On Secularism - Part 3

If secularism charges Christianity with dogmatism it's guilty of the same thing. The difference is what it's dogmatic about. What's ironic is that the rise of secularism owes many of its foundations to what Christianity helped to establish.

I'm not going to do an apologetic for the way in which Christianity helped give rise to the modern sciences. Even the most skeptical historians cannot help but notice its direct influence. But what the sciences offered turned it into an absolute rule, which helped shape the secularism of today. Ancient Greek rationality consisted only of pure speculative logic, but the rise of the sciences sought instead to probe the world. Essentially this shifted thinking towards observation and empiricism.

Gravity is gravity. 10 times out of 10, if you let go of a piece of chalk, it will fall to the ground. Basically this shows an obvious logical pattern. You can then study it and show that there's a certain rate at which it falls (Newton's law of gravity). The more you discover that the world works in an orderly fashion, like a well tuned mechanism, the more you begin to realize that what looked mysterious before can now be explained. So then this begs the question, can all things be explained entirely naturalistically?

And this becomes the crux of Secularist thinking. It believes that even if we can't explain things yet, it must have a perfectly plausible scientific explanation. There are no abnormalities as a result of some sort of spiritual, metaphysical other reality outside of the material. To be fair there's nothing irrational about this. If something strange happens it's always the logical thing to do to look for a plausible explanation other than, well, the boogeyman or something.

Part of it boils down to what makes good science. Generally speaking good science is about testable or falsify-able theories. Using gravity, as an example, you first have the law of gravity. Physical laws are derived from empirical observation which is precisely how Newton had established the law of gravity. (It's useful for practical purposes, but with the development of Einstein's theory of relativity and quantum mechanics it was rendered "moot".) But this is different from the "theory of gravity" which attempts to explain the "how" instead of the "what." If a model is put forth to theorize how gravity works it's good science if the theory can be falsified by further study.

But the miraculous, by definition, is not testable (i.e. falsifiable) and therefore does not represent good science. This isn't a problem normally, but if you insist on a "scientific worldview" which secularism already assumes, then there is no place for miracles. They are denied outright. This isn't the same as skepticism, but a dogmatic refusal to give it a chance even if the evidence clearly supports it. And this is just one place where the secularist worldview falls short.

A miracle is an event recorded in history and cannot be bound to the rigours of scientific study. It's simply impossible. It represents an entirely different discipline. You can use science to help understand historical events, but there's a certain point where the best evidence is the accounts of the witnesses. Science can help us understand the technology of World War II, but it can not explain the rise and fall of the Nazis. The same is true of the records of the Gospels. They can be cross-examined, studied, and at the end of the day, if the records show to the best explanation that Jesus did, in fact, rise from the dead, then that is what we are left with.

And this isn't to say that the sciences represent the discipline that, by nature, is antithetical to the Christian faith. Christianity uses history and science to bolster its case. You can even consider the testimonies of those Christian historians, philosophers, and scientists that have all deepened in their faith as a result of their study. In fact, some had even become Christians through their respective disciplines. Secularists will accuse Christians for being irrational for their faith, as though faith gives us blinders to logic. But this is simply not true. In fact, I would argue it's the exact opposite. Secularism's blatant refusal to see where the evidence leads and instead deny absolutely that some things cannot be explained in terms of pure materialist naturalism shows it has its own blinders. Secularism attempts to use science to discredit Christianity and explain it away, when it does precisely the opposite. Indeed, Secularism is not the real arbiter of truth that it wants to be.

On Secularism - Part 2

I Serve A Risen Saviour / He Lives

Verse 1 - 

I serve a risen Saviour, He's in the world today;

I know that He is living, Whatever men may say;

I see His hand of mercy, I hear His voice of cheer,

And just the time I need Him He's always near.

Chorus -

He Lives! He lives! Christ Jesus lives today!

He walks with me and talks with along life's narrow way.

He lives! He lives! Salvation to impart!

You ask me how I know he lives:

He lives within my heart.

Perhaps you've heard or sung this song in Church. It's seems to be one of the more popular songs of the old hymns, but I can't say I like it very much. It’s not because I don't like old hymns. On the contrary, I'm actually a bit partial to them. They have a beauty and depth that's underscored by having stood the test of time. But this is one song to which I must take exception.

The fellowship of believers may sing this song with kindred spirits, but when it comes to the line in the chorus that says, "you ask me how I know he lives" it gives what is possibly the worst answer to an absolutely crucial question for Christians. Granted, you can make the theological case that Jesus does, in fact, inhabit the heart. Strictly speaking God has given us a new nature and indeed the Spirit now resides within us and empowers us toward sanctification. But the reasons we give for the truth of the resurrection and new life of Jesus are not found in ourselves, through our subjective experiences, or what we feel in our hearts to be true. Like all truth, if it is true it is true outside of ourselves, completely independent of our own existence.

The truth of Christianity is bound to the historical realities of Jesus' death and resurrection, not the feelings of our hearts. And this is an important point not just in defending the truth of Christianity, but it separates itself in this way from all other religions. 

You see, where religion tells you how to live, Christianity teaches about what has happened. In other words, religions teach good advice but Christianity teaches good news. This effectively separates the point of reference between Christianity and other religions. Take Islam, for example. The teachings are not bound to the prophet Muhammed himself. For the sake of argument, it could have been an entirely different person, in an entirely different place, at an entirely different time. Muhammed only passed on what he believed to be the revelations of God. At the end of the day Islam is not bound to the historicity of Muhammed himself, so his existence isn't their primary concern. So too is the teaching of Confucius, or Buddha. It’s not Confucius or Buddha that make Confucianism or Buddhism but their teachings. Even Mormonism isn’t terribly concerned with it’s own history as it is with the “burning of the bosom.” 

All religions teach certain tenants and all promise something in the end if they’re properly adhered to. Many of them will be existentially satisfying, but that doesn’t make them true. It’s a bit like the placebo effect. A sugar pill will often be enough to convince somebody they’re getting better from an illness because they start to feel better. Sometimes they get better by themselves, and sometimes they weren’t really sick in the first place. Either way, the sugar pill had nothing to do with. But it becomes crucially important when you’re genuinely sick and you’re convinced the sugar pill is working. You can still succumb to the illness even if you believe “in your heart” the placebo is working. 

Jesus, on the other hand, is the revelation himself, as a real bona-fide physical reality, regardless of how we feel about it. So, if we were to find out beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus did not, in fact, resurrect from the dead, then everything we believe is all in vain (1 Corinthians 15:12-19). 

And this leaves us with an important distinction. Either Christ has been raised, and we must all believe and be saved, or he has not, and we can eat, drink, and be merry. If I may, we have here Christianity or Secularism. In the same way Christianity stands or falls (that is, through genuine, verify-able, observable data), secularism also stands or falls. 

It should be noted that secularism doesn’t rise out of a denial of Jesus’ death and resurrection but a dogmatic worldview that says science can explain everything naturalistically. In other words, miracles don’t happen. If there is a so-called miracle, then there is a perfectly plausible scientific explanation for it. This means, of course, that even if Jesus existed he couldn’t do any miracles, and certainly couldn’t rise from the dead. And God, for that matter, well even that is just a figment of our imagination.

The point is that both Christianity and Secularism don’t point to the inward feelings of its worldview as a testament to its truthfulness but to observable datum outside the individual. If secularism can demonstrate that miracles can’t happen, that resurrection is impossible, that the world came about naturalistically, and that our idea of God is nothing more than a mind trick, then it arises as the victor. If, however, it can be demonstrated that miracles have happened, that Jesus’ resurrection did occur, that God had to have created the world, and that God truly reveals himself to us, then it is shown to be true, and Secularism to be based on a false premise.

It’s no wonder that debates between Christians and atheists far outnumber debates between Christianity and other religions. There’s just so much more riding on it. 

It Works Small

New Feature! You can read my blog on your i-thingy now thanks to mobile support. That is all.

On Secularism - Part 1

"Secularism" is one of those words in Christian circles that has many different connotations to different people. For some it's like a dark crusading force against everything to do with Christianity. For others it's something that can basically work side-by-side with with it. Still others see it as a self-authenticated and merited worldview. Regardless of how you see it, many of its varying assumptions simply do not square with Christianity, and it's often difficult for Christians to know how to interact with it wisely.

Part of the issue isn't just "secularism" itself, but more generally the culture at large. Secularism is a bit of a nebulous term that represents only a single facet of the greater culture (or cultures) we find ourselves in. In other words, it's not a monolithic movement, so in some ways it's a bit like nailing Jello to a wall. Nevertheless, secularism is increasingly the dominant worldview even if it is competing with others. But what secularism does represent in its most simplest form is to be free from religious belief or influence. With such a wide variety of religious belief, secularism props itself up as the arbiter of truth, bringing enlightenment and progress to all society, with the tools of the sciences at its aid.

Secularism typically isn't explicitly anti-religious, but sees religion as a separate entity that's merely personal and private. So in a secularist government, for example, politicians need to leave any of their religious beliefs at the door and engage in policy making under secularist assumptions. One can easily see why people adopt this approach. In a liberal society desiring to maintain religious freedoms, you wouldn't want your own religious beliefs to encroach upon the beliefs of others through policy making. Therefore, if everyone keeps their religion to themselves you wouldn't have to worry about that.

But being asked to play by rules of secularism doesn't demonstrate its truthfulness or fairness but it's dominance. Studies in the sciences and humanities have taught us enormous amounts of information about ourselves and the world we live in, but the sum of their findings don't add up to secularism. In fact it's quite the opposite. If secularism attempts to be objective by not having faith-based religious assumptions, then it fails by its own standards. That's because rather than removing so-called "faith based" assumptions from its worldview, it's unwittingly replaced them with its own new set of presumptions. It's a bit like saying secularism become its own religion.

Secularism's greatest failing, then, is its own ignorance toward what it deems as mythical and supernatural nonsense. But that doesn't mean that a Christian doing science, by contrast, is going to come upon a mystery and just say "God did it." That "God-of-the-gaps" idea is pathetically unscientific and unfaithful to exploration. The Christian scientist, as much as any other scientist, is genuinely interested in how things work and function in the world. In other words, he is just as interested in truth as the next scientist. That's because the sciences and humanities are not the just tools of secularism, but the genuinely good gifts that God has bestowed upon us.

But besides enabling us to engage in scientific study what does God have to with science anyway? In science your dealing with the material, so what you find is what you find, whether you believe God or not. You certainly don't have to be a Christian to do science well, so it may seem like it makes little difference. As it is, in the sciences and humanities there is a great wealth of information to be gleaned that is not only helpful but truthful as well regardless of who's done it. John Calvin concedes the same thing. Consider this passage from his Institutes (Book 2, Chapter 2, Section 15).

Whenever we come upon these matters in secular writers, let that admirable light of truth shining in them teach us that the mind of man, though fallen and perverted from its wholeness, is nevertheless clothed and ornamented with God's excellent gifts. If we regard the Spirit of God as the sole foundation of truth, we shall neither reject the truth itself, nor despise it wherever it shall appear, unless we wish to dishonour the Spirit of God. For by holding the gifts of the Spirit in slight esteem, we condemn and reproach the Spirit himself. What then? Shall we deny that the truth shone upon the ancient jurists who established civic order and discipline with such great equity? Shall we say that the philosophers were blind in their fine observation and artful description of nature? Shall we say that those men were devoid of understanding who conceived the art of disputation and taught us to speak reasonably? Shall we say that they are insane who developed medicine, devoting their labour to our benefit? What shall we say of all the mathematical sciences? Shall we consider them the ravings of madmen? No, we cannot read the writings of the ancients on these subjects without great admiration. We marvel at them because we are compelled to recognize how preeminant they are. But shall we count anything praiseworthy or noble without recognizing at the same time that it comes from God? Let us be ashamed of such ingratitude, into which no even the pagan poets fell, for they confessed that the gods had invented philosophy, laws, and all useful arts. Those men whom Scripture calls "natural men" [1 Corinthians 2:14] were, indeed, sharp and penetrating in their investigation of inferior things. Let us, accordingly, learn by their example how many gifts the Lord left to human nature even after it was despoiled of its true good.

When Calvin speaks here he makes a distinction between secular callings and those specific to the church. Obviously when it comes to heavenly things, non-Christians will be devoid of understanding, but secular callings are sacred and legitimate for Christians as well. That's because these secular callings were there from the beginning of creation but we have just become corrupted by the curse of the fall like everything else. Therefore you don't have to Christianize your business, your music, or the way you conduct your scientific surveys. As Martin Luther would put it, if you are a shoemake, then make a good shoe and sell it at a fair price.

What secularism does to the sciences is interpret the findings on the assumption that there is only the material. Again, this might seem to make little difference since you’re only dealing with material things anyway. The notoriously atheistic Richard Dawkins of Oxford University may display is ignorance when he writes books like “The God Delusion” but his work on biology can be a great asset to us all. But how does his atheism inform his work where a Christian, or a theist might differ? 

Most simply because all of this work points to something far greater than itself. There’s beauty and order in it. Romans 1:20 says, “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” Francis Collins, the man who led the team that cracked Human Genome Project isn’t without reason when he states that human DNA has the “fingerprints” of the creator God. Even if these reflections seem somewhat subjective, it does no use to simply assume it all happened by itself based on infinitesimally impossible random chance. That only creates bigger problems for itself, and the burden of proof is on the secularist to show why its more reasonable to assume God’s not part of the picture.

For the studies in the humanities, on the other hand, since secularism has no time for acknowledging the existence of God, that we do indeed have a relationship with him (albeit broken), and that the world is fallen and corrupted by our own doings it completely removes an important part of the puzzle, which only the Bible has made clear to us. And this is important because the Bible teaches us not only "theological" things such as sin and redemption but it teaches ethics, morality, equality, justice. Secularism takes these things as well, but by denying the existence of a creator and ruler God, it removes any basis for them. 

This is particularly dangerous in the area of human rights. If human rights are not grounded in the God-ordained dignity of human beings, they are only grounded in the whims of the dominant culture. Human rights become nothing more than the will to power, but secularism sees this as progress. 

Take the work of Steven Pinker, for example. Steven Pinker, an avowed atheist, is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and a best-selling author. If you've never heard of him, in 2004 Time Magazine named him one of 100 most influential scientists and thinkers in the world. He posits that as human beings progress in science and technology that our morality also progresses as well. He cites that we no longer have slavery, we have more human rights such as women’s suffrage and equality, and so on. Rather ironic when you consider we've just witnessed the bloodiest century of all human history. And while Steven Pinker really is a smart guy, it's not difficult to see why he would come up with an idea like this.

Consider some of the things your grandparents believed. Today, many of those things are considered outdated and silly. It’s easy to think from our vantage point that we live in a more advanced society, not only in terms of technology, but in ethics and morality too. But don’t forget that in another two generations your grandchildren will consider many of your own beliefs silly too. The secularist might assume that in two generations they’ll have advanced even further than we have, but to what end? And on what basis are we to believe that the morals of today are better than yesterday or tomorrow? None! Without God morals are subject to the tides of the culture, or to the evolutionary process and we have no ability to discern good or evil except that which is useful for survival. Frederich Nietzche who was one of the few atheists to acknowledge this.

And this is the whole point: Secularism attempts to do something which it can only fail to achieve. It has no grounds for believing its foundation other than its own leap of faith. It not only fails by its own standards, but the grounds on which it's based mean that its own assumptions can't be trusted. Everything becomes a whim, an experiment, and it's all utterly, utterly meaningless.

Truth and Freedom

I had written on this same topic briefly here. It's fairly truncated and I thought it would be helpful to write some further reflections. My hope is explain a little better how it is we find real freedom. I hope you find this helpful, and maybe even liberating.



Slavery...


If you've ever witnessed someone in your life spiral deep into an addiction you may have noticed there are certain stages along the way. The closer they get to the so-called "bottomless pit" the more they take on a different character. They become increasingly irritable, violent, irrational, seclusive, the list goes on. You may even say they become an entirely different person, which is what makes addictions so insidious and ugly.  But these are not just the result of physiological effects from popular hallucinogenic drugs, it's an instinctive reaction of human behaviour to protect something that has become very important to them.

Throughout the course of an addiction, the typical patterns goes somewhat like this: First you may find the original attraction to the addiction and you quickly become attached to it. At first if it is taken away, you may be annoyed, but you could at least move on from it easily enough. But the more important it becomes, the more you will do anything to keep it, even when it becomes less satisfying. When things get in your way (lack of money, friends trying to intervene) you begin to feel victimized, and you quickly start to blame others for your dependancy. At this point your character begins to take on a different form. You become irritable if you don't have "it", whatever it may be. Eventually, however, there is nothing else in life than your all-consuming desire to have whatever it is you think you need. You have become, in effect, a slave.

This is exactly the effect of sin that C.S. Lewis uses to describe Hell in his book The Great Divorce. I quoted the following a couple months back during the Rob Bell controversy...

"Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others... but you are still distinct from it. You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it. But there may come a day when you can no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood or even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself, going on forever like a machine... "(The Great Divorce)

But there is a difference between sin and addictions. Addicts can reach a bottomless pit at which point they have either succumb to it and die, or have a moment of clarity in their despair and through grace are able to recover from it. Sin, on the other hand, in a truly eternal sense, has no bottomless pit. It will never end but continue on forever unless, as C.S. Lewis would say, it "is nipped in the bud."

Perhaps there's no greater modern illustration of this than the depictions of Gollum in The Lord of the Rings. He was once Smeagol, a regular, happy, hobbit-like character who was overcome by the lure of the ring and even murdered his friend to acquire it. The ring consumed him, changed him, and became the master over him. Unlike the addicts of real life, however, Smeagol would physically transformed into the creature known as Gollum. The figurative Gollum clearly paints the ugliness of the all-consuming slavery of sin, but it also points to the inevitable dangers of misbelief and heresy.

But these addictions come in far greater form than what we're normally used to hearing such as drugs, alcohol, money, etc. They can be perfectly good things that are turned into ultimate things that, as Tim Keller would put it, become our functional Saviour. That is to say, raising good children, being successful at work, or having the perfect marriage, can all become our idols. We can all aspire to make sure to raise Christ-like and well disciplined children, and perform our work well, and be have good marriages through being good husbands and wives. There's nothing wrong with that. But when we turn these good things into the ultimate things, we displace the work of Christ as Saviour. In our drive to fulfill these goals we become overbearing to our children, we are far too driven in our work to the detriment of relationships, and when the inevitable rough patch occurs in our marriages our lives become completely disillusioned. We become slaves to these ideals, these idols of perfection, which will eventually fail in one way or another, and lead to destruction.

Truth, on the other hand, is freedom.

Freedom...


What the Bible describes as Truth, and what the general historical Christian consensus now labels as orthodoxy, is often viewed as being far too constraining and narrow-minded. But why should we expect it to be any different? Even if the Truth is constraining and narrow-minded that doesn't make it any less liberating. And it has certainly not been held captive by the hands of mere mortals who wish to box it up by their own whims. On the contrary, we can rejoice in the fact that God has been gracious enough to condescend to us that we may know the truth in the first place.

Our problem with Truth isn't so much that it's too constraining and narrow. It's just that, like Gollum, we've been far too consumed with the ring. Because of our stubborn belief in only half-truth we don't want the truth as revealed in Scripture, and because of our highly-esteemed but misguided intellect when the Truth does confront us it doesn't fit what we imagine it ought to be. We want something that affirms what we already believe, we don't want to be told different, even if what we believe invariably leads to destruction.

But the most difficult thing about Truth is to honestly accept it, because this goes against every ounce of our sinful beings. We would not, except by the grace of God, want anything to do with something that completely turns our life around. But when it happens, only then do we truly see the error of our ways and the glorious riches of God's abounding love and mercy.

I suspect for most of us who affirm and believe in Christ that the feeling of continual liberation through the knowledge and study of Scripture is a slow and often messy process. Such is the process of Sanctification. It's not very often that there is a complete turn around someone makes in repentance. But when it does happen it's always from God revealing himself in extraordinary ways. The example of Isaiah 6 comes to mind. Isaiah, having seen visions of God, cries out, "Woe to me!... I am ruined! For I am a man on unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty." (Isaiah 6:5)

There are two important things that happen when we're confronted by the Truth. First, as Isaiah demonstrates, we finally see ourselves for who we really are. We realize, in the words of Isaiah, that "we are ruined." We are lost on our own, sold as slaves the the cravings of our sinful nature. And Second, that God is a just but merciful Father. As the story in Isaiah unfolds, his lips are touched by the hot coals, cauterizing them to cleanse them, and his sins are atoned for. Only then is he set free.

Or as Paul says in Romans 6:19ff
Just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.
For when you were slaves to sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. 


Of all the greatest theologians and pastors through the ages, one common thread remains in them all, and that can be summed up in the words of John Newton, who said, "I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I want to be, I am not what I hope to be in another world; but still I am not what I once used to be, and by the grace of God I am what I am." Those who've had the most clear view of themselves had the most clear view of God himself, and therefore had the most urgency in imparting a strict and narrow but wonderful and liberating Truth.

When God created men and women he created us with a nature that worships. At any given moment we are always worshipping something. The object of our worship ultimately dictates our attitudes, behaviours, desires, etc. Before Adam and Eve sinned, they were free. They enjoyed everything in creation, each other, and enjoyed communion with God. When the fall happened, all of that was broken, and suddenly their desires turned away. The object of our worship necessarily dictates our actions, attitudes, and our beliefs. We are, by nature, slaves to the object of our worship. If the object of our worship isn't the eternal God, we are doomed to destruction. Therefore, in order to be redeemed, we need an act of God to rescue us from this slavery.

And this is exactly what only Christ can, and has, accomplished for us. Praise be to God.

The End of the World?

For those of you who've seen the signs all over the place declaring the end of the world at the end of this week, here is a little background on how the whole fiasco started. This has been written up by a professor named W. Robert Godfrey at Westminster Seminary California. Here are the set of links to each writeup...

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

While doomsdayers like this aren't new, what astonishes me is the amount of influence he has with an entire radio network at his disposal. It's actually quite troubling and saddening. What's more is that many of his followers have bet everything on this, potentially devastating their entire life's savings and relationships on the world ending in just a couple days. And of course, when the world inevitably doesn't end and all their visions shatter before their eyes many, rather than seeing the error of their ways, will continue to blindly follow Harold Camping and say that the Bible must've been wrong.

Heresy vs. Freedom

Heresy happens, and it's deadly serious. But heresy doesn't crop up out of an intentional vendetta against the church or orthodox theology. Rather, it's often the well meaning attempts of misguided individuals to make Christianity more palatable to the culture at large. That's why heresy usually isn't so much a denial of established doctrine (it can be) but a twisting and bending thereof. It's often cloaked in the same Biblical language of orthodoxy, so it's not always so obvious either. But the consequences of heresy cripple the unity of the church and ultimately subvert the good news of the Gospel, and that's why it's so important, whether we like it or not.

Heresy is one of those words that doesn't get tossed about lightly. It never has. The term itself is so loaded with baggage that people seldom use it, particularly now. With the heightened sensitivities of our culture against anything with connotations to "Truth" its use has become equated with being judgemental, intolerant, and authoritarian. For many the act of criticism, let alone the charge of heresy, is tantamount to intolerant bigotry, and an intrusion on one's freedom.

The problem, first of all, is that truth and doctrinal matters have become far less important than good values. It doesn't matter so much what you believe so long as you're a nice person and tolerant of others. A tolerant society, the argument goes, is a free society. Defending liberty is about defending one's right to create their own truth and identity, unhindered by anyone else who might impose their worldviews on them. The essence of freedom, then, is to be free of any restrictions. 


But those values aren't neutral. They have their own pre-supposed worldview which end up imposing themselves on others who disagree with them. In other words, this form of tolerance is only tolerant of those who conform to its own set of "truths" and dogmas and is just as intolerant, if not more, toward those who choose not to.

Judging something as heretical doesn't just break the rules of these values, they use an entirely different set of presuppositions. For one it implies you have epistemologically achieved some level of absolute truth. For the postmodern, truth is highly subjective, so the idea of heresy is non-sequitur. In the end, no one is the wiser. But to claim absolute truth puts you in a position of authority, and to charge heresy is nothing more than the wielding of power, subverting one's freedom to live as they choose.

The Christian's concern for truth, however, isn't just the will to power, or about being right and pointing out why everyone else is wrong, (which is wrongheaded by itself) but about reasons of much deeper importance and urgency. Among those is a very different concept of freedom than the postmodernists claim to enjoy. For the Christian freedom does not exist from the absence of dogmatic restrictions, rather it is conforming to the right restrictions.

Scientia Potentia Est is a famous latin phrase that roughly translates "Knowledge is Power." The phrase is typically attributed to Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626),  but back then it viewed knowledge as being able empower individuals to greater levels of progress. Indeed, even Proverbs 24:5 similarly lauds knowledge when it says, "A wise man is full of strength, and a man of knowledge enhances his might." Gaining knowledge should never be an end in itself. Such ambitions typically result in the sort of authoritarian power plays the postmodernists are concerned with. But gaining knowledge is part of Christian discipleship. Submitting to the apostle's teaching, holding fast to the faith once and for all delivered, keeping a sober mind and not being blown about by every wind of doctrine, the emphasis on discipleship through learning and understanding is a steady stream throughout the entire Bible. One simply cannot avoid the conclusion that the Bible is incredibly serious about knowledge and wisdom.

And it's only through understanding of the knowledge of God that we can come to a better and more clear knowledge of ourselves. Both Proverbs 1:7 and Psalm 111:10 say, "The Fear of the Lord is the beginning wisdom" (or knowledge). We've all come to know narcissistic people in our lives. They praise themselves and demand the appreciation and respect of others. It's clear from observers they are very delusional people. But the same is true of us if we first don't understand God rightly. We are lost in our own self-deceit, out of our mind, and entirely delusional. We are like slaves.

Freedom, then, is not achieved through the absence of restricting dogmas. Nor is it found in a declaration of independence against the establishment of orthodox Christianity. Led to our own devices we are lost. Rather, true freedom comes through a clear knowledge and submission to the truth which God has given us in his word. As Os Guinness would say, "Knowledge is Power, but Truth is Freedom."

...So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, "If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John 8:31)