THURSDAY TAKEAWAYS 7/23/20
The greatest threat we face to the American way of life is not global warming, racism, or Covid-19 (or 20, 21, etc.): It is relativism. People call Relativism many names such as Secular Humanism, Liberalism, Postmodernism and even Tolerance but Relativism is really much farther to the left than any of them. Relativism is the view that any belief on any topic is as good as any other view. The ancient Greek, Protagoras said, “What is true for you is true for you, and what is true for me is true for me.” The basis of relativism is a denial of truth, or absolute truth. It is a denial of human reason to arrive at truth. The greatest threat is the denial of the possibility of God, any God! Agnostics admit they do not know if there is a God and there are many agnostics. Atheists, like relativist, say they know there is no God which is nonsense!
The highest goal of relativism is one’s own ego and one’s own desires. It does away with right and wrong except for one’s own ego, or perhaps one’s group’s ego. And the corollary of relativism is tolerance, for no one has the right to be judgmental because all ways, views, egos and desires are of equal value. Relativism is as far left as you can get!
Since the Relativist doesn’t believe in right or wrong, good and bad, such words such as “good”, “bad”, “right”, “wrong”, “pretty” and “ugly” are not allowed in a world of tolerance and relativism. Children are taught from the start of school to tolerate the behavior of others even when it runs counter to the way they have been taught. To say some one is intolerant or judgmental is the greatest social shames today!
Allan Bloom says in The Closing of the American Mind, “There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.” It is not only colleges that are teaching it but our elementary and high schools as well. Teachers are taught to confront any small gesture of judgmentalism and/or intolerance.
Relativism denies objectivity and contends that all things are subjective. Therefore, science cannot have any objective knowledge about anything, because “your science is equal to my science.” Science is placed on the level of witchcraft and magic.
William H. Young, Modern vs. Western Thought: Relativism vs. Virtue,
“In Modern subjectivism, relativism replaces virtue, feelings replace reason, mere opinion replaces knowledge, illusion replaces reality, emotion replaces reflection, unconscious bias replaces evidence, instinct replaces intuition, solipsism (selfishness) replaces empathy, and adolescence replaces adulthood.”
There are many corollaries to Relativism: One is that facts don’t matter because “facts” are not true. There are only “your facts” and “my facts”, never any objective facts. Relativism is a world of illusion and you waste your time trying to reach such people with facts. It is an attack on objective knowledge itself. It is an attack on reality and a denial of truth but mainly it is an attack on God and His Son, Jesus Christ!
We have never seen anything like it before except in bits and pieces. It is an attack on reality and truth itself so truth and reality are not effective deterrents to it. And it is an attack on the very concept of God! It does not only say there is no God but that here can be no God, making it the most atheistic philosophy in human history!
One example is the stats on the Coronavirus. One group will use its “facts” to prove a point, while another group will use its “facts” to prove the opposite point. Remember, for a relativist there are no absolute facts. Based on this observation, America is in big trouble. Arguments can no longer be won or lost by persuasion and facts!
And if America is in trouble, the Church is in huge trouble. Church attendance is fading in all 50 states! There is a rapid decline of Christianity in all major denominations including Catholicism in America mainly because the younger generations have bought into this absurd way of thinking.
For Christians all truth is of God and the Church must side with truth wherever it can be found. Science is not our enemy because it is a search for truth, just like Church is. We must stand with truth because we believe in THE TRUTH. I believe that all knowledge will ultimately lead to Jesus Christ. To defeat this atheistic and deadly disease that is threating our country and our way of life we must proclaim the truth of the Word of God and stand up with the truth searchers anywhere they can be found.
When people fight for equality it is easy to slip into relativism. The notion that things are not real, there is no truth, no right or wrong and no God is the distant left that has crossed the line of sanity and lives in an unreal, make-believe world and insane world.
What makes relativism so bad is that part of it is true (although truth does not matter to them). Different people do have different truths and live in different realities. But just because you believe something does not make it true. Just because you say all truth is relative doesn’t make it so. Just because you say there is no God doesn’t make it so. Someday reality and truth will smack them in the face because one day all will stand before the judgment seat of Christ and give account. One day every knee will bow and every tongue confess Jesus Christ as Lord!
Jim
