Above is a pic of my youngest daughter and me.
My Husband, My brother in Christ
Thursday Theology: What to avoid & Why (Pluralism and Relativism)
Let me begin this article by pointing out that people without food on their table, people without a table to put food on or a home for shelter or bed to sleep in, those inflicted with life-threatening disease, those who are unable to provide a decent quality of life for their children ... could care less about the blogosphere. They don't sit around and worry about crossing their "t's" and dotting their "i's" or if the "e" comes before or after the "i" this time, nor do they likely care about such things as moral relativism and pluralism, nihilism and skepticism, and moral absolutism.
I do pray the Lord uses my feeble attempts in my life and words to bring Him glory. I do not want to come across as an expert in these things. That is why I add so many links to Scripture and far better written articles. But I do think it is important... well, unless you are perhaps physically starving to death ... to think about these things. Why? Because what you believe as truth will reflect in your life and words. If you are on your death bed, you are not likely reading my blog... but if you are and you are not sure where you will spend eternity, get off my blog and go to THIS LINK or THIS BLOG. Or if you are looking for words of comfort and are confident that you are on the right path, you will be better off reading THIS, or, as Spurgeon wrote on comfort and as I would prefer on my death bed, "Speak to me now in Scripture language alone," said a dying Christian. "I can trust the words of God, but when they are the words of man, it costs me an effort to think whether I may trust them.".
The reason why I brought this up is because of an e-mail I received that said, "If I were on my death bed, why would anything you write matter?" My answer... it wouldn't. And come to think of it, I am not sure it would matter even if you were not on your death bed. So, in getting to the point, don't trust my written words. Trust God's written Word and by all means be a Berean. I'm not God and I'm not a theologian. I'm just a woman longing to grow in the grace and knowledge of my Lord so that I won't be tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine... so here goes...
I am a Christian that believes in moral absolutism as ordained by God in His written Word of truth. BUT that does not give me the right to expect the world to live under this rule. I do, however, find it sad when a person professing to be a Christian embraces pluralism. When they do, it is proclaiming that God is a weak liar. You CANNOT have two opposing views of truth working hand-in-hand. Only one can truly be absolutely true or there can be no truth at all and we are all living a lie.
What are the consequences of such things as pluralism?
"...Truth, when viewed as absolute and knowable, has become offensive in our society. All one has to do these days is state a theological truth and he will immediately be accused of intolerance. This is quickly becoming the prevailing attitude of the Church as well."--Phil Johnson
See the consequence? This attitude of offense towards God's absolute and knowable Truth has permeated our churches. Including our evangelical churches.
Right and wrong CANNOT depend on the prevailing attitudes of the culture in which the act takes place. Morality is something we SHOULD take seriously... especially as Christians. Why would we, as Christians, even toy with the idea that moral standards should be indexed to the ebb and flow of the prevailing popular opinion in our culture for that time period? Isn't that a picture of being "tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine?"
Here is a quote sent to me by a friend on the futility of relativism:“The statement…’Everything is relative’…is self-refuting, because it is always given as an absolute. (One student countered his infidel professor who had just said that everything is relative by asking him if he were absolutely sure of that!) [It’s] like the statement ‘Everything I say is a lie’; if everything I say is a lie, then the statement itself is a lie. My declaration means I must actually be someone who tells the truth. But if I always tell the truth, then how can I say that everything I say is a lie? The proposition is nonsense because it refutes itself.” --Robert A. Morey
According to the relativist, you can't just ask whether, say, homosexuality is wrong, you have to ask whether a particular culture considers it to be wrong at a particular time. They argue that it's absurd to suppose that there are any abstract universal moral principles. Where do these relativistic standards come from and who's to say which opinons define the moral standards of a culture? Are you going to ask the homosexual or the homophobe or the neutral bystander within the same culture whether it is right or wrong and then take a man formulated statistical analysis? See what I mean by tossed to and fro? There are actually many non-Christians that think Christians or "christians" disapprove of homsexuality because we believe in a vengeful fag-hating folktale God.
What I find most disheartening are Christians singling out any particular sin such as homosexuality because they have divided sin into levels... classifying some sins as more sinful than others sins. When in God's eyes, sin is sin.
The homesexual sinner may come to the evangelist and ask, "So you say I am going to hell because I am a homosexual?"
The evangelist should say, "No, you are going to hell because you are a sinner. But then, Christ died for sinners such as I..." (and then he, God-willing, shares the uncompromised Gospel...)
I also want to add that visible morality IS NOT evidence of genuine salvation. And please realize that if you are a child of God, He has NOT dealt with you according to your sin. If he had, you would not just be dangling over the fires of hell, you would be justifiably immersed and dwelling eternally in the fires of hell no matter how visibly moral you may have been. Remember, sin is sin and God is holy.
Let me just encourage you... no, URGE you to embrace the fact that God is a God of order. He does have absolute and knowable truths, moral standards that we should seek to live by to bring Him honor... not to be applauded by men, but to glorify God. As a Christian, the ultimate, unchanging truth, which is the Word of God, is our measure, our single standard of truth by which we MUST judge righteously what is true. Why? So that we can, as we are commanded, live out and speak the truth IN LOVE.
America has religious freedom. Even those who claim to have tolerance and claim to be inclusive and claim to be moralistic pluralists or universalists still retain tenacious grips on their own versions of the truth and are unwilling to negotiate in their seeming tolerance. It boils down to having knowledge of the Truth as provided by God in Christ, written in God's Word of Truth, revealed by the Holy Spirit.
The world seeks to organize society so that people sharing conflicting views of the truth can live together in harmony. The truth CANNOT manifest itself in multiplicities of positions. (They cry, "PEACE, PEACE!" Where there is no peace.) God's truth CANNOT be understood apart from Christ. As I have said before, I cannot, as a Christian, expect the world to live under this rule or standard. But I should... no, I must live under this rule as a child of God, not for the sake of visible morality, but for the glory of God alone.
