hear from our pulpits. Younger Christians are leaving the more traditional churches in hope of finding a message or theology in more seeker-sensitive churches with which they can experience affirmation. This includes finding relationships with more like-minded people.

2. Certainty is undermined. These conflicts aren’t resolved by finding more affirmative churches. They reappear whenever we pick the Bible or even turn to God in prayer.

3. The secular formulation of non-competing orbs marginalizes and silences Christianity. How could it not! If Christianity is no longer about proof and certainty – and these belong only to the orb of science and provable facts – then there isn’t much to say in defense of the faith or even in defense of our Christian values and opinions if they conflict with secular norms. Our tendency will therefore be to adopt values which we can vocalize or else suffer marginalization.

In this postmodern climate, the expression of any certainty about our faith and its rational basis is met with disdain. We have overstepped the accepted boundaries! But how then can we communicate effectively with our culture? Are we relegated to merely a sharing of our feelings and experiences? Although our personal testimonies are important, they can’t be the entire story. Everyone has their own feelings and experiences. What makes ours any more valid than theirs? What then is the answer? It might sound simplistic, but this represents the core of our faith – “Trust in the Lord!”

Paul wrote about the contrary cultural climate of the last days and gave instruction to the church:

• “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus…Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage--with great patience and careful instruction.” (2 Tim. 3:14-15; 4:2)

The Persecution Narrative

A UK Christian blog affirmatively quoted a certain Anglican bishop who stated:

•I do not believe that Christians are a persecuted group of people in this country today…If you define yourself by your victimhood you’ve got a massive problem…I don’t like it when people moan about being discriminated against…If people feel that the job they’re doing requires them to go against their Christian conscience, it could be in areas of sexuality or the wearing of a cross or whatever it is, then they have a choice to make, and if you feel that what you’re being asked to do is incompatible with your faith then you shouldn’t do it, but that isn’t persecution, you have a choice and you can go and do something else.

Perhaps there are good reasons to resist the Christian “persecution narrative,” but denial isn’t one of them. If you had instead published a study that demonstrated that Christians weren’t being silenced or discriminated against, that would be an appropriate response. Rather, you argued that we should even consider this question, instead of first examining the truthfulness of the charge of discrimination.

If instead he had pointed out that our Lord promised that we would have to go through persecution and that He has a good purpose for it, and so we must face it with joy and confidence, I’d have to say “amen!” But rather, you seem to be preaching that we should either deny or ignore it. Here’s why we shouldn’t:

1. We shouldn’t ignore anyone’s persecution. If Christians are loosing their jobs because of it, don’t we have a responsibility to speak up? Aren’t we being callous when we don’t?

2. If it is becoming illegal to raise our children in accordance with our faith, aren’t we required to speak out against such immoral laws? Don’t we have a responsibility to raise our children according to our faith? Yes, we do have the choice of going to jail, but then who will raise our children?

3. We need to be able to speak the entire counsel of God (Acts 20:27-32). If it has become illegal, we can go to jail as you suggest, but who will instruct the church? If we don’t oppose such discrimination now, are we truly walking in faithfulness to our Lord?

Although we must be as gentle as doves, we also need to be as wise as serpents. Wisdom confronts viruses before they become epidemics. Statements like, “If you define yourself by your victimhood you’ve got a massive problem” or “I don’t like it when people moan about being discriminated against” serve no Christian purpose.