Some Things Are Just Serious

I’m feeling more like myself today. Turns out I have an ear infection which is being treated with medication now.

The way I felt Sunday morning when things seemed to be spinning out of control kind of parallels how I feel sometimes about the postmodern, truth denying culture I find myself living in. We live in a culture where the very notion that objective truth exists is under attack. We are living in a time where opinions, perceptions, feelings and experiences matter far more than objective truth. This is the case in the culture at large, but, far more importantly, it is becoming ever more the case within the church as well.

I’ve pared down a lot of my blog reading because, frankly, I am fairly intelligent and educated, but I’ve read some blog discussions recently that make my eyes glaze over and it becomes a waste of time trying to follow what the people are talking about. It’s like a perpetual game of one-upping to see who can be the most clever in trying to tear down the plain meaning of a statement and assign all kinds of crazy motives and deeper meanings, which then veers off into personal attacks on the person who made the original plain statement.

To be honest, I am growing so tired of hearing all the discussions of methods, embracing mystery, felt needs, contemplative whatever and endless talk and deconstruction of words until there is just no meaning left. What I tend to see happening in these kinds of discussions is a willful and intentional misunderstanding of the plain meaning of a statement for the sole purpose of showing how intellectual, erudite and adept at “deconstruction” (whatever that is) someone can be. What gets sacrificed, however, for all their purported love of “discussion” seems to be actual, honest discussion over the clear meaning. It seems to be more important to some people to be able to nitpick over word choices and to ask for “clarity” (I must say, too, that I am growing so tired of that word, also) than it is to enter real discussion where there is an actual desire to come to the truth and understanding of an issue.

I’ve also noticed that very often (but, admittedly not always) when someone enters the comments and asks a writer to “clarify” his meaning, usually the meaning was pretty clear to begin with, the asker just wants to nitpick and argue rather than deal with whatever the actual clear meaning was in the first place.

It seems, too, that there is a growing trend in this culture to say that nothing can really be understood with certainty and clarity, especially not the Bible, and those of us who do believe that there are non-negotiable doctrines that can be stated with certainty are seen as arrogant or not “nice.” This seems to be the biggest no-no anymore. It seems that anymore, the goal isn’t actually learning and submitting to the truths of God’s Word, but just the art of debate and endless, fruitless discussion. The goal is to talk, talk, talk, and frankly, after a few give-and-takes of this “deconstruction” the words are just spinning around meaning nothing. It becomes just so much nonsense, and I’m finding it to be just so much wasted time and energy. We (I’m including me because I’ve wasted far too much of my time over the past several months reading these vertigo inspiring conversations) sit behind our keyboards wasting time trying to be cute, showing how very smart and intellectual we are and, ultimately, all the cuteness and deconstruction really ends up denying the Gospel and trying to downplay the sinfulness of sin. It essentially is the same thing that's been going on since the Fall. Remember that the serpent asked Eve, "Has God indeed said......"

Can’t we just get back to teaching what the Bible says and submitting to it and living it?

There is a verse that I think very aptly pictures much of what I see happening in discussions today: 2 Timothy 3:7 says, “always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” Rather than working so hard to deconstruct everything and look for hidden meanings all the time and just loving to hear ourselves talk (type), how about just taking things at face value and coming to the knowledge of the truth?

And this is the culture in which my children will come of age. Our job as parents is, first of all, to be praying for them without ceasing, and then to teach them to know the truth, so the truth can set them free. Free from the bondage to sin foremost (amen!), but also free, for one thing, from endless talk, talk, talk that never gets anywhere. Free from vain babblings that never come to the truth. Free to have real answers when tragedy strikes, and not just a lot of babbling about mystery and felt needs. And tragedy will undoubtedly strike in some form – we live in a fallen world with depraved people. It is only by God’s grace that we are not all living out our depravity to its full expression. Please, O Lord God, guard my kids’ hearts and minds, I pray!

Proverbs 9:10
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,
And knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” (emphasis mine)

God has graciously given us His Word so that we can know Him, and thus fear Him and love Him rightly. May we humble ourselves and stop the vain arguing and nitpicking over deconstructing every statement and get back to rightly dividing His Word and teaching its truths.

The thing that gets lost as clear biblical teachings are torn apart and “deconstructed” is that there is, most definitely, truth. Jesus is coming again. Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. While we pridefully (yet cloaking ourselves in our false humility) quibble away about “clarifying” this or that word choice, there are millions of people living and dying with no hope. When tragedy strikes, what will we have to offer as hope once we’ve deconstructed away all the truths of the faith, or once we’ve declared that we cannot really know those truths? We are wasting time on vain arguments rather than submitting to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

And, not to point all my fingers at “them,” while I appreciate the warnings of heresy that are sounded, we who are interested in being faithful to the Word also waste an awful lot of time being drawn into these discussions and railing about them when we ought to be about the business of worshiping our Lord, speaking the truth, and being about the work He would have us do in the time we are given. Too much of the time those sounding the warnings get overly involved in that and develop a prideful, sarcastic, arrogant, name-calling attitude rather than a humble and broken-hearted attitude of warning. We need to balance warning the body, which, admittedly, is necessary, with worshiping our Lord and living out our calling in full before a world that desperately needs to hear the Gospel preached clearly and rightly. The tragedy that has occurred at Virginia Tech is just one more evidence that we are fallen people who, apart from the grace of God, are capable of just about anything evil. If we believe we cannot know the truths of the Word of God with certainty, what hope do we have to offer those who are grieving today in the wake of this tragedy? What hope do we have to offer to anyone, if we really believe that we cannot know with certainty those non-negotiable truths of the Gospel - the only truly Good News that there is? This is too important to be playing games and being so proud of our ability to argue endlessly as we avoid the clear teachings of scripture.

As the mother of young children who is not trained in philosophy or the art of debate, this is an area of concern for me. I see so much confusion masquerading as intellectual discussion that, frankly, it scares me for my children as they grow. I want to be able to teach them well to navigate in these murky waters, and I see such lack of discernment everywhere that is causing many, especially young people, to just eat up the latest fads with no concern for whether they line up with true, biblical Christianity. For this reason, I’ve ordered a copy of John MacArthur’s new book, The Truth War, and I am looking forward to reading it.

I’m always thankful to find good, solid, biblical teaching from men who will take the Bible and say, “Here is what God’s Word says, and here is what it means for you and me.” Would that more of our pastors will have a burning passion to return to that kind of clear preaching. As Paul told Timothy, “Preach the Word!”

We parents had better be paying attention because this is the culture our children are growing up in. This is how their peers are learning to deal with truth and faith. This is the worldview that their friends will be seeing the world through. We parents had better be diligent to pray for our children and to teach our children God’s Law, the Gospel and the authority and reliability of His Word when we wake up, when we sit down and when we walk along the way. Our kids need a biblical worldview through which to filter every statement they hear. They need the hope that comes from knowing that there is certain truth and they can know it and rest in it. We all need to learn to search the scriptures and examine every teaching to be sure it lines up with God’s word. For there are wolves dressed in sheep’s clothing, and they are growing louder and more popular every day.