Ultimate Truth: The Results

            Alright, so what’s the big deal? We threw out the Bible’s views and replaced it with the beliefs of scientists. We get “Jesus” AND the respect of the world. We can keep hold on Jesus’ resurrection and throw the rest out. What’s the price of a little compromise?

            The next generation is the price.

            Studies are showing that two-thirds of the next generation of church kids will not be there when they are older. Why? I’ll set a common scenario before you.

            Dave gets to school on Monday. All throughout the week he learns several things:

1. Science is the only source of truth (science class)

2. We all came from animals and are no more important than animals (science class)

3. There is no truth (any class)

4. The Bible is false and filled with fairy tales (any class)

5. Etc.

            Then Dave goes to church on Sunday. He learns that the Old Testament is full of wonderful stories that most likely didn’t really happen. His teachers tell him that the only thing he really has to hold on to is the resurrection of Jesus. Dave also learns to not offend others because we should just love everyone.

            He asks his pastor what the Bible says about the beginning of the world. His pastor responds that the beginning of the world is found in Genesis, but that it is myth. The beginning of Genesis was just meant for poetry, much like the Psalms.

            He asks his pastor if the flood was global. His pastor shrugs and said that the flood possibly didn’t even happen, and that if it did, it was local.

            He then goes back to school, where his growing doubt is bolstered. Some of his school teachers even tell him that his pastor will side with them when it comes to science! He goes to school to learn truth; he goes to church to learn about nice stories that never happened.

            Tell me, through the years, which side will have a greater effect?

The Next Generation

            The next generation asks some practical questions. “Why should I trust the Bible?” “If I can’t trust some of the Bible, which parts do I trust?” “If I can’t trust all of the Bible, why should I trust any of it?”

            We took some of the authority of the Bible and put it behind scientists. The youngest generation takes the next step and  doesn’t see the Bible as authoritative at all.

            The next generation realizes what the older generation did not. You cannot have two ultimate truths. It’s the Word of God or the word of men. When you take one over the other, that is the death knell. There is no going back. The church of the 1800s and 1900s chose science as the bearer of truth; it was only time before the Bible was totally discredited.

            Once the Bible fell, what is Christianity? Not worth waisting a Sunday morning, the next generation will tell you.

Ultimate Truth: Which Is Our Standard?

            What I'm getting to is that the Christian's ultimate standard is the Bible. It's what we build our mind and actions around. It's what preserves us and defines us. Without the Bible every doctrine could be challenged as unauthentic or outright heresy.

A Horrible Scenario

            Now imagine a Christian looking at Jesus' life and saying, "You know, I believe the Gospels are no longer correct the way they've been read for almost two thousand years. Yes, they are history... but modern scholarship tells us that those kinds of miracles are impossible. But I don't want to chuck out all of the Gospels, so here's what I'll do.

            "I'll REINTERPRET these previously historical documents and claim they contain general, vague, poetical truths. Never mind that the authors intended them to be taken as historically accurate point by point. They just contain things that science has shown cannot happen naturally. I'll pick and choose what I want to take literally."

            Now, what is immediately apparent? This Christian does not hold the Word of God as his ultimate truth! He hold the opinions of the scientific majority as the higher truth. When the scientific majority disagrees with the Bible, it's the Bible that must be reinterpreted, not the research done by these scientists.
            But Christians wouldn't do this to the Bible, right? Right?

Not So Fast

            This is exactly what's happened to the way we treat Genesis. In Genesis chapters 1-11, the Bible is crystal clear that the world was created in six literal days. Moses is also clear that animals reproduced after their own kinds ("kind" meaning the modern genus or family, not species). He is also clear that the flood was global.

            This interpretation (Young Earth Creationism, or YEC) has been THE interpretation for thousands of years. Granted, the occasional person –Augustine comes to mind– liked to play around with the Creation week. However, the flood was global, the animals didn't change kinds, the earth was young, and so on and so forth.

             Then in the 1700s and 1800s, non-Christian naturalist scientists started seriously coming up with ways of looking at the world apart from God. Now, they weren't the first academics that didn't believe in God, it's just that their previous theories never gained very much traction in the pro-Christian Western world.

            The first thing they tried to do was to make the world old. "With time, anything is possible" has been the naturalist's cry. Geologists looked at rock layers and chucked catastrophism (the worldwide flood), replacing it with uniformitarianism (the slow-moving processes we see today have been going on since the earth formed).

            With geology having been done in, the focus went to the animal world (zoology, biology, etc.). With Darwin's theory becoming popular, it was pretty apparent that God wasn't necessary to explain the life we see. With Evolution, all you need is time. Billions of years of it, if you believe today's scientists.

            Now what was the Christian to do? Could these non-Christian scientists really be wrong? Of course not! This is science, the ultimate standard of truth! The Bible must be reinterpreted to accommodate naturalism, obviously.

            So we panicked. In came Old Earth Creationism (OEC, also known as theistic evolution), which was the Bible with the first eleven chapters being thrown out. Six days? Preposterous! They must've been six undefined ages. Animals reproducing after their own kinds? Never! We obviously came from an ancient one-celled organism. A global flood? Ha! Moses was obviously being poetical, or the flood was local.

            We held the opinions of the scientific majority as our ultimate truth. Never mind that the people behind these theories were not Christians (and therefore looking to explain the world naturally). Never mind that Genesis is pretty clear about how everything came to be (otherwise it wouldn't have taken until the 1800s for a seriously contradictory interpretation to come out). The clear teaching of the Word of God bowed to the majority of finite scientists.

            We are no better than the man who reinterpreted the Gospels.

Ultimate Truth: The Foundation

Stay with Me

            This next series of posts will be about the Bible, science, and evolution. But you wouldn't know it by most of this post. Stay with me as I lead to my conclusions on the issue.

The Premise

            You know those really annoying kids that always ask "why?" to everything? Yeah, those kids. It eventually gets to the point where you either tell the brat to beat it (if he's yours), or you kindly say, "I don't know, let's change the subject."

            You eventually hit rock bottom with your answers. Your reasonings, knowledge, wisdom, and everything else has all been stripped to their irreducible components... and you just accept it. Why are you getting this surgery? Because the doctor said so. Why did you go to the grocery store? To get food.  Everything has it's basic answer.

            You are left with "I believe this because I think I have good reason to." Which can actually be further reduced to "I believe this because I want to."

            In philosophy/theology, I call this rock-bottom position your ultimate truth (or ultimate standard). It's what you appeal to when someone challenges your core beliefs.

            I believe Jesus rose from the dead. Why? Because the Word of God says so. 

            Now, that ignores all the evidence for believing in the reliability of the Bible. That also ignores all the failed explanations at naturally explaining Jesus' empty tomb. But in the end, the Bible is my ultimate truth. I believe that the Bible is true, and that is that.

            The atheist's ultimate standard contains a couple of world-views, namely naturalism (all things are the result of natural processes) and materialism (the material world is all there is). He will say that Jesus did not rise from the dead.

            Why? Because that is naturally impossible.

            Now, that bare-bones answer ignores all the evidence that people can't come back from the dead. It also ignores the fact that the first disciples of worldwide movements don't claim their mutilated, flayed criminal savior appeared to them and inspired them to then go on and die horrible deaths at the hands of psychos who hate their guts.

            But the simple answer is that the atheist doesn't believe in the resurrection because it contradicts his ultimate standard: naturalism/materialism. He believes atheism to be true, and that is that.

            My next couple of posts will be on why it is so important for Christians to have the correct ultimate standard.