From: REXLEX@linac.fnal.gov
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Limits to Criticism/Post Xian Era
Date: 28 Aug 92 06:32:51 GMT
Organization: Fermi Lab

After reading all that has been painstakingly typed for you, we are ready to
begin the great debate.

Rom. 1:20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His
eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood
through what has been made, so that *THEY ARE WITHOUT EXCUSE.*

Rom. 3:19   Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are
under the Law, *that every mouth may be closed,* and all the world may become
accountable to God;

I will be held accountable if I did not putforth with every ounce of power
given to me from on high to confront this age of relativism and the resulting
"anti-christ" attitude of slandering the Word of God.  To say it has error is
to equate the member of the Godhead through whom it is ascribed to -with error.
 This is THE LIE of this age, and we should be as the Ninevites and repent in
sackcloth and ashes.  Rather you are all ready  to run quickly to shed the
inoccent blood of those who, without compromise, put forth the Scriptures as
inerrant.  I tremble to think of judgement coming upon those who are therefore
trampling under foot the Word of God given to man in the inerrant and
infallible Old and the New Testament documents.  You it is who have provided
the seed bed of pride to those who no longer listen to any authority.
 
Because of the lost of absolutes during this age of relitivism,
 
     "we are no longer guided by virtue or tradition.  Selfish passions breed
freely, unrestrained by communites of memory (cultural conscience).  Since any
absolutes are an impediment to self-realization, man's "noble" goals are
freedom, choice, and tolerance.  Gone are any notions of duty to our fellow man
and to the Creator.  As a result, there is no straight edge of truth by which
one can measure one's life.  Truth is pliable and relative;  it can take
whatever shape we can't.  Indeed, many simply look within to find it. . . .
THere is no universal truth, no absolute code of conduct; there is only truth
for me and truth for you.
     When enough people hold to it, this line of reasoning produces dramatic
results in a nation's public values, which are the realm of ideas and
assumptions by which a culture conducts itself."  (Chuck Colson)

     Colson frequently refers to an occassion in which he was the guest
speaker:  "During a meeting of college educators at Harvard University in the
autumn of 1987, President Frank Rhodes of Cornell University addressed the
issue of educational refors, suggesting  it was time for universities to pay
"real and sustained attention to students' intellectual and moral well-being." 
Immediately there were gasps from the audience.  One angry student stood and
demanded indignantly, "WHO is going to do the instructing?  WHOSE morality are
we going to follow?"  THe audience applauded thunderously, affirming that the
heckler had settled the issue by poing an unanswerable question.  President
Rhodes sat down, unable of unwilling to respond."  
     It wasn't that long ago, before the sixties, that Pres Rhodes could have
pointed to 2000+ yrs of accumulated moral wisdom, or to a rationally defensible
natural law, or to the moral law revealed by God in the Judeo-Xian Scriptures. 
Today there is no morally binding objective source of authority or truth above
the individual.  Those who believe other wise should read C.S. Lewis 3rd book
of his space trilogy, "That Hideous Strength."  It is almost prophetic.  
     Here on this BB, there is no hope of eventual solution in disagreements. 
Neither side's views can be right or wrong because both are merely subjective
expressions of personal feeling and there is no objective standard by which to
choose one feeling over another.  So both sides simply shout louder!  And you
say you have no need for absolutes.  I thought I was the simple minded one.
     We have talked about homosexuality, but to follow clh's lead, lets take
the issue of abortion instead.  Though there are not direct references to it as
in the case of homosexuality, in Scripture, I think the point will still be
made.  
     Abortion -on the one side there are those who advocate that it is a
fundamental human right.  On the other hand there are those who assert that it
is a moral evil.  In a relativistic society sanitized by any objective
standards of right or wrong, both sides are doing nothing more that expressing
feelings.  There is no rational way to choose between them.  Opponents grow
further and further apart, differing on a level so fundamental that they are
unable to even communicate.  Is this not what we see time and again on various
different issues here on the BB?  Pat Buchanan once made this observation:
"Americans of left and right no longer share the same religion, the same
values, the same codes of morality; we only inhabit the same piece of land." 
I've only been posting for 2-3 months and this is quite evidentally true.
     "When moral judgments are based on feelings alone, compromise becomes
impossible.  Politics can no longer be based on consensus, for consensus
presupposes that competing moral claims can be evaluated according to some
common standard.  Politics is transformed into 'civil war carried on by other
means.'  In the end, a relativism whose initial goal was tolerance yields an
enviornment of unending moral conflict and intolerance." (Colson)
     What is true in the political realm is just as true in our "religious"
arena here on the BB.  In an attempt to settle increasingly bitter
disagreement, we become characterized by a kind of libertarianism by default. 
Absolute values are off-limits when it comes to the formation of *any* policy. 
Everyone must be allowed to pursue his/her own private good so long as some
semblance of order is maintained.  John Stuart Mill would be proud.
     "Proponents of a public square sanitized of moral judgments purport that
it assures neutrality among contending moral factions and guarantees certain
basic civil rights.  This sounds enlightened and eminently fair.  In reality,
however, it assures victory for one side of the debate." (Colson)
     Hence the "greesed pig" syndrome.  If one person believes that abortion
should be illegal and another contends it should be an option, it is no
compromise when government, with supposed moral neutrality, leaves the decision
to private individuals.  It is unconditional defeat for those opposed to
abortion:  children die.  So it is with the whole gambit of issues in daily
living facing the Xian.  With all the new questions having to be faced because
of new technologies and their natural off-spring, we are left with no
authoriative absolute by which to give guidence.  
     THis is precisely why I posted the "Post Xian Era" letters.  We are at the
edge of a chasm.  Relativism is bringing forth its natual children.  And the
process by which the once unthinkable become acceptable is simple enough. 
Let's stick with abortion, but you can insert any moral delema now facing our
society.  It works like this:  Abortion was once so offensive that it was
scarcely discussed in public, and then only with shame.  But some respected
expert in a respected forum advocates it.  The public is shocked.  Then
outraged.  THe very fact that such a thing could be publicly debated becomes
the subject of debate.  In the process, sheer repetition of the shocking
gradually dulls its effect.  No longer outraged, people begin to argue for
positions to moderate the extreme; or they accept the premise, challenging
instead the means to achieve it.  Think this is not so?  
     "Like men with sore eyes: they find the light painful, while the darkness,
which permits them to see nothing, is restful and agreeable."  (Chrysostom) 
When what was once a crime becomes a debate, that debate usually ushers the act
into common practice.  History has proven it.  I can remember in 1968 a friend
who was going to go to NY to have an abortion.  No one knew because it was
shameful and in the collective conscious of that society, it was wrong.  What
has happened since.  Each of us can list a number of young girls that freely
admit that they've had abortions today.  THIS IS ONLY 20+ YEARS LATER!  Next is
coming euthanasia.  Already the discussion is around the use of fetal tissue
for research.  
     An old priest, Father Smith, confronts the narrator, a psychiatrist, in
the following exchange:

"You are an able psychiatrist, on the whole a decent, generous, humanitarian
person in the abstract sense of the word.  You know what is going to happen to
you?"

"What?"

You are a member of the 1st generation of doctors in the history of medicine to
turn their backs on the oath of Hippocrates and kill millions of old useless
people, unborn childreen, born malformed children, for the good of mankind -and
to do so without a single murmur form one of you.  Not a single letter of
protest in the august New England Journal of Medicine.  An do you know what
you're going to end up doing?. . . . . . . . "

"No,"  I say

The priest aims the azimuth at me, but then appears to lose his train of
thought. . . . .

"What is going to happen to me, Father," I ask before he gets away altogether.

"Oh," he says absently, appearing to be thinking of something else, "you're
going to end up killing Jews!"  (Walker Percy)


Rex
2 Cor. 6:11   Our mouth has spoken freely to you, O Corinthians, our heart is
opened wide.

(RexLex@fnal.fnal.gov)

[I'd like to point out that I normally refer discussions of abortion
to alt.abortion.  I'm allowing it here as an example of something Rex
finds offensive, but am not willing to accept discussions specifically
directed to it.  Readers should take it for granted that other
participants find attempts to prohibit abortion just as offensive.
--clh]