“First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye .” (Jesus in Matthew 7:5)
It is an absolute fact that every disciple
Jesus called, and indeed every human
author of Holy Scripture, was a miserable sinner, just like me…and you
too. I don’t state this to anger
anyone. But if anyone imagines
themselves to be righteous before God, they are not allowing God’s law to
expose the inner truth about themselves (1 John 1:7). Indeed any dismissal of evidence of any kind
that favors the existence of God renders such a person guilty of the first sin
St. Paul mentions (Romans 1:18f).
Further-more, whoever imposes their expectations onto others while
failing to adhere to the same standards (again, of their own design), is both a
hypocrite and a violator of the golden rule.
Despite doubts by critical textual critics, I am convinced Jesus said
the words recorded in John 8 for the reason that his challenge to the woman’s
judgers is morally superior, in the manner that is be expected only of the true
Son of God. Similarly, people
participating in toppling statues of our Founders have neither the moral
authority nor the right to do so. They
are to the contrary imposing on historical figures criteria that are far more
stringent than God applied to the biblical writers. We all should plead for His mercy instead.
Neither do these self-appointed “revolutionaries”
demonstrate any potential qualification to lead anyone, let alone an entire
society, into uncharted waters. Their
credibility indeed is undermined right up front by their track record
(televised) of refusing to submit their agenda to intellectual scrutiny. To the contrary they merely out-shout
and bludgeon their dissenters. For similar reasons, they offer no grounds at
all for why anyone should trust that their brand of defiance of people in
authority has any capacity to usher in a harmonious new world, or even a
society remotely as just as our own admittedly imperfect one. Recently I
saw on TV one rioter berating police with his presumptive taunts that police don’t
have intellectual skills to do “college-level” thinking. I judge to the contrary that his obnoxious presence merely raised doubts
about the credibility of universities as a whole (see below), even as he
exposed as questionable the intellectual weight behind the college degree(s)
that he claimed to earn.
More to the point, anarchists’
agenda depends on the distorted parody of US history that they impose. Firstly, their methods of highlighting what
they judge as the “unsavory” aspects of our record, reject classical academic methods of truth-seeking by censoring all arguments that thwart their
goals. And their “motivational” tools
rely on pressuring for a compliance that is enforced by threats of harm.
By contrast, authentic truth-seeking, as opposed to brain-washing, seeks out all substantiated evidence that is relevant to a given question. It also frames the historical details correctly in light of its larger context. And it debates in complete freedom the relative merits of each relevant hypothesis.
My entire essay can be accessed by the same name, and includes a substantial mumber of footnotes, can be at my website: www.christianityontheoffense.com/articles
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