Must we Protest to Protect our Freedom to Proclaim?

Pastor and theologian Wayne Grudem defends the freedom that the church should not be prohibited from endorsing one candidate over another:

• This Sunday I have agreed to join nearly 1,500 pastors nationwide and participate in Pulpit Freedom Sunday [PFS], sponsored by Alliance Defending Freedom…This action is in violation of the 1954 "Johnson Amendment" to the Internal Revenue Code, which prohibits tax-exempt organizations like churches from endorsing any candidate by name. But in our nation, a higher law than the IRS code is the Constitution, which forbids laws "abridging freedom of speech" or "prohibiting the free exercise" of religion (First Amendment).

I agree with Grudem that this “Johnson Amendment” [JA] constitutes a violation of the First Amendment, which guarantees the free exercise of religion. JA needlessly limits the freedom to speak from the pulpit. I was therefore surprised that many Christians disagreed with Grudem in the comment section. Here are two typical responses:

• If you are to lose your tax exempt status, let it be for preaching the Gospel instead of breaking a law that has nothing to do with it. 

• As a pastor I preach the Gospel at church. It isn't that I'm afraid to go to jail or lose our church's tax exemption. It’s that if I'm going to go to jail, I want it to be for preaching Christ crucified and risen again for the forgiveness of sins.

Because these objections are so frequently cited, I thought it important to facilitate the dialogue with my defense of PFS:

1. The JA violates our First Amendment guarantee against governmental encroachment.

2. The JA sets a dangerous precedent. If it stands, it declares that the government has the right to limit the freedom of the church to preach as it would.

3. These comments draw a sharp and questionable distinction between preaching the Gospel and opposing a political candidate. Such a distinction would prevent the church from preaching against a Stalin or a Hitler – two people who silenced the Gospel and slaughtered Christians.

4. Perhaps we have a truncated understanding of the Gospel. Instead, I think that we glorify the Gospel when we demonstrate its relevance to all areas of life – feeding the poor, slavery, segregation, and various forms of injustice, including threats to the freedom of religion.

5. When we fail to apply the Gospel to the ills of society, we show its irrelevance, and bring down contempt upon the church. While atheists deplore our involvement in the political process, they also castigate the church for not being more involved – think segregation or the rise of National Socialism.

6. Our tax-exempt status shouldn’t be regarded as a privilege but a right. The State has no right taxing the church. Once the State has this power, there remains nothing to limit how much the State could tax the church. It could even tax the church out of its property.

We live at a time when many of our rights are being challenged. I therefore think that we have to get on with our discussion!

Defending our Rights and our Gospel: They Go Together

Many Christians believe that it is somehow illegitimate to take our grievances to court. They often claim that our calling is a matter of spreading the Gospel and not standing up for our rights. However, I don’t think that we can make such a facile distinction. Sometimes these activities are inseparable. Take the example of the case that the Jews for Jesus just won:

• Almost a decade ago, attorney Silver, who is also a rabbi, set out to persecute and bankrupt the Jews for Jesus ministry, because he disagreed with its theology. Silver claimed that Jews for Jesus defamed his client, Edith Rapp, because it published a praise report about her. He filed complaint after complaint, filled with hateful and vitriolic rants against the ministry. Silver was previously sanctioned for those rants, and he was ordered to pay more than $50,000 in attorney’s fees and costs. He appealed those sanctions.

• Circuit Judge Lucy Brown sanctioned attorney Barry Silver with another attorney fee award, this time for over $41,000. When added to prior court sanctions, the latest award pushes the sanctions over $100,000.

Had Silver won, it would have represented a stunning defeat for our free practice of religion and speech as defended by the First Amendment to the Constitution. It would also have impacted our ability to promote the Gospel. If you have any question about how essential these rights are, just look at Muslim nations where Christians are legally forbidden from presenting the Gospel to Muslims. Also observe how the church has declined in these nations over the centuries.

I therefore applaud the Liberty Counsel and JFJ for their defense of our common rights to preach the Gospel. Okay, this in itself, doesn’t guarantee the welfare of the church, but we also shouldn’t disdain its importance.

Although Paul warned against going to court to settle “to settle a dispute with another” brother (1 Cor. 6:1-6), there exists no injunction against going to court. In fact, God Himself established a legal system for His people! Besides, we find that even Paul and Jesus stood up for their rights.

Paul often demanded his rights as a Roman citizen (Acts 16:37; 26:32), even though these rights had been denied to many others. Jesus also pointed to the illegality of what His persecutors were doing (Matthew 26:55; Luke 22:52-53; John 18:20-23). Of course, Jesus didn’t go as far as to make a legal defense, because this worked against His purpose. Besides, not being a Roman citizen, He had no real rights.

Truth and Trust: The Number One Casualty

If civilization depends on trust, then Western Civilization is facing a long Western winter. The problem isn’t so much that the West is struggling vainly to win trust, but that it has simply abandoned this concept and the concept of truth upon which trust must find its foundation. If our interests or agendas – be it a good form of social activism or not – trumps truth-telling, trust becomes collateral damage.

Writer Jen Angel expresses the growing commitment of the media to social activism, even at the expense of objectivity:

• I also drew from Ostertag’s work the concept of needing media that is unafraid to align itself directly with activism and movements for change, that doesn’t seek to objectively report the news, or to be a passive observer. 

Of course, we all have our social-religious-political commitments, and we should! However, we undermine ourselves when our politics commandeers truth and objectivity in service to its cause.

Truth is especially critical to the media. If the media is supposed to provide accountability – and I think that we all regard this as essential to the welfare of democracy – it fails to provide this function if it first commitment is to its political agenda.

In fact, our Founding Fathers thought so highly of the media’s watch-dog role that its right to unencumbered free speech was specifically guaranteed in the First Amendment to the Constitution. The media has therefore been entrusted with a sacred duty.

What should we think about a media whose first interest and commitment is to political activism at the expense of objectivity? Should we trust it? This question is now center-stage. The mainstream media has become so committed to liberal causes that a recent survey revealed that 60% of Americans no longer trust it! Such activism is dangerously polarizing this nation. And when trust is lacking, power and brutality hasten to fill the vacuum.

Should we trust the findings of science, when the scientists themselves admit that truth-telling has taken a back seat? Denyse O’Leary writes that:

• Darwinian philosophers like Michael Ruse insist that ethics is an illusion…Well-known atheist science writer John Horgan explicitly endorses lying for science in such cases as the effort to fight Global warming: “It’s a war, and when people are waging war, they always lie for their cause.” (Salvo, Issue 22, 48)

Sadly, there is a tendency to regard the promotion of all our political or scientific agendas as “waging war.” And if ethics is no more than an “illusion,” then why not bend the truth to promote the cause! And if we are willing to lie “for science,” for what wouldn’t we lie!

Hence, there is a crisis of trust - that even our constitutional rights will not be upheld. In a war, nothing is sacred. Every “truth” is expendable, and every right can be revoked.

This makes me wonder about myself. I too have an agenda. My blog’s mission statement reads, “Defending the Christian faith and promoting its wisdom against the secular and religious challenges of our day.” Does my agenda relegate truth to second-fiddle in a winner-take-all war? It mustn’t!

Why not? I think that there are several reasons. If God is all-powerful, merciful and truthful, then I need not lie to cover for Him. He can cover for Himself. If He can’t, then I am wasting my time – both with Him and with my efforts.

However, if God is everything I believe Him to be, then my first goal is faithfulness to His calling. This means modeling myself after Him in every way, and this includes truth-telling.

Rejecting a Guilt-Laden Christianity

One pedagogue has been beckoning Christians to take his seminars with this promise:

• We want to liberate Christians from the burden of guilt-laden doctrines.

This promise is trendy. It caters to the spirit of our doctrine-despising age, especially those doctrines that cause discomfort. Consequently, our youth call themselves “spiritual” and carefully distinguish this from “religious.” In their thinking, the “religious” are encumbered by doctrines – thinking as opposed to experiencing and finding within a comforting “truth” that works. For them, “guilt-laden doctrines” represent the highest form of proof that someone has taken the wrong road. After all, “anything that makes me feel guilty and uncomfortable is not the type of spirituality that works for me!”

I must confess that the Bible is filled with such doctrines. Anytime that Scripture tells me that I must do something, and I fail to do it up-to-standard, I feel some twinge of guilt. However, does this prove that there is something wrong with these teachings or that there is something wrong with me – something to which I must pay attention?

If we believe that God designed us, then we have to conclude that He designed us to feel guilt and shame for a good reason. We derive indispensable feedback from our sense – our eyes, ears, and nose. Perhaps our feelings also convey important information. Pain tells us to take our hand off a hot stove. Anger can appropriately motivate us against injustice. It can also be an important tool in problem-solving. Although guilt and shame are very painful, even life-controlling, perhaps they too convey useful feedback, and perhaps there is a place for “guilt-laden doctrines.” Perhaps we should not be too hasty to dismiss them.

Indeed, “guilt-laden doctrines” play a profound role. They inform us that our guilty feelings are legitimate. They point to a reality that is just as real as a hot stove, and they tell us that we have to do something about this reality. It is not enough to go to a psychiatrist for meds to neutralize the guilt. From this perspective, it would be just as silly to drop an Advil instead of taking our hand off the stove. This is because the threat of the stove is real and transcends our pain.

Of course, the Bible need not provide teaching for us to pull our hand out from the fire. This is already obvious. However, we do require moral instruction. We have powerful impulses that would have us violate the laws of our conscience (Romans 2:14-15) to our ruin (Romans 1:18-32).

Revenge is a persuasive motivator, which can trump conscience. We therefore require clear and unequivocal teachings - “guilt-laden” teachings – to reinforce the truth-laden judgments of our conscience. And what a relief when we can resolve our guilt, not by taking a pill as if there were not moral truths, but by confessing our sin and humbling ourselves to ask for forgiveness!

However, I think that our “guilt-laden doctrines” perform an even greater service. Moses insisted that Israel had to follow these guilt-producing teachings – all of them – as a protection against pride. God would bless them incredibly, but there was a danger that it would go to their head. As a result, they would succumb to the temptation to take credit for their successes and think that they were better than others (Deut. 9:4-9), thereby, cutting themselves off from their God. However, by following the laws, they would be reminded that they were just the same as others – sinners who desperately need the Savior (Deut. 8:11-18; 27:26). In light of this threat, God gave them the law to humble them and to remind them that they constantly needed forgiveness – His mercy.

What happens when our “guilt-laden doctrines” are eliminated? We are no longer humbled. Yes, we still have our feelings of guilt and shame, but Western medicine has come up with many drugs to neutralize these feelings. Secular counseling, astutely serving marketplace demands, assures the client that there is really nothing intrinsically the matter with him – no objective guilt. Instead, he just has to learn how to love himself.

Paul exposed the superficiality of the world’s solutions, asserting that we can never be good enough:

• Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin. (Romans 3:19-20)

Our “guilt-laden doctrines” play an indispensable role in silencing our pride and arrogance. These teachings are designed to humble us to the point that we cry out to God for mercy and find the only true healing:

• But the Scripture declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin, so that what was promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe. Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed. So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. (Galatians 3:21-24)

Our implacable conscience and “guilt-laden doctrines” have been designed to lead us to Christ by convicting us of sin and showing us the hopelessness of our “goodness” before God. No wonder we can never be good enough to silence our conscience! No matter how good we are, it continues to rage against us as it was designed to do, in order to lead us to our Savior.

Ironically, it is our “guilt-laden doctrines” that have produced within me a love and gratitude for God. I even feel intimate with God because of these doctrines. Jesus had been invited to an up-scale dinner at Chez Pharisee. The host was disgusted to see a sinner-woman enter and, out of gratitude, wash Jesus’ feet and wipe them dry with her hair. Knowing the arrogant and condescending thoughts of the host, Jesus explained that because the woman knew that she had been forgiven much, she loved much (Luke 7:36-47).

Today’s feel-good religions – I should say instead, “spiritualities” - fail to produce a real love for God and an intimacy with Him. He will simply not honor such a faith – a denial-laden “faith.”

Radical Inclusiveness, False Teachers and False Prophets

If Scripture is the Word of God, we are not free to interpret it in any way that might feel right to us. Peter warned:

• That no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. (2 Peter 1:20-21)

Had prophecy originated with man, we would be free to interpret according to our own whims. However, since prophesy came from God, we are constrained to interpret it according to His intent. Jesus denounced the Pharisees because they consistently failed to properly interpret Scripture (Matthew 22:29), but taught it as if they had. Through their teaching, they had “taken away the key to knowledge” (Luke 11:52) that would have unlocked the door to salvation. And they were culpable for this! They weren’t making honest and innocent interpretive mistakes.

Many pastors and teachers of Scripture are also taking “away the key to knowledge,” causing others to stumble in their pursuit of truth. I just heard one pastor teaching about Eldad and Medad who “prophesied in the camp” (Numbers 11:26-29). However, Joshua, Moses’ assistant unjustifiably protested, “Moses, my lord, stop them!" However, Moses corrected Joshua:

• “I wish that all the Lord's people were prophets and that the Lord would put his Spirit on them!" (Num. 26:29)

The pastor surmised that Eldad and Medad hadn’t been included in the in-crowd and concluded that Moses was dishing out a lesson in the radical inclusiveness of any lifestyle, even in regards to the ministry.

However, this interpretation is entirely unwarranted. The two men had been “listed among the elders” and “the Spirit also rested on them.” Besides, Joshua’s protest focused on the fact that they were “prophesying in the camp" and not where the others were prophesying. It seemed to have nothing to do with their being outsiders.

Even worse, the pastor’s reasoning went like this:

• If Moses refused to judge Eldad and Medad, we shouldn’t judge others. If he didn’t prevent them from ministering, we shouldn’t prevent others from ministering. 

However, such an interpretation is Scripturally impossible! Scripture is filled with many examples of judging and excluding:

• Jesus’ teachings on eternal punishment. (Matthew 5:22; Matthew 5:29-30; Matthew 10:28; Matthew 18:9; Matthew 23:15; Matthew 23:33; Mark 9:43; Mark 9:45; Mark 9:47; Luke 12:5)
• The many OT denunciations of false prophets. (Jeremiah 23:17-18, 31; 14:14; 5:31; 29:31; Zeph. 3:4; Micah 3:11; Isaiah 28:7; Ezekiel 13:2, 4, 10; 14:9; 22:28)
• The many NT denunciations of churches that either allowed sin or false teachers in their midst (Rev. 2:14, 20).
• Teachings on church discipline. (1 Cor. 5:5-6; Mat. 18:15-20)
• The qualifications for elders and deacons. (Titus 1; 1 Tim. 3)

Clearly, the Bible isn’t teaching in favor of the radical inclusiveness of any lifestyle. Consequently, the pastor’s preaching cannot be the result of an honest mistake. This pastor of many years couldn’t have been ignorant of these verses and hundreds more like them.

Jesus judged! He warned us to beware of false teachers. (This does not pertain to immature Christians!):

• "Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them.” (Matthew 7:15-16)

Jesus counsels that we should “recognize them” by their fruit. This is especially true regarding the fruit of their teaching. If they have “taken away the key to knowledge” (Luke 11:52), the church must be warned of this. However, many well-meaning Christians feel that we shouldn’t judge in this matter.

However, this pastor who taught radical inclusiveness, even in the face of unrepented sin, has “taken away the key to knowledge” in favor of a false but comforting hope. In this, he is following in the steps of the false prophets:

• “They [the false prophets] keep saying to those who despise me, 'The Lord says: You will have peace.' And to all who follow the stubbornness of their hearts they say, 'No harm will come to you.' But which of them has stood in the council of the Lord to see or to hear his word? Who has listened and heard his word?...The anger of the Lord will not turn back until he fully accomplishes the purposes of his heart…I did not send these prophets, yet they have run with their message; I did not speak to them, yet they have prophesied. But if they had stood in my council, they would have proclaimed my words to my people and would have turned them from their evil ways and from their evil deeds.” (Jeremiah 23:17-22)

Preaching peace in the place of repentance is murder. The false prophets and pastors should instead “have turned them from their evil ways and from their evil deeds.” However, their minds have been co-opted by a false understanding of love, which equates love with indulgence.

We cannot twist Scripture so that it will agree with our philosophy of life. Peter had warned that when we culpably and knowingly twist Scripture, we are preparing for our own funeral:

• He [Paul] writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction. (2 Peter 3:16)

If “destruction” is at stake, must we not warn, even cry out, even when we are accused of spreading “hate?” We are not free to interpret Scripture and to speak of God according to our whims. God was angry with Job’s three friends because they did not speak “of Me what was right” (Job 42:7-8).

My prayer is that I might always interpret Scripture correctly. It is His Word, and He deserves no less. It is also an act of love.

Creation, Jonah and Turning the Bible into Allegory

Is it important to know whether or not the Bible as historical? One respondent correctly pointed out, “Parts of Scripture are history--other parts are not.” So then, how can we determine the historical from the non-historical? Well, if we take the Bible seriously, we try to determine how the Bible regards these “parts.” We compare Scripture with Scripture.

This same respondent, took the position that we shouldn’t regard the Book of Jonah as historical. However, it seems obvious that Jesus took it and used it as history:

• He answered, "A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here. (Matthew 12:39-41)

Consequently, Jonah should not be taken as parabolic (non-historical) for several reasons:

1. Jesus doesn’t say, “According to the tale, Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish.” Instead, He speaks as if this actually happened.

2. Jesus then states “so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” If the “Book of Jonah” is no more than a parable and Jesus knew this to be the case, then He is affirming, “In the same way that Jonah was fictitiously in the whale, I too will be fictitiously buried for three days. However, this could not have been His meaning.

3. Jesus warned Israel that “Nineveh will stand up at the judgment” of them. However, if all knew that Jonah was simply parabolic, they would have scorned Jesus: “As it is fiction that Nineveh repented, so too is it fiction that Nineveh ‘will stand in judgment.’”

However, there was no such retort, as appropriate as this retort would have been had Jonah been regarded as a mere allegory or parable.

It seems obvious that Jesus regarded the Book of Jonah as history. If we are followers of Jesus, then we are constrained to also be followers of His thinking and reasoning. He regarded Scripture as the undefiled Word of God (Matthew 5:16-18) and submitted to it in all regards. Quoting Deuteronomy 8, He responded to Satan:

• “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God." (Matthew 4:4)

This means that we too must live by “every word” and to understand them as Jesus did. If He regarded the first several chapters of Genesis as history – and we find that the Apostles also regarded these chapters as history – then we too are constrained to regard them as history.

Jesus based His teaching on marriage and divorce on the historicity of Genesis 1 and 2:

• "Haven't you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female' [Gen. 1:26-27] and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh' [Gen. 2:24]? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate." (Matthew 19:4-6)

Jesus’ entire argument is based upon the history of God’s work, that:

• He created them,
• He made them one flesh,
• And “joined [them] together.”

If God had only figuratively (not historically) created and joined them, then we would have every right actually divorce as long as we don’t figuratively divorce. Therefore, one who is contemplating divorce could reason that, “I’ll divorce my wife, but I’ll remain married to her figuratively, in my heart.” Of course, this is absurd, but this is because a non-historical understanding of Jesus’ words is also absurd. Instead, Jesus’ clear intent was to demonstrate that divorce is wrong and that the Pharisees were wrong for justifying divorce.

Jesus built His case on the common understanding that Genesis is history. If Genesis hadn’t been widely regarded as history, the Pharisees could easily have retorted, “Well, God didn’t actually join them together, so we are not prohibited from actually divorcing our wives!” in which case, Jesus’ argument would have completely collapsed.

This is not to deny that Genesis 1 and 2 are difficult to interpret. However, if we start with the conclusion that these chapters are not history – and also that the New Testament’s interpretation of them shouldn’t guide our interpretation (Scripture interpreting Scripture) - then we consequently reject our most important interpretive guidelines and constraints. Operating with this “freedom,” the door is opened to just about any interpretation we’d like to paste on Genesis.

Perhaps the “God” of Genesis is a blind, impersonal force – gravity, according to Stephen Hawking? Perhaps instead, he is the universal consciousness – Eastern monism? Or perhaps he’s naturalism anthropomorphized. If we refuse to allow Scripture to interpret Scripture, anything is possible, and if any interpretation is possible, we are left in utter confusion and our faith is for naught.

Death, Life, Afterlife, Atheism and the Meaning of Life

 

Often the best way to disagree with our opponents is to agree with them – to build bridges of communication by first sharing common perspectives. Philip Appleman, an atheist, wrote:

• Most of us need to be much tougher-minded than we are, more resolute in rejecting the bribes of the afterlife. Once definitely done with our adolescent longing for the Absolute, we would find this world valuable after all, and poignantly valuable precisely because it is not eternal. Doomed to extinction, our loves, our work, our friendships, our tastes are all painfully precious. We look about us…and discover that we are beautiful because we are mortal, priceless because we are so rare in the universe and so fleeting. Whatever we are, whatever we make of ourselves: that is all we will ever have –and that, in its profound simplicity, is the meaning of life. (Pique, Sept. 2012)

Of course, we can find much to disagree with in this statement. However, we can find areas of agreement, especially in the thoughts I’ve italicized.

This might sound strange to you, but death is a gift. It may be a painful reality, but we need it, at least for now. For one thing, an appreciation of the temporary nature of our lives provides an incentive to gain wisdom, as the Psalmist claims:

• Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. (Psalm 90:12)

If instead, our lives were indestructible, we would have little reason to gain wisdom. Who would need wisdom about health matters? However, our lives are very limited, and therefore, we can’t take them for granted.

I like to remind myself of this fact. I do this by walking in cemeteries and reading the inscriptions on the stones. They remind me that my own life is very temporary, and even more, that my relationships are merely a temporary gift. This fact urges me to cherish my dear wife for the short time she has been entrusted to me and to keep the brief irritations in their proper, insignificant context.

We’ve all seen the tears, relief and joy when a loved one is miraculously pulled alive out of the rubble of a killer-earthquake. Nothing is more precious than their reunion with the loved one! All hurts and resentments are forgiven and forgotten.

It is therefore no wonder that the Psalmist prays:

• Show me, O Lord, my life's end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life. You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man's life is but a breath. Man is a mere phantom as he goes to and fro: He bustles about, but only in vain; he heaps up wealth, not knowing who will get it. But now, Lord, what do I look for? My hope is in you. (Psalm 39:4-7)

Death and the prospect of death not only restore us to sanity – a proper appreciation of our lives and relationships - it also restores our primary relationship. If we are indestructible, there is little to hope for. Drought, disease and thirst can’t touch us. However, as the Psalmist is reminded that he is a mere “breath,” he is forced to look hopefully towards God. Only God is an adequate source of hope. Even if a man “heaps up wealth” during his short sojourn, it is utterly meaningless.

Once we build our bridge of communication through sharing areas of agreement, we can begin to use it to probe the disagreements. In contrast to our Biblical perspective, Appleman asserts:

• Whatever we are, whatever we make of ourselves: that is all we will ever have –and that, in its profound simplicity, is the meaning of life.

However, how can we can we find hope and consolation in such a “meaning” – “Whatever we are, whatever we make of ourselves?”  Instead of producing hope, it lays an extra burden on our backs to produce and accomplish - but for what? We can even argue that an accomplishment-based identity is socially counterproductive. Emphasis on our differing levels of accomplishment separates people into classes, breeding arrogance, isolation and stratification rather than community.

This of course brings additional problems. If we derive our ultimate value from our job or our children, what happens to us when they depart? Won’t this create an unhealthy dependency?

Appleman also insists that we are “priceless because we are so rare in the universe.” Although rareness can drive up the price of oil, what makes us a priceless commodity? Rarity can’t do it! The bubonic plague is rare, but this does not make it priceless.

Besides, if we are just another animal on the evolutionary gradient, we might be priceless to our children, but so is the cockroach to its children, at least until the children leave home and we become an elderly burden. What then makes us priceless in an unchanging, objective sense?

Our Declaration of Independence identified the source of our pricelessness:

• We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Our Founding Fathers understood that our value and rights couldn’t depend upon others, least of all government or society to bestow them. Our rights and value had to rest upon sturdier stuff – our unchanging and all-wise Creator. Only He could make our rights unalienable rights. If instead our rights and value were granted by government, they could just as easily be retracted by government.

Appleman needs to understand that our pricelessness can only be grounded in a priceless God. Lord, grant us the wisdom to be the light!