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Thursday 15 November 2012

How "absolute"?

A few decades back, many of us in the evangelical fold were vocally exercised about the postmodern trend away from any absolute positions on right & wrong or even the concept of absolute truth. Most of the world has of course been blithely unaware of such misgivings and has just gotten on with life in a subjective world. The world has moved on ...but I think some of us have been left behind looking a bit confused.

By now, there has grown up a kind of conceptual disconnect between those on opposite sides of that old debate -- by now we're now nearly talking two different languages -- one side holding strong moral positions and the other going "thanks for your opinion but who made you the judge?" But what good has this done for anyone? We've just made ourselves irrelevant and less able to communicate.

Christians (amongst others) generally believe in absolute truth. We also generally believe that some (absolute) truth has been revealed and everyone is bound by it. The mind of God is the truth and where He reveals His thoughts (e.g. in the 10 commandments), then all humanity needs to pay attention. The image of the Watchman warning the land (Ez 33) is sometimes applied to the church. The watchman's duty is to sound the trumpet and give warning -- but note that he's not responsible for the outcome too.

How do we respond when others will not listen to our point of view? Suppose they say our opinions are just as subjective as theirs? There's no proof you can give that is going to be acceptable. Or suppose they come back with an alternative set of absolutes, based on the Koran or the Book of Mormon for example? Who can explain (practically speaking) that someone's paradigms aren't right? ...and without a tinge of superiority or self-righteous condemnation? You may be right, but to others, it doesn't matter a toss whether you are or not: they already live quite happily with a whole different set of paradigms.

'let you in on a secret? The world already knows we're a pompous, self-righteous bunch, because we talk as if our opinions were more valid than theirs and we claim an exemption for ourselves because "God says so" (in the Bible). We're not open to meaningful dialogue on the pressing issues of life because we already know all the right answers and we just want to preach it.

You can have the satisfaction of being in the right if you want, but it's a no-win position. Really we've got to engage with people in their own language and work from there. The church can't set the rules of engagement: we have to work in the world as we find it. Imagine for a moment if we could set the rules. We set the paradigms, set the agenda for what's important and what's not, control the definitions -- would that look like success? No. We'd then have become "the world" -- the dominant way of thinking -- we'd be back to the dominant position of the church in the middle ages and we'd need to be won back to the love of God ourselves.

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