June 23, 2009
Deferring
I admire those who can make a Christian defense on the spur of the moment, but for many of us our best thoughts come to us only in hindsight. I think some of us can learn something from a technique used by Jesus. Rather than always defending the Father or Scripture, he would sometimes defer to them. “Haven’t you read this scripture…, You are in error because you do not know the scriptures or the power of God…” Sometimes being able to make a case may not be as important as knowing when to defer to the Authority.
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Gail;
-----Those of us who have watched the demise of our culture’s Christian foundation transpire over the last forty years carry a lot of pent up frustration. On the sidelines of the many debates involved in the process, and in the streets of every town there have been a lot of voices deferring to the power and authority of the Word. But the cameras and microphones of the sycophantic media have been perpetually poked into the faces of philosophers who have tried to defend the culture’s Christian base by reasoning reflective of Scriptural principle, but never by direct reference to it. I have craved to hear a continuous message be fed back to the talking-heads that simply states, “Your understanding of these issues is non-existent because your understanding of God is non-existent because your denial of the Word of God is existent.”
-----What Jesus did when He deferred the argument to Scripture was to set the Scripture up as the premise in the debate. As such, what the Word said then had to be attended and debated. And it is chocked full of simple, undeniable truths that can not be philosophically brushed off the lectern. But philosophical arguments about the existence of God, or His moral character, or His moral authority, or His inspiration of the Bible, yadda, yadda, yadda, can easily be rejected by flat denial, because they can simply be tagged as speculation by any soapy-faced, over-glorified, pragmatic, liberal who has access to a camera and a microphone. For their authority to deny whatever they choose to deny has been given them by a toady, non-thinking public interested only in their next slice of pizza and another can of beer. The talking-heads know this well. So without conscience they support any idea which accommodates an excessive flow of pizza and beer.
-----But how can, “Let love be genuine,” be denied? It then must be accepted as a premise which engages debate about the nature of love and the reality of genuine. How can, “Do good to all men,” be denied? Or, “Let us then pursue what makes for peace?” There are thousands of simple imperatives in the Word of God which indubitably stand upon their own merit. Even the moronic talking-heads understand the folly of denying them. But lo, they have never been forced to face up to them. If over these last forty years of cultural battle the voices of conservatism would have continually raised these myriads of Biblical imperatives, with unabashed reference to their source, at the very least the cultural conscience would be pondering, “Does love serve the one loved, or use the one loved to serve the self,” instead of, “Certainly a woman should have the right to choose!”
-----I agree with you wholeheartedly, Gail. Jesus was a great debate stopper, not because He did not want debate, but because He used the undeniable truths of the Word against the arguments of the unreasonable deniers. I thank God that He is the last scheduled speaker at the lectern of this public debate.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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