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A bountiful, but bitter harvest of dishonor, immorality, profanity, drug and drink addiction, and uncaring secularism have become commonplace in our beautiful America. They extend from the powerless and poor through all intermediate levels to the wealthy and most powerful in government and business. A burgeoning acceptance of homosexual behavior continued merciless abortion, and the nothing-left-to-the-imagination pornography that stares one in the face at almost every turn are a part of this corrupt reaping.
But the harvest is never reaped without the seed sowing before it. To change the figure for a moment, the amorality of modern America is only the symptom. Symptoms can never be cured without finding and destroying their cause. The important thing to discover is the seed that has produced such a putrid harvest.
Some of the “grass roots philosophies” of the 1960s need to be mentioned at this point. “If it feels good, do it” and “Do your own thing” are two of them. Rather than being the seed, I judge them to be a part of the harvest. The seed is much older.
It is philosophical in nature and is so old and has been repeated so many times that its origin is likely lost in obscurity. It doubtless started in reference to religion. It has been used for generations untold to celebrate and defend division within Protestantism in an effort to mitigate, if not obliterate the importance of strict adherence to some of the clearest statements of New Testament doctrine.
Its most familiar iteration is, “It makes no difference what you believe, as long as you’re sincere.” If this were true concerning religious “doctrine” (which it most assuredly is not), then it is but a small step to apply it to moral “doctrine.” By this very rule, “situation ethics” determines that adultery and fornication are not wrong as long as “true love” (i.e., “sincerity”) is present. If it makes no difference what one believes, then, just as logically, it makes no difference what one does—as long as he is “sincere” and/or “loving,” of course.
By such a dictum our world has come to call good “evil” and evil “good” (Isa. 5:20). This philosophy confuses, or even worse in the minds of a naïve public, erases, the distinction between Heaven-inspired Truth and Hell-inspired error, right and wrong, darkness and light, narrow and broad, righteousness and wickedness. It teaches that the worst possible wrong morphs into right behavior and the grossest lie becomes truth if one is only sincere in practicing and/or believing it. But try as one might, sincerity and/or love will not purify immorality or transform religious error into truth, any more than sincerity and/or love will magically cause 5 to be the sum of 2+2.
[Note: I wrote this article for and it was published in The Lighthouse, weekly bulletin of Northpoint Church of Christ, Denton, TX, August 26, 2012, of which I was editor.]
Attribution: From thescripturecache.com; Dub McClish, owner and administrator.
