DN=: Part 11–Backwards

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

All that is not eternal is eternally out of date.

Last July, we talked about three ways of learning. There is experience, or making your own mistakes and learning from them. Then there is wisdom, which is learning from someone else’s mistakes so as not to repeat them. And then there is common sense, which is collective wisdom that has taken root in a population.

Observing this progression, it is easy to see that common sense results from people building upon what has gone before. It is the sum of the mistakes and the corrections of previous generations. It would logically follow, then, that to employ common sense in one’s reasoning, one must look backwards to history.

Nevertheless, our culture inexplicably does not seem to value this type of reasoning anymore. The “progressive” ideology dictates that all things must change in the name of moving “forward.” Whether it was working well or not is immaterial.

But common sense dictates that if you have made a wrong turn, forward is not your best option. To get back on the right road, you’ll have to go backwards until you reach the spot where you made the wrong turn. THEN go forward.

Obviously, you can’t go forward and backwards at the same time. Therefore, by completely ignoring (or worse, attempting to modify) history, a “progressive” mentality completely nullifies any potential of employing common sense. This makes failure a virtual certainty.

The primary reason that Truth Mission exists is to declare war on this intellectual futility.

Truthseekers proclaim God and His Word as the source of all Truth, which is unchanging and applies equally to all people in all situations. Truth never fails, because God never fails.

Understanding this, it then becomes clear why Christians look to the Bible for answers when life poses difficult questions. The Bible has an example for nearly any situation in terms of which strategies work and which ones don’t. Because the Bible is the ultimate source of correction, it will always improve our situation if we heed that correction.

More importantly, however, because God’s Word is eternal and unchanging, the lessons it teaches will always have value, regardless of the circumstances of the world or our individual situations.

ETERNAL DN= OUT OF DATE

As we have already noted, one cannot go backwards and forward at the same time. Therefore, anyone obsessed with moving forward at all costs misses the opportunity for the course correction that only history and Truth can provide.

Since one with such a worldview only sees the Bible as a musty old book, and not God’s eternal Truth, the further “forward” they go, the smaller Truth becomes in their rearview mirror. Since they consider everything behind them “out-of-date,” then the Truth and all who proclaim it become, in their minds, “backwards.”

So forward they go, until inevitably, they find a tree in their path, yielding the all-too-predictable result. Busted face notwithstanding, their pride remains intact, since that was what led them forward in the first place.

In the absence of the common sense that has been left behind, this pride initiates the blame game by rationalizing: “I am superior to the backwards thinkers, yet I have a busted face. Those to whom I am superior do not have busted faces; therefore, it must be their fault that my face is busted. Indeed, they are likely the ones who planted this tree to prevent me from going forward. I should have the freedom to walk wherever I choose without having to worry about my face being busted!”

(So what’s the problem with freedom of choice? Come back for Part 12–Civil Liberties)

DN=: Part 10–Affirmation

For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thornbushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks. (Luke 6:43-45 ESV)

If a person’s words are trustworthy, that person will have an established record of trustworthiness. You are not going to be led down a successful path by someone who has never succeeded.

Likewise, a person known for encouraging others likely won’t tell you something that will be a stumbling block to you. Even if it’s something you didn’t expect, or didn’t WANT, to hear.

We all come to a day of reckoning where we realize the direction we’re going isn’t the one in which we ought to be. I can’t imagine anyone going through his or her entire lives without making at last one major course correction. (If you’re reading this and you haven’t yet, don’t worry, you will.)

No matter who you are and what your situation is, that situation, and your destiny, will never change without you making some conscious decision to change your way of thinking and go a way you haven’t gone before. This could mean a slight change in direction, or a complete 180.

The churchy word for a change of mind accompanied by a change of direction is…

Repentance

The important thing to understand is that repentance cannot occur without new information entering the cranium. You can’t change your mind or choose your direction without knowing that you have a choice to make.

The trouble is that the right choice is not always the easy one. In fact, it usually isn’t. The right choice usually results from your having received information that you needed, but not necessarily that you wanted.

Anybody can tell you what you want to hear. If you want your current belief system to be affirmed, the internet is more than happy to oblige. All you have to do is type what you already believe into your favorite search engine. You will find thousands, maybe even millions of people, to affirm your point of view.

There’s just one problem with this. Belief DN= Truth. As such, a quest for affirmation will never lead to intellectual or spiritual growth.

AFFIRMATION DN= INFORMATION

Now don’t get me wrong; I am speaking of affirmation in the sense of affirming a point of view, not one’s own self-worth. The latter is healthy affirmation. I will tell you plainly that I crave that kind of affirmation nearly as much as I crave oxygen.

However, a quick perusal of the Truthseeker Manifesto will illuminate everything that is detrimental about a quest for affirmation of one’s worldview.

You can’t end an argument by attempting to bolster your own position. You can’t establish common ground without leaving your own ground. Seeking to affirm your beliefs does not afford you the opportunity to test them. Also, it is very difficult to explain your own reasoning when all it consists of is quote mining from other people’s reasoning.

Essentially, the quest for affirmation is a rejection of Truthseeking. The desire for affirmation is a symptom of insecurity. Specifically, it is the fear of losing everything that is familiar to you on the off chance that whatever, or whoever, is challenging your belief pattern might have some information that you would have to accept.

The only way to overcome this fear is to have a burning desire to be informed, not just to believe, but to KNOW! But knowledge only comes when you take the lid off the glass.

In a culture that values affirmation, however, this is easier said than done. If we are serious about obtaining information that is worth knowing and passing on, we may have to look to history.

(For a different kind of history lesson, come back for Part 11—Backwards)

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DN=: Part 9–Brainwashing

Brainwashing (n.)

1: a forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up basic political, social, or religious beliefs and attitudes and to accept contrasting regimented ideas

2: persuasion by propaganda or salesmanship

(Merriam Webster dictionary)

Listen, dear friends, to God’s truth,
    bend your ears to what I tell you.
I’m chewing on the morsel of a proverb;
    I’ll let you in on the sweet old truths,
Stories we heard from our fathers,
    counsel we learned at our mother’s knee.
We’re not keeping this to ourselves,
    we’re passing it along to the next generation—
God’s fame and fortune,
    the marvelous things he has done.

He planted a witness in Jacob,
    set his Word firmly in Israel,
Then commanded our parents
    to teach it to their children
So the next generation would know,
    and all the generations to come—
Know the truth and tell the stories
    so their children can trust in God,
Never forget the works of God
    but keep his commands to the letter.
Heaven forbid they should be like their parents,
    bullheaded and bad,
A fickle and faithless bunch
    who never stayed true to God.

(Psalm 78: 1-8 The Message)

When you see a child who behaves well in public, what is it you always say? “The public school system sure has made a great citizen out of that boy?” Or, “Our governmental programs have certainly taught this young lady how to be a good American?”

No, you say, “Their parents must have taught them well.” If the parents are present, you might thank them directly for being such good parents. Lord knows if the kids AREN’T behaving, it’s the parents you’re going to blame, right?

So if it is this obvious that everything a child is and does is shaped by the examples set by his or her parents, then why does our culture get so bent about Christian parents setting a Christian example for their kids?

School’s in session.

Education, of course, is a good thing. If we never learned anything, then we wouldn’t know anything (duh). And common sense, that is, the collective wisdom of all the I told you so’s from all the parents ever, tells us that the primary source of any child’s education is at home.

Face it; we’re all home-schooled, no matter what our diplomas say.

Our parents have us from day one, when we are completely empty glasses. From them we learn to walk, talk, eat, pee and poo where we’re supposed to. Sometimes they even teach us to read, write and count before we start school.

Most importantly our parents, and specifically our fathers, are the primary shapers of our value system, our moral compasses, our sense of right and wrong.

So is this education or brainwashing?

EDUCATION DN= BRAINWASHING

Look back up to the top at the dictionary definition of brainwashing. It’s not just indoctrination, or even FORCED indoctrination; it is forced indoctrination designed to replace one way of thinking with another.

Parents are teachers, not indoctrinators. They are filling empty glasses. A child does not yet have a way of thinking or a value system to replace.

Therefore nothing, let me say that once more for emphasis, NOTHING that a parent teaches his or her own children can possibly constitute brainwashing. This includes the passing on of Christian faith, the bedrock upon which the family has been established generation after generation.

So if giving your own children a Christian education is akin to pouring the Water of Life into their empty glasses, then by contrast, cultural brainwashing is coercing an educated person of any age to pour out their water, smash their glass, and take a deep drink from this brand new glass of fruit juice.

What do you mean it tastes like Kool-Aid?

(For an alternate beverage choice, come back for Part 10: Affirmation)

DN=: Part 5–Discrimination

Discernment is the divine enablement to distinguish between truth and error, good and evil, right and wrong. A person with this gift can differentiate pure from impure motives, identify deception in others, determine authenticity of messages from God, recognize false teaching and sense the presence of evil. (Paraphrased from “Network” by Bruce Bugbee and Don Cousins.)

In other words, discernment is God’s B.S. detector.

Have you ever known someone who accurately saw something fake or sinister in a person’s character before anyone else did? Have you ever had a friend who told you what you were thinking when you couldn’t even explain it yourself? This is discernment at work.

(Remember back at the beginning of this series when I talked about people talking in code? I didn’t forget about that. From here on out, we’re going to defuse political correctness one code-bomb at a time.)

Another word with a meaning similar to discernment, in the literal sense of having the ability to distinguish differences, is discrimination.

While discernment is a spiritual gift, given by God to whomever He chooses, discrimination is a natural skill that can be learned and developed by anybody through careful observation and judicious contemplation.

It would seem, then, that discrimination should actually be a positive thing, since being UN-able to recognize differences would be a sign of a lack of intelligence or observance.

Nevertheless, this word has gradually become associated with “bigotry,” even though those two words really aren’t connected.

DISCRIMINATION DN= BIGOTRY

There’s a big difference between distinguishing the differences in people and treating people differently. Paul wrote:

In Christ’s family there can be no division into Jew and non-Jew, slave and free, male and female. Among us you are all equal. That is, we are all in a common relationship with Jesus Christ. (Galatians 3:28 MSG)

And also:

[In this new creation all distinctions vanish.] There is no room for and there can be neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, [nor difference between nations whether alien] barbarians or Scythians [who are the most savage of all], nor slave or free man; but Christ is all and in all, everything and everywhere, to all men, without distinction of person]. (Colossians 3:11 AMP)

In making these statements, Paul is instructing these early churches that although the Church is made up of all kinds of different people from different backgrounds, it is much more significant that Christ is our common ground. Being the original Truthseeker, Paul discriminates by noting the differences, but does not show favoritism, because Christ does not show favoritism.

Looking at it this way, we can clearly see that bigotry is defined by emphasizing differences with the motive of boosting one’s own status over that of another based solely upon those differences. Bigotry may START with discrimination, but it ends somewhere else entirely.

So how do you know when you’ve crossed the line?

Labels

Whenever you refer to another person with a label instead of their name, that’s a pretty clear sign that you are crossing over to the dark side of discrimination, because you are now seeing that person not as an individual, but as part of a subset of humanity, most likely one to which you do not belong yourself.

Once you have identified the difference and affixed a label to it, the emphasis of that difference comes naturally. From there, it’s a very short walk to bigotry, simply because our human nature is to justify ourselves, and the easiest way to do that is to lower our view of others. Labels just streamline that process.

So how does discernment fit into this?

From the definitions we have already discussed, discernment is essentially God-level discrimination. But since we have already seen that God sees all of His followers as equal in Christ, then it should be obvious that the purpose of discernment is not to enable bigotry by labeling humans and dividing them into groups.

Discernment is not about judging character or outward appearances, but rather motives and the behavior that arises from them. Which leads me to my next DN=.

(Come back for Part 6–Judgmental)

DN=: Part 1–Does Not Equal

Perhaps, like me, you have noticed a preponderance of equal signs lately, on Facebook and elsewhere. I have also noticed a link between the equal sign and false accusations of “hatred, bigotry and ignorance” being directed at people who are not necessarily on board with the equal sign.

This got me to thinking about people and their differences. Obviously, there’s a whole bunch of us on this planet. We are all unique, as are our experiences and perspectives. We all see life a little bit differently. Yet it seems that we all carry with us the assumption that everyone sees life in exactly the same way.

I expect this is our natural self-centeredness at work. If someone doesn’t share our point of view, well, then there must be something wrong with that person.

This much is natural, but it seems that in this generation our society has taken this concept to absurd extremes. Simple misunderstandings of diverse points of view have become breeding grounds for character judgments and demonization.

This progression has given birth to the phenomenon known as political correctness, in which people speak in code words with the purpose of not offending others. Unless they feel offended themselves. In that case, there is another set of code words with which they can label and demonize their opponents without taking the time to hear them out.

Anyone else see a disconnect here?

I may have found a way to disarm this bomb, however. If we are speaking with integrity, that is, if we say exactly what we mean and mean exactly what we say, then in theory, we have eliminated the possibility for misunderstanding.

One problem with this theory however—people who speak in code also assume that you are doing it as well. So rather than hearing what you say, which is exactly what you meant to say, they waste much mental energy trying to figure out the hidden agenda you don’t have.

So in order to better understand each other, we need some clear definitions of the words we say and the thoughts and intentions behind them. To this end, I have come up with my own variation of the equal sign: the DN= (Does Not Equal). The purpose of DN= is to clarify the motives behind our words to be more thoroughly heard, and therefore, better understood.

To illustrate the DN= principle, let’s start with a word all Americans know–freedom.

(And that’s just what we’ll do, if you come back for DN= Part 2!)