Monday, February 3, 2014
377 - When Opposites Attack
Spirituality Column #377
February 4, 2014
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville
"Truth, of course, must of necessity be stranger than fiction, for we have made fiction to suit ourselves.” – G.K. Chesterton, Heretics, 1905
Almost 110 years ago Christian apologist and British essayist G.K. Chesterton whimsically railed against society in his book Heretics, pointing out that contemporary thought had most things backwards when it came to right and wrong.
Things we ought to know are right – the love of Christ, the sanctity of marriage, the innocence of children, the obligation of hard work, the personal responsibility of political freedom, the truth of the Bible, and reflecting the servant-hearted love of Christ in our dealings with others – are declared wrong. Heresy becomes orthodoxy, and vice versa. Opposites attack the truth.
Chesterton’s England was overtaken by made-up morality of the moment put forth by the academic, economic, political, artistic and media elite. Sound familiar?
Among the great intellectual issues Chesterton described were the growing primacy of Darwin and Evolution displacing God’s Creation, the marginalization of the Church, the general disappearance of the population’s day to day common Christian faith, Marxism and the nascent menace of early communism, the precursive imperialist aspirations of Germany which would soon result in two world wars, and the “progressive” view of truth – much as it exists today – that believes true liberty means being free from the responsibility of concrete behavioral ideals.
Chesterton noted Henrik Ibsen’s maxim, “The Golden Rule is that there is no Golden Rule.” We had a way of saying it in the 1960s: “If it feels good, do it.”
Here in America, things did change dramatically in the 1960s. That decade saw the ouster of school prayer, ascendance of global communism, Viet Nam, the Kennedy and King assassinations, the broad emergence of “The Pill” contraceptive, civil rights tension, and a complete overhaul of popular music – the language of the times – on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. The 1970s with legalized abortion, and then homosexual normalization over the decades, has us in a cultural place today Chesterton would easily recognize.
I don’t see where “Progressive thought” – the systematic lie of convenient and libertine personal preference favored over sovereign God’s enduring absolute truth – has helped mankind progress at all. Progress for mankind was Jesus Christ on the Cross; that restored relationship with God. The Old Testament tells us of God, Creation, and Humanity, and the New Testament tells us the truth of divine love, our sin, forgiveness in Christ, and the everlasting glory of God.
Society resists truth that glorifies eternal God and embraces fiction that glorifies temporal man. No wonder the world seems so strange … still.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) remembers watching the Beatles’ first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show Feb. 8, 1964, 50 years ago.
February 4, 2014
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville
When Opposites Attack
By Bob Walters"Truth, of course, must of necessity be stranger than fiction, for we have made fiction to suit ourselves.” – G.K. Chesterton, Heretics, 1905
Almost 110 years ago Christian apologist and British essayist G.K. Chesterton whimsically railed against society in his book Heretics, pointing out that contemporary thought had most things backwards when it came to right and wrong.
Things we ought to know are right – the love of Christ, the sanctity of marriage, the innocence of children, the obligation of hard work, the personal responsibility of political freedom, the truth of the Bible, and reflecting the servant-hearted love of Christ in our dealings with others – are declared wrong. Heresy becomes orthodoxy, and vice versa. Opposites attack the truth.
Chesterton’s England was overtaken by made-up morality of the moment put forth by the academic, economic, political, artistic and media elite. Sound familiar?
Among the great intellectual issues Chesterton described were the growing primacy of Darwin and Evolution displacing God’s Creation, the marginalization of the Church, the general disappearance of the population’s day to day common Christian faith, Marxism and the nascent menace of early communism, the precursive imperialist aspirations of Germany which would soon result in two world wars, and the “progressive” view of truth – much as it exists today – that believes true liberty means being free from the responsibility of concrete behavioral ideals.
Chesterton noted Henrik Ibsen’s maxim, “The Golden Rule is that there is no Golden Rule.” We had a way of saying it in the 1960s: “If it feels good, do it.”
Here in America, things did change dramatically in the 1960s. That decade saw the ouster of school prayer, ascendance of global communism, Viet Nam, the Kennedy and King assassinations, the broad emergence of “The Pill” contraceptive, civil rights tension, and a complete overhaul of popular music – the language of the times – on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. The 1970s with legalized abortion, and then homosexual normalization over the decades, has us in a cultural place today Chesterton would easily recognize.
I don’t see where “Progressive thought” – the systematic lie of convenient and libertine personal preference favored over sovereign God’s enduring absolute truth – has helped mankind progress at all. Progress for mankind was Jesus Christ on the Cross; that restored relationship with God. The Old Testament tells us of God, Creation, and Humanity, and the New Testament tells us the truth of divine love, our sin, forgiveness in Christ, and the everlasting glory of God.
Society resists truth that glorifies eternal God and embraces fiction that glorifies temporal man. No wonder the world seems so strange … still.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) remembers watching the Beatles’ first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show Feb. 8, 1964, 50 years ago.
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