ABSOLUTE TRUTH
The militant atheist, Richard Dawkins, was asked, "What should we do about all the religious people?" His answer took a turn toward the taciturn. In the style of "Silent Cal," President Calvin Coolidge, he said, "Mock them." (Try that in Saudi Arabia.)
On college campuses, students find the concept of absolute right and absolute wrong mocked with extreme prejudice. From day one, their expensive schools have dedicated themselves to mocking and by that means, destroying the very concept that some things are absolutely right and some things are absolutely wrong regardless of time, place, and culture. This leads the students into a trap. In one class, there were many students who couldn't bring themselves admit that the Holocaust was evil. Oh, they knew it happened, but their relativism wouldn't allow them to say, "That was an evil, evil thing."
BEAUTY IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER?
There's a saying: "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." However, my son's pastor shocked the assembled when he wisely said, "Whenever you hear anyone say that, run the other way as fast as you can and never make him your friend."
Although such fleeing might sound harsh to the tolerant ear, that pastor was right. He went on to explain, "God has pronounced some things beautiful" (the Garden of Eden, the creation of Genesis 1-2 before the Fall in Genesis 3, the future New Heavens and the New Earth, the New Jerusalem, the feet of those who bring good news, Solomon's Temple, and the fruit of the Spirit, et al.).
On the other hand, God has pronounced some things ugly (sin, Satan, the factions of the Corinthian church, the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, legalism, the church at Laodicea, and the domineering Diotrephes). The pastor's point was that one who believes that beauty is in the eye of the beholder is sailing on a sea of subjectivity and that belief will bleed over into other areas.
HEY, RAY!
It's the same sentiment expressed in the 1970 hit song, "Everything is Beautiful" by Ray Stevens. The lyrics of the song need to be analyzed, especially those in italics:
Everything is beautiful
In its' own way
Like a starry summer night
Or a snow covered winter's day
Everybody's beautiful
In their own way
Under God's heaven
The world's gonna find a way
Midway through, the song changes from "Everything is beautiful" to:
Everybody's beautiful
In their own way
Therefore, we see that categories vanish, drowned in the Sea of Relativism. Malcolm Muggeridge wrote, "Human depravity is the most empirically verifiable fact," yet the monolithic American educational system teaches the impressionable, "There's no such thing as human depravity." Talk about a denial of reality!
IDEAS HAVE CONSEQUENCES
The hermetically sealed university system won't advise the students of the consequences of the sealing out of absolute truth:
"If there is no absolute truth, no standard of right and wrong that we are all accountable to, then we can never be sure of anything. People would be free to do whatever they want—murder, rape, steal, lie, cheat, etc., and no one could say those things would be wrong. There could be no government, no laws, and no justice, because one could not even say that the majority of the people have the right to make and enforce standards upon the minority. A world without absolutes would be the most horrible world imaginable." (author unknown)
Look at the ever-developing consequences of a hermetically sealed campus, The University of Southern California, when a Jewish author arrived on campus to speak. He said:
"It used to be a pleasure for me to speak on a college campus like USC. I can remember the days when I could stroll onto the USC campus and walk over to the statue of Tommy Trojan . . . Now, however, I can’t set foot on this campus – or any campus – without being accompanied by a personal bodyguard and a battalion of armed campus security police to protect me and my student hosts." (David Horowitz, Nov. 4, 2009)
Another Jewish speaker/author, Ben Shapiro, needed police protection and many of his supporters were physically assaulted for attending his speech. Two universities, DePaul and UCLA canceled his speech because the administrations of said schools said that they couldn't (or wouldn't?) provide adequate protection for his appearance. In the speech that wasn't canceled, a mob formed outside and pulled the fire alarm to stop the meeting.
Recently, a group at an Ivy League university holding up hostile placards greeted Christian apologist, author, philosopher, and international speaker, Ravi Zacharias, who was to speak on campus. That same day, he received a note from a friend overseas who promised to pray for his safety because he said, "I know you're entering the hostile territory of an American university."
ABC "World News Tonight" on April 5, 2017, reported that the stealing of college newspapers in which someone finds something objectionable has increased nearly 600 percent over the past decade.
The ABC news program also reported that many schools have rules that ban words that result in another person's loss of self-esteem. One might wonder what would happen if someone paid for an ad in a college newspaper in which the gospel was given and the reader was given a number to call if he had questions. (Romans 3:23 and 6:23 aren't self-esteem building texts.)
In March 2009, Wright State University banned a Christian group from meeting on
campus because of its requirement that voting members be Christian and because of
its refusal to accept “nondiscrimination” language that would eliminate
faith-based standards for its voting members. After seeking legal help, the Campus Bible Fellowship got the ban lifted.
Amazing isn't it? American universities, sealing off absolute truth and even the consideration of it are becoming violent places of antisemitism and hostile to Christianity.
(TO BE CONTINUED)
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