Maturity

    Are you, as a parent, an abusive and controlling monster for not letting your two-year-old drive the car by himself? Are you being unreasonable and oppressive for imposing this limitation on his freewill? 

    Of course not. A child that small, aside from it being illegal, is not capable of that sort of responsibility. He cannot do what needs to be done, he does not have the experience or the knowledge to do this. This approach is in the same category as having child proof lids on medicine. A child does not have the wisdom or experience to decide for themselves to take or not take medicine. This is also why we do not leave loaded guns lying around our house. 

    These are metaphors for Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden being forbidden from eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. At creation, man was brand new, he had no experience, he had no wisdom, and he had no ability to handle such an incredible tool. Had Adam and Eve simply obeyed and followed God’s lead in this, God would have brought them along and raised them up to maturity so that at some point they could appropriately handle this knowledge.

Definitions and Private Interpretation

    If a small group of people began labeling themselves in a certain way and began promoting and behaving in a way contrary to that label, and eventually took over the name so that anyone in common parlance associated the label with this group, would it not be right to call this out as a lie? To classify someone by the behavior of one group who have dishonestly appropriated a label is unacceptable. This has been taking place throughout the last two thousand years. Early in history, the church gathered and addressed these situations, making official declarations about what the church has always taught and believed. The church would then call these deviant groups to repentance and in the case when that repentance did not take place, the church would identify this group as outside of communion.

    But since the 16^th century with the invention of the world of Protestantism, this all changed. In common public thought, when people think of a “Christian” they think of American evangelicals, which is an unassociated, disconnected mass of splinter groups who all take the same name but differ radically in belief and practice.

    Ultimately this comes down to how the label “Christian” is defined. Is it really an amorphous blob that can be shaped anyway desired? Or does the label Christian have an actual historical foundation that can be compared against? Jesus taught the disciples, and these disciples became apostles and faithfully passed this teaching down to the churches they started around the known world. This has been taking place since the first century. Technically speaking, any group that takes the name “Christian” yet does not belief and practice that which was handed down from Jesus to the apostles is one of two things. They are either not Christian or they are unfaithful and to be considered outside of the boundaries of communion in the case of unrepentance. There are no other options. 

    This would be akin to two men playing ping-pong but calling it football because they want to define it that way. Anyone looking in from the outside, with a knowledge of the game, would know that what is taking place there is not true.

Interaction

 

You’ve heard the expression, “Falling on deaf ears.” The idea is that some people do not want to hear anything contrary to their worldview. There is no level of logic, reason, or facts that will change their opinions or ideas. What responsibility does this leave with us then? None. 

If someone else is not interested in what you have to say, don’t bother. There is no need to force a conversation, to prove yourself, or to prove them wrong. “Making” someone understand is not our responsibility. All we can do is love them despite everything negative involved in the situation.

You aren’t even responsible for making them love you in return. The only thing you are responsible for is to love them and give them no reason to hate you. Just remember, Jesus did everything exactly right and he was still hated by those who should have known better.

A Moral Foundation

    The odd thing about morals is that so many people seem perfectly fine with arbitrariness. “I’ll just make up my own version of right and wrong.” But the question remains, if you can arbitrarily make it up, you can arbitrarily change it on a whim and anyone else can do the same with their system of morals. Are you going to say that they’re “wrong” for doing so? Unless one has a standard outside of themselves upon which to base a set of morals, any moral stance taken is by definition, arbitrary and therefore without authority.

Giving Advice

How do we respond when someone holds a belief that is contrary to our own or simply is wrong? First, it depends upon the person. If we are talking about a complete stranger who has posted a thought on a social media account, there is no need to respond unless they are specifically asking us for input or direction. If this person is someone under our authority, we should direct them towards the truth. If this is someone who is an equal and with whom we are in a relationship, it can be brought up as a discussion point if they are interested in dialog. If they are not, we need to let it go. If this is a spouse and the point needs to be resolved, it can only be resolved if both people are interested in resolving it. In short, unrequested advice is nothing but imposition.

Thoughts, Speech, and Grace

  

Whenever we speak and whenever we act, we are doing so, hopefully, with the best of intentions. We speak or act those things that we believe to be the best word or action for the moment we are in. But far too often, this is not actually the case because we are very limited in our wisdom and understanding.

Realizing this, we should be far more gracious toward others. We can easily see, and critique others mistakes but, for some reason, we want grace and sympathy from others when we err. Our grace to others should far, far surpass the grace we give to ourselves.

Truth in the Arts

 

Over the years I have argued for the importance of truth in art. Every song, every story, every movie, every sculpture or painting or photograph needs to be true. And when I say true, I don’t mean ‘historically accurate’, I mean that the story that is being told by the work of art must be foundationally (or to use a technical term, metaphorically) true.

For example, the “Lord of the Rings” books are true works of art. Obviously, they are not historically accurate but the foundational story that they tell is true. When a work of art is true, it faithfully represents human nature, it exists in a world in which evil is truly evil and has ultimately been defeated and God is in control.

This is the real danger of American culture. So much of the music that is made, the books that are written and the movies that are created do not tell the truth. When we subject ourselves to a steady diet of untruth, we are shaping our thinking to align with falsity. We are slowly confusing ourselves and moving ourselves away from the pursuit of holiness.

We have one thing to do in our time on this planet, we are to love others. That’s it. That’s all. And by all means possible, do not let the worldview of American culture define “love” for you. God is love, not lust, not emotion, not happy feelings. To love someone is to do what you can for them that will move them toward holiness.