The progressive movement is moving at an ever increasing pace today. The movement is thus defined by dictionaries as: "a person or organization advocating or implementing social reform through law, or new, liberal ideas." The movement believes that only man-made laws or man's social reform can improve the human condition. Therefore, only man's thoughts are considered, and only those thoughts that are consistent with the social reform concepts the movement has embraced.
Because of the concepts they have adopted they have made themselves the warriors for social justice, fighting primarily against Christians who hold historical Biblical views. They consider these historical Biblical views as coming from oppressive men who made themselves "clobbers" of certain groups of people at various times in human history. In all of these arguments, the Biblical views are never considered as having their origin from God himself. In fact, most of the true progressives DO NOT BELIEVE in a personal God who gave His Son to die for our sins. Therefore, there is no sin, only acts that society determines detrimental to the human condition. Again, the mind of man (and only the minds of those individuals who are highly enlightened -- which leaves out most of us (in their mind)) determines what is good behavior and what is bad behavior.
There are some so-called "Christian" groups that have joined the progressive thought because progressives point to what they call abuses against selected portions of society who are not allowed to exercise their choices of life, just like everyone else. Any true Christian in heart will never like a group being singled out or abused. So, forgetting any admonition from God about human behavior, they are sucked into the battle against historical Biblical views.
To try to bring some clarity of understanding into this muddlement of views of the human condition, we need to return to the beginning. And there are multiple viewpoints about our beginning.
What is truly remarkable is that when we investigate the many varying cultural backgrounds around the earth we learn most have some kind of creator beginning. Some kind of god chose to create man, and each culture considered themselves that god's favorite. The one culture that holds the oldest book created (which reveals creation's beginning) is the Jewish/Christian culture. But for centuries, there have been intellectual elitist who scoffed at that old book (The Holy Bible) claiming that most of it was written after the time of Jesus Christ. Many of them were silenced when in 1947 the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. Among those scrolls were the Book of Isaiah, the Book of Daniel, and other large fragments, all which dated long before the time of Christ. That meant the prophecies of the coming of Christ Jesus were all written hundreds of years before the time of Jesus, every prophecy being accurate in all detail. Only a Creator God could have known and revealed this knowledge to the men who wrote it down. In other words, it wasn't men who were authoring the words, it was God himself.
There are many other archeological finds that give proof of the God-authorship of The Holy Bible, otherwise known as God's Word. If a person sincerely wants to know if God's Word is truly what it says it is, there are several resources available (one such resource is "Evidence that Demands a Verdict" by Josh McDowell). I long ago researched the proof of that for myself from every resource I could find and could write a doctoral thesis on the subject. But that is not my aim here.
God's Word itself starts with these words, "In the beginning God..." Those words come from what is called the Old Testament, but the New Testament reiterates this truth: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God." As we read on in the first chapter of John (from which comes our New Testament truth) the Word spoken of is Jesus. In other words, Jesus is the Word, He is God, and He was at the very beginning. It is clear that God was at the beginning, His Word was at the beginning, and Jesus is the very embodiment of that Word.
The Word of God exudes from God the Father, and God the Son. In the very first chapter of God's Word it says, "Then God said, ... and it was so." God speaks and what He speaks occurs, comes about, is Truth. The Truth He speaks is not subject to culture or man's interpretation of the human condition. He spoke this Truth before man's existence and His Truth is not open for a cultural debate, since man's cultural debate is often silenced by some new discovery, and God's Word has never been silenced by true discoveries. The Word of God revealed to us in The Holy Bible has proven to be true despite the persuasive words of intellectual elitist, who themselves will always be silenced by the Truth revealed. All of which clearly shows that God is the Author of the Word of God, and not man, and so various passages in the Bible cannot be called "clobber passages" of man, since man is not the author. In fact, since God is the author, I would not want to be one who speaks that demeaning phrase against the work of God, nor be the one who sets about to change the words to fit "our cultural understanding."
This is the introduction to my new series, entitled, "In The Beginning, Cultural Determination?"
•••
Editor's note: Jim Duncan is the pastor of Mountain Bible Church, Mountain, Mo. He may be contacted at P.O. Box 146, Pea Ridge, AR 72751; or by telephone at 417-341-8504; by e-mail at [email protected]. His Web site is www.jamesduncan-writer.net.
Religion on 01/21/2015