Truth Archives — Page 2 of 3

Whatever We Ask: Part 6–Prosperity

“. . . God wants to make your life easier. He wants to assist you, to promote you, to give you advantages. He wants you to have preferential treatment.” Joel Osteen—Your Best Life Now

This quote is an example of a concept known as “prosperity gospel.” There are several variations on the theme, but the main idea is that the Bible’s references to promises of blessing and prosperity are a contract between God and His children. All Christians have to do is confess, or “speak into existence” God’s promises, and He is bound to deliver on them. Both proponents and critics of prosperity theology sometimes refer to it simply as “name it and claim it.”

Indeed, there are many examples of God promising blessings in the Bible. Here are just a couple of them:

The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life. (John 10:10 NLT)

And the Lord will make you abound in prosperity, in the fruit of your womb and in the fruit of your livestock and in the fruit of your ground, within the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give you. (Deut 28:11 ESV)

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We have both the right and the position to ask God for anything in prayer, but remember this. He doesn’t owe us anything, and we owe Him EVERYTHING! If we don’t keep that reality in clear focus, then we are likely to approach God with an attitude of entitlement, rather than one of humility. The result is that, in our minds, God becomes a supernatural ATM, spitting out the blessing whenever we insert our “believe to receive” card.

But wait a minute. Isn’t “believing to receive” the whole point of faith? When we ask, we are supposed to believe and not doubt, and God does promise blessings to those who believe, so what’s the problem with believing that God will keep His word regarding prosperity?

Actually, there’s nothing wrong with trusting God to keep His promises. What’s wrong is the American definition of prosperity.

Let’s face it, y’all. We are SPOILED in this country.

As I write this, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. Most Americans can’t live on that. Just about nobody can raise a family on that. Fast food workers are demanding more than twice that in some areas.

And yet, our federal MINIMUM wage yields an income higher than that of 92% of the world.

Think about that for a minute. If you are working full-time and making federal minimum wage (many states are higher), then you are already doing better than six billion people are.

But do you FEEL rich? In most cases, I would expect that would be a no.

And what about those other six billion people who make less? 2.1 billion of them are Christians. Are they prospering? Is God keeping His promises to them?

Here is a verse that is NOT frequently quoted by prosperity gospel adherents, “Beloved, I pray that with respect to all things you may prosper and be healthy, just as your soul is prospering (3 John 1:2 DLNT).”

The folks that would have you believe that it’s God’s job to make your life easier are putting a period in place of the comma in the verse above. Prosper and be healthy in all things! Sounds great!

But there’s something else there—a “just,” sometimes translated as “even.” John’s assumption is that physical and material prosperity will follow and accompany spiritual prosperity.

So what does that look like?

You need look no further than Paul. First, consider this rundown of his physical circumstances:

Five times the Jews have given me their punishment of thirty-nine lashes with a whip. Three different times I was beaten with rods. One time I was almost stoned to death. Three times I was in ships that wrecked, and one of those times I spent a night and a day in the sea. I have gone on many travels and have been in danger from rivers, thieves, my own people, the Jews, and those who are not Jews. I have been in danger in cities, in places where no one lives, and on the sea. And I have been in danger with false Christians. I have done hard and tiring work, and many times I did not sleep. I have been hungry and thirsty, and many times I have been without food. I have been cold and without clothes. (2 Cor 11:24-27 NCV)

And yet, the same man says this:

I’m not saying that because I need anything. I have learned to be content no matter what happens to me.I know what it’s like not to have what I need. I also know what it’s like to have more than I need. I have learned the secret of being content no matter what happens. I am content whether I am well fed or hungry. I am content whether I have more than enough or not enough. I can do everything by the power of Christ. He gives me strength. (Php 4:11-13 NIRV)

Contentedness is the secret to a prospering soul. And this comes from trusting not that God will give you everything you want for your purposes, but that you will have everything you need for His.

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So how about it? Is your soul prospering? If so, then you are already living “Your Best Life Now.” You don’t have to “believe God” for the biggest house in the neighborhood to make it better.

Whatever We Ask: Part 5–Unstable

But if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and he will be given it. But he should ask in faith, not doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed about by the wind.For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord, since he is a man of two minds, unstable in all his ways. (James 1:5-8 NABRE)

Last August, we discussed that doubt could be healthy if you put it to work for you by testing new information in your search for Truth.

Nevertheless, doubt is not always a healthy thing. It is one matter to doubt one person’s interpretation of scripture or another individual’s worldview. It is quite another to doubt God Himself.

God knows what you need. He knows it before you know it. He is not only capable, but also willing to meet your needs. Yet, it is not your need that He responds to when you pray. It is your faith.

Prayer is based on trust. We ask God to meet our needs and hear our petitions because we believe and trust that He will handle the situation. If we didn’t believe that, why pray at all?

But we still do that sometimes, don’t we? Have you ever offered up a prayer because it seemed like the thing to do, but you didn’t really expect that your prayer would be answered?

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Unstable in all our ways…

Jesus’ brother James is not one to mince words, as you can see in the passage above. He explicitly says that someone who doubts when he prays will not get the answer to their prayer that they hope for. The key word there is “hope.”

There are two different kinds of hope. There is expectant hope, where you are welcoming an event in advance that has not yet come to pass, and there is “I don’t know if this is going to work or not, but I sure HOPE it does.”

Again, what is the point of praying if you don’t expect an answer? Do you believe that God is God or don’t you? If we offer up a prayer from a position of worry, then we are literally “of two minds.” One mind is thinking of God answering the prayer, and the other is thinking of a Plan B.

When we do this, what we are really doing is making God the Plan B, because worry and anxiety will always cut in line ahead of whatever else is present.

So clearly, it is a daunting task to hold both kinds of “hope” in your mind at the same time. Just as you cannot serve two masters, you cannot persevere on two different paths in life simultaneously.

So when James says that a person who does this is “unstable in all his ways,” he is not only saying that this person is indecisive, but by extension, that he cannot be trusted.

That sounds inordinately harsh, but think about it. We’re talking about Christians here. If we can’t even make up our minds about relying on the God we claim to serve, then who would ever rely on US to follow through on anything? A person who spends their life in an endless “What If?” loop never gets anything done that needs doing.

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So if that’s what unstable looks like, then what about stable?

Throughout the Bible, the image of a rock is used to denote stability. God Himself is referred to as the Rock on many occasions. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus also uses this image to describe a life lived by faith:

Therefore, everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them will be like a sensible man who built his house on the rock. The rain fell, the rivers rose, and the winds blew and pounded that house. Yet it didn’t collapse, because its foundation was on the rock. (Matthew 7:24-5 HCSB)

Notice the “and” in Jesus’ statement. It’s not enough to hear what He’s saying and answer with a “yeah, but. . .” Stability and security come not from passive hearing, but from active LISTENING and the follow-through that accompanies it.

Now having used the word “security” there, I am reminded of one more issue regarding the answering of prayers. One that is particularly sticky to us here in the USA.

(Come back for the conclusion in Part 6—Prosperity)

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Whatever We Ask: Part 4–(Un)answered Prayers

All prayers are answered. Sometimes the answer is, “No.”—Bono

One of the pitfalls of the Christian life is how easy it is to backslide from “highly favored child of God” to “spoiled brat.”

We have seasons of life where everything seems to be going our way, and we give God the glory for that. But then life throws us a curveball, and the whining starts.

“Why isn’t God answering my prayer? He said He’d give me anything I ask for. Haven’t I been ‘doing it right’?”

The truth is that God does answer prayer, but not always in the way that we expect.

Sometimes we get excited and run up ahead when He needs us to hold back and notice something He wants to show us. Sometimes selfishness creeps in and the “desires of our hearts” become more like the cravings of our appetites. And sometimes, we simply don’t recognize the answer for what it is when it comes.

God is not a vending machine or an ATM. We exist to serve Him, not the other way around. For this reason, the point of prayer isn’t primarily to address our own needs. Jesus explained it this way:

Don’t worry and say, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ The people who don’t know God keep trying to get these things, and your Father in heaven knows you need them. Seek first God’s kingdom and what God wants. Then all your other needs will be met as well. (Matthew 6:31-33 NCV)

Prayer is your Out box. When you put something in your Out box at work, do you pull it back and put it in your In box again? No, you put it in the Out box because you are finished with it.

Whatever it is that you are praying for, God has a plan for it. It may not be the plan you would have scripted for yourself, but think for a minute. Who’s smarter, you or God? Don’t you think it might be possible that Father knows best?

There’s more to it than that though. Logic alone will tell you that God is bigger, more powerful and more able to meet your needs. The question is, “Do you TRUST Him to do that?” Do you believe that He not only knows what’s best for you, but that He WANTS what’s best for you?

How you answer that question will determine how you respond to His answers. If you really believe that God’s way will lead to a better result than anything you could have come up with, then it becomes a lot easier to roll with the changes when they do come.

(But what happens if we don’t? Come back for Part 5—Unstable)

DN=: Part 14–Equal Opportunity

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . .

(Declaration of Independence)

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

(George Orwell—Animal Farm)

“Equal opportunity” is another way of saying that everyone has the same chance to succeed or fail.

However, instead of designating an equal chance at success or failure, “equal opportunity” has become synonymous in our culture with entitlement. Success is now assumed, and if a person does not succeed, well then that person has been denied “equal opportunity.”

But if equal opportunity in the true sense means the same as fair play and justice, then it would make sense that everyone already HAS equal opportunity. If justice is universal, then so is opportunity.

Oh, but wait a minute. Justice also means getting what we deserve. So we have equal opportunity to make our own choices, but we also have equal responsibility to own the consequences of those choices. Sometimes, those consequences are not favorable.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY DN= EQUAL RESULTS

So it should be plain by now that the “=”movement is not really about equal opportunity at all. What the “=” community is really after is a life and a world that is free from consequences.

The irony is that if the “=” community actually got what it wanted, then it would be UN-equal, since having freedom from consequences would set it apart from the justice that everyone else would receive from making the wrong choice.

“=” DN= EQUAL

Let me pause for a moment here, because I know a lot of you are wondering: “Why does he keep saying ‘the “=” community,’ when he’s obviously talking about the LGBT community?”

The answer is that gay marriage isn’t the real issue here. Sure, the media and our politicians would like to make it the issue, but in the big picture, it all comes back to a problem that plagues everyone, gay or straight—self-righteousness.

Paul makes it clear in his letter to the Romans that homosexuality is not the disease, but merely one of many symptoms:

What happened was this: People knew God perfectly well, but when they didn’t treat him like God, refusing to worship him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives. They pretended to know it all, but were illiterate regarding life.

Worse followed. Refusing to know God, they soon didn’t know how to be human either—women didn’t know how to be women, men didn’t know how to be men. Sexually confused, they abused and defiled one another, women with women, men with men—all lust, no love. And then they paid for it, oh, how they paid for it—emptied of God and love, godless and loveless wretches.

Since they didn’t bother to acknowledge God, God quit bothering them and let them run loose. And then all hell broke loose: rampant evil, grabbing and grasping, vicious backstabbing. They made life hell on earth with their envy, wanton killing, bickering, and cheating. Look at them: mean-spirited, venomous, fork-tongued God-bashers. Bullies, swaggerers, insufferable windbags! They keep inventing new ways of wrecking lives. They ditch their parents when they get in the way. Stupid, slimy, cruel, cold-blooded. And it’s not as if they don’t know better. They know perfectly well they’re spitting in God’s face. And they don’t care—worse, they hand out prizes to those who do the worst things best! (Romans 1:21-22, 26-32 The Message)

Now that sounds awfully harsh, particularly in the Message paraphrase, but can you deny the reality of that in 21^st-century America?

One of the saddest things that I have yet seen is when churches water down or discard this message. It is not a church’s job to provide a safe space for sinners of any kind to come together and “be who they are.” A church’s function is to bring people together to find out who they are in Christ.

Faith in Christ Jesus is what makes each of you equal with each other, whether you are a Jew or a Greek, a slave or a free person, a man or a woman. (Galatians 3:28 CEV)

That’s right. The Truth is that we all have an equal opportunity to be equal in Christ. We have always had it and always will.

Sounds simple enough, but ah, there’s that pride thing getting in the way again. The problem with this simple solution is that it involves surrendering your will, and it is not in our nature to want to do that.

So what is left then for those whose pride prevents them from humbling themselves before God and admitting their failure?

They find someone else to attack.

Christians.

Since there is no Truth or common sense in their argument, based as it is upon their own self-righteousness, then the only avenue left to them is to tear down Truthseekers in order to maintain their perception of superiority.

And since PC code words are their forte, they have come up with the ultimate man-made nonsense word.

(And for that, you’ll have to come back for Part 15)

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DN=: Part 13–Fair Play

“It’s not fair!”

Every child ever

Justice, as you’ll recall, is when we get what we deserve. It’s interesting, though, to note how abruptly our stance on justice and fair play adjusts depending upon which side of the justice we find ourselves.

We sure don’t mind dispensing justice; however, receiving it is a different story.

As in so many other situations, our pride is the problem. If we exalt ourselves to think that we are above justice, and that “the rules” don’t apply to us, then it would follow that we wouldn’t expect to partake in the natural consequences of breaking those rules either.

JUSTICE DN= GETTING YOUR WAY

So although justice is always fair, it only FEELS fair if we have a clear understanding of what it is that we truly deserve:

Adam sinned, and that sin brought death into the world. Now everyone has sinned, and so everyone must die. (Romans 5:12 CEV)

However. . .

The Lord is compassionate and merciful,
very patient, and full of faithful love.
God won’t always play the judge;
he won’t be angry forever.
He doesn’t deal with us according to our sin
or repay us according to our wrongdoing,
because as high as heaven is above the earth,
that’s how large God’s faithful love is for those who honor him.
As far as east is from west—
that’s how far God has removed our sin from us.
Like a parent feels compassion for their children—
that’s how the Lord feels compassion for those who honor him.
(Psalm 103: 8-13 CEB)

Did you catch the key phrase there? David repeated it to make sure that you would. Justice is universal, but God reserves grace for those who honor him.

Without this grace, the only thing left for us is justice. The universal natural consequence of our universal sinful nature is death. This is the ultimate Truth of our lives, and complete reliance on Jesus for our salvation is the only way out of it.

Obviously, many reject this Truth. Equally obvious is the fact that we all have a choice to accept it or reject it.

Nevertheless, for some reason the prevailing mentality in this country has become that one can do whatever one wishes, up to and including a complete rejection of universal Truth, and suffer no consequences whatsoever.

FAIR PLAY DN= ENTITLEMENT

We all have desires. However, a person who is ruled by pride will view the fulfillment of his or her desires as the primary goal. Those that are successful in fulfilling a few of these desires may quickly begin to regard this fulfillment as an entitlement.

Then, in their own minds, they will conceive a bogus sense of justice and fair play, in which they “deserve” to get whatever they want whenever they want, and anyone or anything that would deny them that is guilty of an injustice.

However:

Many people vie for special treatment from a ruler,
yet genuine justice proceeds from the Eternal. (Proverbs 29:26 VOICE)

Because God alone is righteous, and because God alone determines Truth, it is only by God’s authority that true justice can be dispensed.

The eternal, indisputable and universal justice that applies to all humanity is not only manifest in our rights, but also in our consequences.

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A majority of humans may get laws changed. A government skilled in social engineering may even be able to get the attitude of a nation changed. But NOTHING a government or its advocates can do will ever be able to change the natural consequences of a choice.

A government can grant or deny privileges. A government can mandate civil responsibilities. A government has the authority to set its own civil penalties for breaking its own rules and laws.

But a government will NEVER be capable of conferring rights upon any subset of the human race.

Yes, this even includes homosexuals.

(Yeah, I went there. Wait till you see where I go next in Part 14–Equal Opportunity)

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DN=: Part 12–Civil Liberties

“I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but I will not be mastered by anything. (1 Corinthians 6:12 NIV)

I’m free to choose who I see any old time

I’m free to bring who I choose any old time

Love me hold me love me hold me

I’m free any old time to get what I want

“I’m Free” Mick Jagger/Keith Richards

One of the main functions of a father is to establish and enforce boundaries for his children. The intent of setting these boundaries is to protect his children, because he knows more than they do.

There is no condemnation in this, only a sense of love and protection. The child picks up on this, and remains content within the security of the boundary.

Now if an earthly father can manage to set healthy boundaries in love, how much more effective and useful are our heavenly Father’s boundaries! Would it not stand to reason that an omniscient God, who knows every possible outcome of every possible choice we could make, would know what’s good for us and what isn’t?

The most obvious example of this is the 10 Commandments. A lot of people are put off by them because of the “Thou shalt not” tone that most of them have. So why would a loving Father God put such restrictions on the freedom of His children?

One word—consequences.

LIBERTY DN= FREEDOM FROM CONSEQUENCES

Some consequences of violating God’s boundaries are obvious. Take for example “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” If you break that commandment, the most obvious and immediate consequence is generally the breakup of a marriage.

Long-term and indirect consequences are difficult to predict, however. We can’t know for certain how young children will be affected by the divorce—how they will cope with the sense of loss, how they will develop socially as they grow, what baggage they might carry into their future relationships and marriages.

God sees every potential negative consequence, and wants to protect us from them. Nevertheless, our nature instinctively reacts to any kind of boundary as a restriction on our freedom. Christian or not, nobody likes being told what to do, or to have their “freedom of choice” taken away.

But when you stop to think about it, this is a ridiculous notion. NOBODY can take away your freedom of choice, not even God. He’s the one who gave it to you in the first place.

Boundaries

God doesn’t set boundaries to take away our choice. He places them there to assist us in making the right choice, because he knows which choices will have good consequences and which will have bad consequences.

However, somewhere along the line our culture developed a callous disregard for sin, or crossing God’s boundary lines, and its consequences. Our culture has been brainwashed to believe that God’s boundaries, as set forth in the Bible, are out of date and out of touch with progress.

Since the Bible is God’s Word, and therefore our most definitive written source of Truth, this Truth gets dismissed along with the Bible. Inside this moral vacuum, people get the idea that they can create their own truth—a moving target that is relative to whatever suits their whims at any given moment—and anything contrary to that amorphous worldview then becomes a violation of their civil liberties.

Only here’s the problem. Since Truth is universal, and it’s found in the same place where God’s “restrictive” boundaries are, then it would follow that the consequences of crossing those boundaries are also universal.

The consequence of mentally turning sin into civil liberties is that to do so, the concept of civil responsibility is totally abandoned. You can’t be “free to do what you want any old time” and be your brother’s keeper at the same time.

Fortunately, God has a way of evening things out.

(To find out how, come back for Part 13–Fair Play)

DN=: Part 11–Backwards

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

George Santayana—The Life of Reason

All that is not eternal is eternally out of date.

C.S. Lewis–The Four Loves

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 8–Hate Speech

Be clearheaded. Keep alert. Your accuser, the devil, is on the prowl like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. (1 Peter 5:8 CEB)

All of humanity has a common enemy—Satan, the accuser. The enemy’s primary goal has always been our destruction, but he has been busy developing some new tactics.

First to review, you’ll remember that in Part 3, we identified “righteousness” as being a right standing with God the Father, which is made possible only through a trusting relationship with His Son, Jesus. Those with whom the enemy succeeds in denying this opportunity for righteousness will nevertheless still crave it.

However, since they have allowed themselves to be cut off from God’s saving grace, they are only able to manufacture a false perception of righteousness. In their desperate attempt to elevate themselves in their own minds, they find themselves compelled to disparage others in order to make that possible.

The enemy facilitates this process by helping those under his influence categorize people into groups and label them. Then he directs his unwitting followers to abuse the people in those groups by treating them unequally and criticizing them based on their differences.

Over time, these blanket condemnations become a habit, and hatred develops. If left unchecked by correction, it is possible for this hatred to swell into an epidemic of ignorant bigotry. This bigotry will then be projected toward the groups of people to whom they are trying to maintain their sense of superiority.

Combating this is a struggle we all share. And it is indeed a daily struggle. Seeing other people as individual human beings, instead of part of a labeled subset of humanity, requires a generous helping of both humility and critical thinking.

Knowing this, our enemy imparts his unwary abettors with a liberal dose of arrogance, which suppresses all traces of humility and artificially inflates their perception of their own intellect, eliminating the prospect of any critical thought taking place.

This is where the enemy plays to his greatest strength. He advises his impressionable followers, “If you can’t convince ‘em, accuse ‘em!”

And this is how it plays out.

When one of these people attempts to engage a Truthseeker in debate, he quickly discovers the futility of this venture, since the primary objective for Truthseekers is to end arguments, not win them. Since the arguer finds that he cannot claim the logical high ground, he will then attempt to lower the ground beneath his opponent by attacking his character.

But here is the twist! Since unwarranted character assassination would make him guilty of judgmentalism, he must first deflect his own guilt by accusing the Truthseeker of being judgmental himself, thereby forcing him into a defensive position. With any luck, the Truthseeker will take the bait, lower himself into the argument, and thus become that which he has already been accused of being.

On the other hand, a mature Truthseeker will not take the bait, but will simply hold fast to the Truth, and not change course.

When the arguer sees that his attempts at both logic and character assassination have failed, he plays the only card left in his deck by attacking Truth itself.

He does this by labeling the Truth “hate speech.”

DEFENSE OF TRUTH DN= HATE SPEECH

The irony of this concept of “hate speech” is that the people most commonly accused of hate speech are in actuality the ones most commonly on the receiving end of it.

For centuries upon centuries, Christians have put their trust in the eternal God, in his indisputable and unchanging Word in which He is revealed, and in His universal promises and plan for all of mankind. In a world where people follow after every wind of change, no matter how ludicrous, we build our lives on the solid rock of eternal unchanging Truth, passing it down from generation to generation.

But instead of a fixed and eternal rock, our faith is now portrayed by our degenerate culture as an ignorant and hateful tradition. We are even demonized for faithfully carrying out our most important responsibility as parents, the passing on of our faith to future generations, with the charge of “indoctrinating” our own children!

If parents should not be the ones most responsible for helping to frame the basic worldview and shaping the character of their own children, then who should? The enemy has some ideas about that.

(And you’ll hear all about them if you come back for Part 9—Brainwashing.)