Christianity and Liberalism
Part 3
I feel it necessary to elaborate for a few moments on the subject of liberalism versus conservatism. Although I find it more than compelling to draw the obvious parallels between modern 'Christian' thinking and liberalism, I am in no way placing any stamp of approval on much of what is considered conservative positions. It is just that most liberal thinking is too easy to ignore. However, when a person's morals, ethics or behavior is contrary to the word of YHVH, then it matters not what his or her culturally accepted banner is. A man of God is measured by his God. The walk of a man of God is to be measured by the walk of his God. If a man is lawless, then his god is lawless. This is precisely why the 'god of this world' is called the lawless or Torahless one, and why his followers teach and do the same.
It is unfortunate that most of us measure each others values and morals upon what is generally accepted by the majority, rather than by the revealed word of our Creator. The conservative position still maintains that the majority of the people in this country are indeed conservatives with 'Christian' values and 'down home' heart of the country morals. The problem with that brings us to the question of what are 'Christian' values, and who defines what those values are? Does a conservative position translate to a godly position? Is a Christian position a godly position? Some of us may answer no to that, but that is the paradigm that is commonly accepted, and it is this knee-jerk model that irritates liberal thinking. It is my opinion that we need a third position. There is liberal thinking, conservative thinking, and then there is scriptural thinking. Let me give an example. How many times have you heard someone tell you about a movie they saw, and describe it as the classic struggle between good and evil? I have even listened to 'Christian' brothers defend a particularly violent or downright demonic movie by saying that it was not a bad movie because it was all about the struggle of good versus evil and good won! Can you see what is wrong with this picture? (pun intended) Yes! Good won over evil. But who defined what was good and who defined what was evil? The director? The writer? Before we move on let me ask another question. Is the movie 'Left Behind" from a scriptural point of view or a Christian point of view? What is good and righteous is defined by the written word of God, period.
Passing new laws instead of enforcing the ones that already exist!
This is the life blood of liberalism and liberal politics. It is basically job justification. Here's how it goes. After winning an election in your state, you immediately team up with like kind, while collectively praising the fact that your party won and FREEDOM has been restored to the masses. Like minded liberals then form an eternal committee to study a problem that will not go away. Being paid to pass laws, they draw up a bill that proposes new legislation to fix the problem. Some time after the law is passed another study is done which will always conclude that the previous legislation is not working. The eternal committee meets to study the matter and subsequently proposes new legislation, which is what they are paid to do. The object being, that whether the laws are designed to be enforced or not, the studies and polls will always indicate that they are not working. This is precisely why in every election we are confronted with the same issues. Passing new laws while ignoring the old ones only produces more committees to pass more laws. Another monkey wrench in this absurd merry-go-round is the constant changing of the guard, who by nature, want to make a clean sweep of their predecessors. This brings us back to our first installment of this teaching in which we discussed the demonizing of the antecedent. In with the new, out with the old. Hallelujah! Happy days are here again.
Where could this kind of thinking come from? What religion can you think of that has tossed out Torah, only to replace it (or Him) with more laws than you can count? What religion can you think of that has little or no problem with man-made laws, but jumps up and down in praise over our immancipation from God's laws? What religion can you think of that believes that 'Christ' died to put an end to the laws of God but not the laws of man? Am I being unfair here?
It has been estimated by learned men long ago that there are 613 commandments in the Tenakh. I would propose that if Adam and Chavah had obeyed the first commandment, there would be no need for ten more. It is also my proposal that if God's people obeyed the 'Ten Commandments' there would be no need for six hundred and three more. But this is not the fallen nature of man. Man has, from the very beginning, rejected the instructions of his Creator, only to replace them with his own, and then claim that he is freed from the law. The dominant religious teaching in this country it that we are not accountable to the 613 commandments of the Tenakh, but only to the tens of thousands of manmade laws. What is wrong with this picture? All we have done is replace God's laws with our own. Man has proffered a thousand reasons for turning away from the instructions of his Creator, most of which had come from our pulpits. You know, those 'elected' representatives of the masses. Those selected men and women whose very jobs depend upon pleasing the masses and passing new religious legislation. You know, those who actively participate in demonizing the 'Old Testament law' while creating a whole new set of sabbaths, festivals, rituals and liturgy. Of course, that's what they are paid for.
What liberals know about conservatives, they learned from other liberals.
Recently, an ex-journalist named Bernard Goldberg wrote a provocative expose' on the liberal bias of the media. It was obviously a shock for us all to learn that the media was prejudiced. One of his revelations was that many news people do not really believe or understand that they are biased. This, Mr. Goldberg explains, is mainly due to the fact that most media people party among themselves and discuss the important issues from inside their own world. It is not that they are not out in the world, it is just that their perspective of where it came from and what it all means is limited to their own kind and those who already share the same world view. In other words, their view of those who hold a different opinion, is based upon intellectual exchanges with those who hold the same views as themselves. Kind of a circular reasoning, if you will. Besides the fact that this gives them a skewed view of conservatives, the most pathetic result is a skewed view of themselves. There is no way for them to validate their own beliefs. Let me give an example. A group of us are born and raised in a McDonald's resturant. We had never ventured outside the dining area. Having been convinced that the whole world was red and yellow, I approach a fellow employee, dressed in red and yellow, and ask him his opinion of the colors of the outside world. "Well," he says, "I think it is pretty clear ...".
I was raised in the Christian church. I was told that the Christian religion is not really a religion, but is based upon a relationship with the Savior. However, all other religious systems WERE religions because they were not based upon a relationship, but rather upon the words of men and so-called prophets. Everything I knew about other religions was told to me by Christians. Everything I knew about Christians was told to me by Christians. All of a sudden I am craving a Big Mac. Anyway, let me share with you for a moment a small, and seemingly insignificant episode in my life. I had spent several years of my life a while back witnessing the true 'Christ' to the lost Mormons. After consuming a few hundred anti-Mormon tracts, I was now prepared to give 'um hell. There were all kinds of methods used to show that their prophet and their doctrines were not scriptural. By the way, their prophet and much of their doctrine isn't biblical. One thought provoking fact that we nailed them with concerned the ordinance of baptism that was clearly taught in a book that was supposed to have been given to Joseph Smith word for word, 600 years before Christ. You should have seen the looks on some of their faces when we told them that baptism did not come along till the New Testament. This was another nail in the coffin of Mormon teaching that proved that the book of Mormon was not from events that took place 600 years before Christ.
It was near or about this time that I made a deliberate move of my own, and dove through the takeout window. Hey guess what? The world is not all red and yellow and baptism was practiced by Israel long before the Messiah. Could it be possible that Christian theologians could be uninformed about other things? Could they have a bias? Is it even possible that they do not know everything?
Several years ago, I was explaining the meaning behind some of the Hebrew idioms used quite extensively in the Brit Chadashah to a friend of mine. He stopped me in the middle of my ranting and said, "Where in the world are you reading this?" Now, let me first explain that the question was rhetorical. What he was really saying is that what I was saying was different than what he had been taught, so then by definition it must be wrong. There is no understanding of scripture outside of the state appointed, whoops, I mean, church appointed sources. Let me put this in a nutshell. Most Christians only hang out with other Christians. Most of what they know about the 'Messianic' perspective, they have heard from other Christians. They rarely ask you what you believe or teach because it is outside of their box, and is heretical at best because it is outside of the box. They cackle among themselves about it, and the next thing you know, you are wearing dredlocks, dancing naked, getting re-circumcised and swinging chickens around your head. Am I a little harsh here? Perhaps.
Shalom Alecheim!