From: REXLEX@linac.fnal.gov
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Liberal vs. Conservative (was Re: Into the highways and hedges)
Date: 2 Sep 92 02:53:44 GMT
Organization: FNAL

In article <Sep.1.03.39.01.1992.13553@athos.rutgers.edu> kish@ring1.rutgers.edu
(Kish) writes:
>masimo:
>| The fundamental difference between you and I is that I don't need a certain
>| unchangeable or immutable authority on which to lean.  God, Godself, and
>| God's relationship to me are enough.
>
>REXLEX:
>+ You may say this intellectually, but experientially I would hold that this
is an impossibility.  Heck, intellectually I'd say this is an impossibility.
>
>Your zeal for "fundamentalism" prevents you from seeing any other possibility.
Also, I don't think you have really responded to masimo's full point.  I have
included the rest of his paragraph here:
>
>masimo:
>| You, on the other hand, seem to need more, you seem to need to believe that
God laid down some unambiguous truths written in the Bible.  This forces you to
conform your beliefs to the limited scope of scripture and of your even more
limited understanding of that scripture.  I don't accept the limitation, but
neither do I reject the scripture.  I only reject giving to it more than it
deserves.  I cannot allow it to restrict my understanding of God.
>
>I like how this was worded and would like to second its sentiment.  
>
>REXLEX:
>+ We were not created that way. We were created with an affinity for the 
>+ absolute. . . . 
>
>This sounds like a lot of unnecessary suffering and confusion. Maybe its 
possible, perhaps even necessary, to stop manufacturing conceptual reference
points and then holding them up as substitutes for God.
>-Bill


     When absolutes of right and wrong are eliminated, even in the public life,
each person "does what is right in his own eyes."  Because it's that time
again, look at politics.   Relativism alters the political process by
transforming pluralism, one of the peculiar geniuses of the American system,
into a different thing altogether.  Traditionally, pluralism meant that all
conflicting values could be voiced & weighed against one another, and against a
transcendent and recognized standard, in the public arena; from this healthy
debate would emerge a consensus of values by which a community could be
governed.  
    However, as seen on this BB, in an attempt to be inoffensively neutral, the
new  pluralism (born of relativism, which insists there are no objective
truths), ignores all values.  Consequently nothing prevails.  To quote Dorothy
Sayers:  "In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called
Despair. . . .the sin that believes in nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys
nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and
remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die."  
     This loss of transcendent standards has also destroyed the notion of
common good, so that politics, as in most area's of common living today, has
become nothing more than warfare among competing special interests.  First a
program is created, then a bureaucracy;  in the process, the state takes on
more and more power.  As government swells, so does its tendency toward
repression.  Before long, civil rights and liberties are eliminated in an
effort to control the citizenry.  An thus decadent societies can pave the way
for totalitarian governments;  thus the relativism that seems to promise
freedom can actually lead to repressive, collectivisitic  governmental
structures
     In the area of religious liberalism we can picture this way.  Any one who
follows the George Gallup pollsters can remember not too long ago, Jr. saying" 
religion up, morality down."  Polls show that 81% of the American people claim
to be Xians.  Yet values devoid of Xian truth permeate American life.  Would
this be the case if 81% of our citizens were living out their professed Xian
faith?
     Thanks to relativism, "Xians" are arriving at faith on their own terms
-terms that  make no demands on behavior.  "I believe in God.  I can't remember
the last time I went to church.  But my faith has carried me a long way.  Its
called _______ism (insert your personal name).  Just my own little voice."     
  When the not-so-small voice of the self becomes the highest authority,
religious belief requires commitment to no authority beyond oneself.  Then
religious groups become merely communities of autonomous beings yoked together
solely by self-interest or emotions.
     Relativism has not only invaded politics, society, but also the church. 
Also look at our law system now.  We could talk about Roe v. Wade, or we could
talk about Georgetown U's  with the "Gay People of GU" and the rulings from the
Superior Court and from the Court of Appeals.   Read Bishop John Shelby Spong's
"Living in Sin: A Bishop Rethinks Human Sexuality."  To quote: "The time has
surely come for the churches of America not just to tolerate, but to celebrate
and welcome, the presence among us of our gay and lesbian fellow human beings.
. . One way to do that is for the church to admit publicly its own complicity
in their oppression, based on its vast ignorance and prejudice. . .[by stating]
its willingness and eager desire to bless and affirm the love that binds two
persons of the same gender into a life-giving relationship of mutual
commitment."   He doesn't stop here for he suggests a liturgical service to
mark the end of a marriage, describing one such "painful, traumatic, but
intensely real" service held to "offer this all too human reality called
divorce to God."
     Certainly we agree that God brings healing, forgiveness and renewal to all
who confess their human failings with a repentant heart to Him.  But we need
not offer the "reality" of broken commitments to God as if they were sacrifices
of obedience.  
     Like listening to the media talking about abortion, the tolerant
intolerants of our day, the bishop loads his language, focusing on such
positive notions as "celebration" "life-giving" and "commitment" in the face of
the dark "prejudice" and "obsessive concern" of the church.  By implication,
anyone who disagrees with his ideas is "out of touch with reality."  
    Isn't this where you have left me and my interpretations of the facts?  For
you a thing isn't immoral, rather its amoral.  You have no absolute moral
standard; instead you exalt the individual and celebrate relativism. 
Dostoyevshy (sp?) wrote that anything is permissible if there is no God.
     The reigning god of relativism and the rampant egoism it fosters coarsen
character, destroy any notion of community, weaken civility, promote
intolerance, and threatens the disintegration of those very institutions 
necessary to the survival and success of ordered liberty.  As Robert Bellah
said "We have put our own good, as individuals, as groups as a nation, ahead of
the common good."  The resulting chaos that we see, even here, contrasts
sharply with Plato's vision of the establishment of order.
     Radical individualism, which has brought us to this critical juncture,
blinds most people to the fact that there even is a crisis.  Freed from the
archaic impediments of the family, church, and community, you seem not to see
how your liberty has enslaved you to alienation, betrayal, loneliness, and
inhumanity.  Just look around you and tell me if this is not where we are
today?  Its because of relativism the truth is on the scaffold and wrong is on
the throne.
     Yet, I'm not a historical determinist.  Individuals cans cause significant
change.  There are no inexorable elements propelling history.  God is sovereign
over human events.  Reread Ester: "I will go to the king, even though it is
against the law.  And if I perish, I perish."  Before Rome's fall, its citizens
had lost the characteristics that had made them distinctly Roman.  See if this
sounds like us.  Discipline, respect, and obedience.  Creativity, and the "we
can do it" attitude.  Now as in Rome there is incest and adultery, and
homosexuality.  Moral education supplanted by indolence, corruption and
decadence.  As so many historians point out, Rome fell from within.  Look at
what happened after its fall and all the savagery of the Visigoths.  All of
medieval Europe seemed destined for complete barbarism.
     However, there was one, and only one, force that stayed the tide, and it
was the CHURCH.  The Church teaching the absolutes of Scripture.  Teaching the
meaningful ness of man.  Orphanages, hospitals etc. were set up by the Church. 
The West eventually emerged from these "Dark Ages" into a renewed period of
cultural creativity, education, and art.  It rejected the Roman and barbarian
lapses of character and put forth the Biblical concept of absolute and with
these forms  came the titanic freedoms we now enjoy.  But remove them and the
very freedoms themselves will smash us to bits.  This is precisely were your
relativism has left our society today.  
     You mock me by saying "apparently you need absolutes to live your life." 
Well, so do you but your too blind to see that when you set yours aside in the
name of "love" and "Tolerance" you condemn yourself to "egotism" and "tyranny."

"Whole tracts of our religion are bare of spiritual passion, or spiritual
depth.  Christianity speaks the language of our humane civilization; it does
not speak the language of Christ.  The age, and much of the Church, believes in
civilization and is interested in the Gospel, instead of believing in the
Gospel and being interested in civilization."   P.T. Forsyth

Now many of you write me off as an extremist.  I'm not really, but because I am
taking a stand against relativism, the natural observation is that I am.  It
can't be helped, its just the nature of the case.  As Chuck Colson refered to
in one of his last books, how does one objective observe if you are in the
midst of a "Dark Age?"  I believe we are one the fringe of it and if relitivism
isn't called forth for what it is, then we are truly doomed.

"I find atelevision very educating.  Everytime somebody turns on the
set I go into the other room and read a book."  Groucho Marx

Rex