Look Where Imagining There’s No Heaven Has Gotten Us

How did the world go crazy?  How is it that no one can tell anyone that they are wrong about anything?  How did a biblical view of the world become the object of hate and scorn?

You might want to ask John Lennon.  His 1971 atheistic anthem (now attributed to both Lennon and Yoko Ono) was the philosophical mantra of the 1960s that has now gone completely mainstream and touches every aspect of society.

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace.

 When you throw off all vestiges of religion and morality, you also throw off all sense of right and wrong.  “Evil” atheism has an ethic based upon survival of the fittest. “Nice” atheism sees no sense of right and wrong, has no standard for truth, and eventually requires that everyone is affirmed no matter how unreasonable or self-destructive their views might be.  The end of each is destruction.  That destruction is certainly eternal, but contrary to John Lennon’s dream it brings destruction “today” as well.

It is a world view built on no standard, no right, no wrong, and it does not work.

In 1989, Kenneth Myers described this cultural relativism as the great foe of Christianity.  Myers asked whether there are any transcendent standards by which one culture could be considered superior to another.  He maintained that there were and as a result saw cultural relativism as something that must be battled.  He described cultural relativism as follows:

First of all, we are forced to fight cultural relativism, that nasty habit all too common in the twentieth century to assume that all values associated with someone’s culture are simply created by that culture, that all cultures create values, and that it is simply egocentric and chauvinistic [and now white] to prefer one set of values to another. (All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes, Crossway, 1989, p. 29).

He goes on to say that without the truth claims of scripture, there can be no clear thinking about culture and that cultural relativism is the enemy of Christianity.

The world we live in today is the full manifestation of the cultural relativism of the academic world of the 1960s, but it is not new.

Judges 17:6 describes our time perfectly.  There is no judge, no norm, and everyone does what is right in their own eyes and who are you to tell them any different?  This type of thinking ultimately and always leads to chaos and slavery.  It did for Israel in cycle after cycle in the Judges.  There is little doubt that the same conditions led to the antediluvian violence that brought judgment on the earth.  History is also full of examples.  The chaos in Germany after World War 1 led to Hitler, the bloodbath of the French Revolution paved the way for Napolean, and the chaos of the Bolshevik Revolution led to communist totalitarianism.

We have an obligation before God to fight for a Christian world-view but that fight needs to take place in areas that we do not readily consider.

We have to fight cultural relativism in our own minds.  Wherever we go, we are being brainwashed and pressured to give in.  It’s in the music, the news, movies, TV, social media, everywhere.  Sometimes it is even pushed on believers by their own children.  We have to guard our minds–fill our minds with Philippians 4:8 thinking.  Test all things according to 1 Thessalonians 5, hanging on to the good and discarding the evil.  We must be discerning in every aspect of what we take into our minds.  We have to give up being “fans” of those that promote anti-god thinking.

We must fight cultural relativism in the church itself. When it has invaded churches, the light of the gospel is eventually extinguished. Consider Gracepointe Church in Nashville, which affirmed same-sex marriages in 2015 today claims the Bible is not scientifically reliable, not authoritative, and is not the word of God (here).  This is simply an abdication of the faith once delivered to the saints. Gracepointe has given up New Testament Christianity.

We need to fight cultural relativism in the education of our children.  Christian parents have to honestly face what their children are being taught in state-run schools. If they do not understand and properly respond, they will lose their children to the lies of this age.  This can happen on all levels—elementary, high school, and college. Our children cannot be kept innocent.  They must truly have a relationship with God and be equipped to battle the lies of this world.  No academic reputation or economic advantage is worth the sacrifice of the minds and hearts of our children. I am all for Christians running for school boards and seeking to have an educational influence on a local level, but it is highly unwise to think our children are equipped to transform the schools we send them to attend or the teachers to whom we entrust them.  There is more of a need for Christian education now than ever.

We need to fight cultural relativism with the truth of the gospel.  We will never argue someone into heaven.  There is no intellectual argument for someone who believes that all truth claims are arrogant.  The only gospel message that will penetrate that armor is the light of the gospel living in us and the piercing supernatural testimony of the Word of God enlightened by the Holy Spirit as it penetrates the heart of the lost.

We are in a cultural battle.  We have at least four fronts on which we must fight.  The fight has come to us, we will either take a stand against the lies that surround us, or we will succumb to them.

Dare to stand.

 

Photo by Ted McGrath–https://www.flickr.com/photos/time-to-look/49897228748