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Subjective truth vs. objective truth

Feb 6th, 2010
by misterrichardson.
4 comments

Objective truth, or that which is true no matter what anyone else says, always trumps subjective truth, or that which is true because I feel that it’s true. Of course, it is entirely possible that the truth that I so firmly believe and feel is also that same truth which is also objective. But I could also be entirely wrong if my standard for truth goes no further than myself.

Now add into this mix the debates about absolute truth. Some say their truth is the objective truth, others, with a totally different set of beliefs, say their truth is the objective truth. Even those who claim there is no objective truth assert that there is at least one objective truth (that there is no objective truth), but their position is absurd. Everyone, on some level, believes in some sort of objective truth.

This emphasis on objective truth is what motivated the Apostles of Jesus Christ to go out into all the world, preaching the gospel and making disciples. Jesus Christ was the truth, not a truth.

One of the weaknesses in the modern day church is that we have left off the preaching of objective truth and substituted something that won’t necessarily do the job, subjective truth. It may be true that Jesus has done something for me, but unless I understand the objective truth of Jesus Christ, I am not really going to understand what it is that He did. Sermons filled with endless stories about the preacher betray a very subjective view of the truth. You might get to know the preacher well, but you won’t really learn the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Jesus is not the best way for me, He is the only way for everyone. Jesus calls Himself the truth. Paul states that if anyone contradicts his preaching of Jesus Christ, then they’re wrong. Christians are not called to pick and choose truth based on “what works” – we are called to internalize the objective truth of the Scripture, which is our only infallible source for that truth.

I really believe that this breakdown in the teaching and preaching of objective truth is what causes so many of our teenagers to forsake the faith when they get older. It’s also why so many older people have no clue why they’re really going to church or living as they do. Many are doing and believing what seems right to them, only to be shaken in their beliefs later when something happens that doesn’t fit into their system of subjective truth. And once their foundation begins to shake, the structure of their lives is sure to fall. And when this shaking begins, it won’t matter how many Christian concerts you’ve been to, or how many buildings you’ve built in third world countries, or how many times you’ve walked an aisle and said the sinner’s prayer. You might hold subjective truth, but it won’t hold you.

However, the believer in God’s objective truth found in Jesus Christ will never fall. He may stumble, yes, but he will not fall. Why? Because if Christ is for us, who can be against us? The fact of Jesus Christ, the objective truth of Jesus Christ, is what will hold us when nothing else will. There is a difference between me gripping what I think is the truth, and the true truth gripping me.

This is the difference between subjective truth and objective truth.

Posted in: Christianity, Theology.
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This is why I love Voddie Baucham

Feb 5th, 2010
by misterrichardson.
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I have a very high view of the role of the worship leader. I view leading worship as a sort of pastoral responsibility to which one must be called, and for which one must be equipped. Unfortunately, we live in a time when every kid who knows five chords and ten songs thinks God has called him or her to be a worship leader. Hence, there is a flood of young, inexperienced, untrained, and often biblically illiterate worship leaders who have done nothing more than learn the top songs off of a few worship CD’s. This is a travesty!

…

A good voice and a love for God is not the sum total of a worship leader’s qualifications. Nor is it the ability to “move a crowd.” There is the question of the depth of one’s theology and how that depth is communicated in the songs one chooses to use, and how one chooses to use them. There is the ability to choose songs that are appropriate for the given audience and occasion. There is the ability to sense where God is leading and moving during a service, or a series of services (I.e. choosing response songs that suit the manner in which God is calling people to respond to what they’ve heard).

These are just a few things that must be taken into consideration. Unfortunately, they rarely enter into the decision of whom one will invite to lead worship. Often, the only questions asked are, “does he do the songs our people like?” and “does he sing well?” That is the type of shallow, carnal approach to ministry I try to avoid.

Source

Posted in: Christianity.
Tagged: ·

Unless the Father draw him

Jan 30th, 2010
by misterrichardson.
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No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him, and I will raise him up at the last day. (John 6:44)

Here the emphasis is on the divine decree of predestination carried out in history. When Jesus refers to the divine drawing activity, he employs a term which clearly indicates that more than moral influence is indicated. The Father does not merely beckon or advise, he draws! The same verb occurs also in John 12:32, where the drawing activity is ascribed to the Son; and further, in 18:10; 21:6,11; Acts 16:19; 21:30; and James 2:6. The drawing of which these passages speak indicate a very powerful – we may even say, an irresistible – activity. To be sure, man resists, but his resistance is ineffective. It is in that sense that we speak of God’s grace as being irresistible. The net full of big fishes is actually drawn or dragged ashore (John 21:6,11). Paul and Silas are dragged into the forum (Acts 16:19). Paul is dragged out of the temple (Acts 21:30). The rich drag the poor before the judgment-seats (James 2:6). Returning now to the Fourth Gospel, Jesus will draw all men to himself (12:32) and Simon drew his sword, striking the high priest’s servant, cutting off his right ear (18:10). To be sure, there is a difference between the drawing of a net or a sword, on the one hand, and of a sinner, on the other. With the latter God deals with as a responsible being. He powerfully influences the mind, will, heart, the entire personality. These, too, begin to function in their own right, so that Christ is accepted by a living faith. But both at the beginning and throughout the entire process of being saved, the power is ever from above; it is very real, strong, and effective; and it is wielded by God himself!

- William Hendriksen, Commentary on John.

Posted in: Bible, Theology.
Tagged: ·

Hillsong, Rob Bell, etc.

Jan 26th, 2010
by misterrichardson.
3 comments

Over the last few days I’ve been perusing the websites of Rob Bell and his Mars Hill Church, and Hillsong Church and all the various spin-offs from Hillsong (like Hillsong United and I-Heart), because these have been mentioned favorably by some of my students. So I thought I would post a few of my thoughts here.

First, I can never look (or be) as cool as Rob Bell. His presentation is catchy. But what about content? It’s here that I found his sermons and Nooma videos to be a bit lacking. Some of his sermons have material that is outright wrong (like getting 1st Century history wrong), but the main problem I see is that issues are dealt with rather shallowly. I kept having questions about issues that weren’t addressed. I found the Nooma video on women to be particularly unsatisfying because there was so much that was left unsaid. But this really doesn’t matter because the important thing is that we DO – do good things and not worry so much about doctrine and belief. You can have correct beliefs and still not be obedient to God.

Second, I can never be as hip as the Hillsong United group. Again, they present themselves in such a way that many find them attractive. But what are they actually saying? They seem to be coming from a place similar to Rob Bell. There’s lots of beautiful people doing beautiful things like saving the planet, fighting AIDS, and guaranteeing health care. And they’re doing this because God would have us to do this.

Now how could anyone be against young, attractive people trying to do good things because God said so?

A good example of this is on the I-heart.org website. It’s a list of top 20 things wrong in the world. The thing that’s wrong with the list is that it looks like it’s been written by a bunch of liberal politicians looking for votes. There are at least three major things left off this list – abortion, Islamic terrorism, and the continuing threat of Communism/Atheism. Fix any one of these problems and you’ll take maybe half of the items off I-heart’s list. In other words, this list is politically naive.

Or you could knock off the whole list by preaching the gospel, but that apparently isn’t considered.

But politics aside, this sort of thing is what religious liberals have been pushing since the early 1900’s. They ignore the major threat to all people on the face of the earth – an eternity spent suffering the wrath of God – and concentrate on relieving earthly stresses. Except they usually don’t do a very good job of relieving earthly stresses, because their theology doesn’t seem to take God very seriously. If we ignore the only thing that will save both body and soul from hell, it will not matter one bit whether we gave to some United Nations agency to stop global warming. Compassion is not measured by how many programs you have at church. True compassion consists in relieving people of their truly greatest burden – sin.

As a side note, I signed up for some Bible Study group on one of the Hillsong sites (which I can’t find now because the sites are so poorly organized) and sent in a couple of questions. Over a week has gone by and still no response.

To summarize, here’s what I found. I’m not young and cool. Rob Bell and all the various Hillsong manifestations are very cool. Both Rob Bell and Hillsong are light on Scripture and heavy on “doing something.” Both verge towards liberalism, with its denial of Scripture in act, if not in fact. There’s a lot of talk about God, but not much about Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Because of this, I can’t recommend either Rob Bell or Hillsong for those who want to take Jesus Christ and Scripture seriously.

Posted in: Christianity.
Tagged: ·

The Problem of Biblical Illiteracy

Jan 20th, 2010
by misterrichardson.
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There’s a good article over at Modern Reformation about an issue that’s near and dear to me – biblical illiteracy. It’s by David Nienhuis, who is a professor of New Testament at Seattle Pacific University, and is written about his experience with incoming students, most of whom claim to be Christians.

I found this quote especially interesting:

Not long ago I met with a student who was struggling in one of my courses. When I asked her what she thought the trouble was, she replied, in a tone suggesting ever so slightly that the fault was mine, ‘Reading a lot is not part of my learning style.’ She went on to inform me that students today learned more by ‘watching videos, listening to music, and talking with one another.’ She spoke of the great growth she experienced in youth group (where she no doubt spent a lot of time watching videos, listening to music, and talking with people), but her ignorance of the Bible clearly betrayed the fact that the Christian formation she experienced in her faith community afforded her little to no training in the actual reading of Scripture.

In assessing why this is so, he examines the historical shift in the American church from knowledge to experience and from theology to morality.

But not only can we fault our recent history, we can fault our present methods, as well:

Several of my Bible survey students expressed their surprise and disappointment that ‘years of church attendance and AWANA Bible memory competitions’ never trained them to engage the actual text of the Bible. They weren’t trained to be readers; they were trained to be quoters.

Everyone involved in the teaching the Bible should give this a read.

Read it all here.

Posted in: Bible, Education.

The Order of Creation by R C Sproul

Jan 18th, 2010
by misterrichardson.
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…the New Testament passages that call wives to submit to their husbands and men only to lead in the church have been greeted with vociferous protests. Calumnies have been launched against the apostle Paul for being a first century chauvinist, while others have sought to historicize and relativize these rules by arguing that they were merely culturally conditioned customs relevant to the first century but not to the modern world. It also has been argued that the principle of submission denigrates women, robbing them of their dignity and relegating them to the level of inferior humanity.

…in an organizational hierarchy, we do not assume that because a vice president is subordinate to the president that the vice president is inferior to the president as a person. It is obvious that subordination does not translate into inferiority.

Read the whole article

Posted in: Theology.
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The special creation of Man

Jan 5th, 2010
by misterrichardson.
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In our Bible Doctrine classes, we began our semester today with a discussion about the creation of Man or Mankind. I know that these are terribly sexist words today that might horribly offend a women’s libber, but we’re only teaching what the Bible teaches. It says, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea… So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” So “man” includes all people.

The main point, though, in the creation of man is the fact that we are created out of the dust, not evolved from some lower life form by chance. And since we have been created, we are part of God’s plan and purpose. One reason why people have so much trouble in their lives is that they see no real purpose in living. If only they understood that their ultimate purpose in life is to “glorify God and enjoy Him forever,” they would cease from all the life-destroying activities that bring them (and their families) so much grief. Our sensibilities of right and wrong and good and evil all teach us that there is a standard by which we are to be measured, which is, of course, meaningless if there is no God.

The special creation of man is also seen in the unique make-up of man – we are both physical and spiritual. We are like animals, in that we have physical bodies; but different from animals, in that we have souls. This is why it is quite alright to kill animals and eat them – they’re not made in the image of God, they don’t have souls, and besides, God said we could (Genesis 9:3) – but not alright to do the same to other people. This idea is one that is lost in a Hinduistic society where animals are worshipped and people suffer as a result. In such a place, where the soul is no longer unique, but just a part of the collective consciousness of all living beings, people are no longer special and can be treated as such. But Scripture teaches that only man occupies this unique position in all of God’s creation, therefore, we should treat others in the same way we would like to be treated.

And because we have a soul, we are also part of God’s eternal plan. We will live on even after this body ceases to live. What we do here now will matter for eternity – this is perhaps the most important aspect of our being created in God’s image – the sharing of eternity with Him. We will experience eternity enjoying God’s blessing or suffering under God’s wrath – either way we will live in eternity.

This is why we insist on man being created, not evolved. Scripture has revealed it and our nature confirms it.

Posted in: Christianity, Theology.

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