Tried With Fire

The issues of sin and justice have been on a back burner in my mind for several years. One particular aspect is the idea of moral equivalence - where all sins are considered equal. This older post by Kevin DeYoung is worth reading, the majority of which is also in Hole in our Holiness . In the book, he references The Holiness of God where R.C. Sproul states that all sins require atonement but all sins are not equal. [I]t seems humble to act as if no sin is worse than another, but we lose the impetus for striving and the ability to hold each other accountable when we tumble down the slip-n-slide of moral equivalence... When we can no longer see the different gradations among sins and sinners and sinful nations, we have not succeeded in respecting our own badness, we've cheapened God's goodness. 1 The idea of gradations of sin is important for us to keep in mind so we understand the difference between sin and gross sin . Again, all of our sins require forgiveness. All of...

According to the well-known "secularization theory" of Max Weber, religion - under the conditions of modernity -  goes through various stages. First, religion is privatized , its domain shrunk to the island of private subjectivity. Statements such as "Jesus is alive" and "Jesus is Lord" are no longer regarded as objective, public claims based on historical  events but become references to one's personal experience. As for "Jesus is alive," in the words of the famous gospel song, "You ask me how I know He lives? He lives within my heart." And typically, "Jesus is Lord" refers to my personal decision to make Jesus my Lord and Savior. While the apostles testified to historical events of which they were eyewitnesses, "giving your testimony" in evangelical Christianity today typically means talking about one's inner experience and moral transformation. Once privatized, religion becomes relativized .  No longer ...

[T]oday if you talk about Christianity being true or historically verifiable, many people would be puzzled. Religion is assumed to be a product of human subjectivity so that the test of "good" religion is not whether it is objectively true but only whether it has beneficial effects in the lives of those who believe it. Total Truth , Nancy Pearcey, Crossway, 2004, pp. 116-117. This quote reminded me of a pitch made by a popular preacher on television a number of years ago. He suggested that the host "try Jesus for 60 days and see if He won't change your life."  While it's true that Christ will change our lives, "try Jesus because it works" seems to be just a subtle form of the prosperity gospel. This is quite different from truth claim that God's wrath is coming, you must repent and believe the gospel. This also makes me wonder about the over emphasis placed on personal testimony. If the testimony is more dramatic, it's more convincing...

I would have thought that something as black and white as math would be exempt from the spreading ooze of postmodernism. Obviously not: Today, however, most philosophers no longer even regard mathematics as a body of truths. The dominant philosophy of mathematics treats it as a social construction, like the game of baseball. "Three strikes and you're out" is an arbitrary rule. It's not true or false; it's just the way we choose to play the game. By the same token, mathematical rules are regarded as just the way we play the game. Even American schoolchildren are now taught this postmodern view of math. A popular middle school curriculum says students should learn that "mathematics is man-made, that it is arbitrary, and good solutions are arrived at by consensus among those who are considered expert." Man-made? Arbitrary? Clearly, our public schools have waded deeply into the muddy waves of postmodernism. Moreover, if math is arbitrary, then there ar...