PART 3 of the series
It’s common today, in an age of biblical illiteracy (and that’s even true, tragically, within the church) to have no idea what the Bible says about unbelief. This ignorance is bad enough for self-professed atheists but it’s literally catastrophic for the church. In short, it means that even professing Christians are conformed to this world because their “default” (factory setting) is to think according to the premises of humanism. That is to say that our basic operating premise in all things isn’t “what does to the Scripture say” but, “what do I think.”
Man’s basic problem – and that includes all of us – is our separation from God caused by our insistence on not actually believing that He’s the source of all truth. His Word is to be wholeheartedly trusted and obeyed. To say that it’s not is to say that something else is. There are no other options. Either God’s Word is ultimate or something else is. There’s no way for nothing to be ultimate. It would mean utter randomness and chaos and death. Lack of ultimacy is impossible. Thus, the fundamental question of life is what’s your ultimate authority? In other words, how do you determine between right and wrong, true and false? What is ultimately real?
So, when Christians engage the rest of the modern world the first thing we should know is that the basic premise, the factory setting, the operating system of this world is secular humanism. (We can address other false religions some other time). This means that they don’t believe anything is truly transcendent and ultimate. They have no metaphysic. This world is all there is. This fundamental error leads to the next mistake, which is that the only way to know things in a chance-riddled, accidental universe (Big Bang cosmology provides no motive or reason behind existence…we’re just here) is through so-called science.
Notice the great flaw. If there’s no purpose behind existence (no ultimate), then why would any truth matter at all? The simplest search for truth is itself a philosophical and theological admission that truth exists and matters for persons because right and wrong have consequences. This chain of thought – this instant and incessant integration of metaphysics (ultimacy), epistemology (knowledge) and ethics – proves that Jesus Christ is Lord. Yep, you read that right. Why, you ask? Well, simply because no other system of thought can provide a non-contradictory explanation for these basic facts. With all due respect to Descartes, the moment a man or woman sees the world and thinks a single thought, they’ve proven that this is God’s world.
Okay…okay, I know this can be confusing but once we’re trained (by Scriptural principles!) to think rightly about reality we’ll see the pattern in everything. Indeed, all things are from the Lord which means that there are false religions in everything we do and think because they have to counterfeit His reality for humanistic purposes. If we simply identify the main categories of life and thought we’ll order our thinking in a way that’s biblical. Our problem isn’t “out there” but in our refusal to think “analogically” – that is, keeping God’s Word preeminent in all our reasoning.
Which brings us back to the gay pride issue. (I know, I know…this will pay off, trust me).
The basic premise that there’s no God causes us to seek knowledge not from His Word but from some other source. If you teach people that this world is all there is (materialism), then naturally it follows that “science” (operational knowledge of material matter) will be one’s highest source of knowledge. This introduces a massive problem, however. How then do we discover what’s good and bad? A materialistic universe is ultimately impersonal. To then posit that life is better than death, love better than hate, or any other ethical position, contradicts the core of materialism. In this way we see how scientific-materialism simply can’t be true because its premises don’t support ethics.
To this end, the LGBTQ movement has borrowed the ethical categories of Christianity while rejecting its source. The entire movement is literally based on ethical arguments that it can’t support according to its premises. This is a result of believing that there’s no creator God who is both ultimate and personal. When Jesus says that He’s “the way, the truth and the life” this is a profound statement in that it reconciles existence and truth to personal meaning. Absent this, we’re left with the awkward dance of life and abstract truth somehow being personally meaningful. The metaphysic of materialism leads to the death of meaning. It casts men and women into a cold and impersonal system that’s void and uncaring. To then state that something is right or wrong is to posit immaterialism into the mix. To say that one’s approval or disapproval is good or evil (the basis of the LGBTQ movement) is immaterial (ethics) superimposed upon impersonal materialism.
The questions to ask the LGBTQ advocate, then, are simple. By what standard do you make these charges? How is your claim that you’re right and Christianity is wrong compatible with your basic position of ethical nihilism? What is the ultimate ethical standard and how do you know it? Since ethics applies to people, the ultimate standard must proceed from the ultimate person. We simply can’t have a moral law that’s impersonal. In Christianity we understand that this is the triune God – both personal and ultimate. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. If this is wrong, present your case for the ultimate person then or else your arguments are supremely contradictory.
Christians are forever on the defensive in these debates, which is unconscionable. It’s a disgrace! Proper understanding of the principles of Scripture makes one ready to battle with the truth instead of the mealy-mouthed and/or bone-headed defenses common today. The idea behind all of this is to point out the logical impossibility of any argument against Christ. We repeat: any line of argumentation that doesn’t reside in Christ and His divine principles must, by absolute necessity, be contradictory. If we don’t believe this, we aren’t His. If we think that the premises of unbelief “have a point” then we’ve accepted the premise of Genesis 3:5. The crisis the church faces with the LGBTQ movement is a crisis of the Christian mind being the secular mind – of trying to worship Christ according to syncretistic standards…keeping our options open…not wanting to be a crazed fundamentalist. To that we ask: is that right? How do you know it? By what standard?
You see, we are always in the process of evaluating right and wrong. This proves that this is a moral universe that God has made and there’s no escaping this obvious fact. The moment you say “yes” or “no” is the moment you’ve announced that truth exists “out there” and that it’s authoritative and applies to people. Only Christianity makes sense of this. The battle against the LGBTQ religion is our opportunity to come to Christ again and know His Word. That this issue has caused even the slightest stir at all is evidence that the church doesn’t believe and understand Scripture.
If God didn’t create the world then it isn’t His. If it isn’t His, then it’s random and if it’s random then there’s no reason why anyone should protest against evil (moral wrong). It just is what it is, right? At the root of all non-Biblical philosophy is the contradiction of random and meaningless human beings insisting that reality, which they say is mere material, ought to be moral. Worse still, this morality is never defined because it has no source, so all engage in the hokus-pocus of man-made moral religion. We know evil, as it were, when it happens to us and politics is littered with people applying a moral code that’s without logical foundation to fix problems that, according to their avowed premises, don’t ultimately matter. Again, to be clear, without God, ultimate meaning and morality simply don’t exist.
Thus, in summary, Christians should stop playing defense in the debates with unbelief – especially those framed in such stark moral terms like those of the LGBTQ groups. Without God, their moral arguments are all arbitrary. Ask them how they know what’s right and wrong – how they have an unchanging moral standard that applies to all people. The gay pride movement is based on the ethical assumption that what they do is morally good. Ask them who is the moral law giver. As the Apostle Paul taught in 2 Corinthians, we should tear down the intellectual strongholds erected against Christ. They are castles of sand. They are moral proclamations made by people who claim that there are no moral absolutes.
Call their bluff. Ask them? Who is the moral authority in the universe? If it isn’t God then it’s no one. And if it’s no one, why does anyone care what anyone else says or thinks since it’s all arbitrary anyway?
Don’t miss it…the gay pride movement is a theological movement – a false one. The true debate isn’t political, it’s about ultimate authority. Don’t grant anyone the “great exemption”, as Greg Bahnsen called it. Call their moral-theological bluff and ask them to state their case.
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