I've always wondered why I stalk some bloggers. Maybe I feel that the deep words that emanate from their pages should not be missed. Or maybe my steps are ordered. Better still, maybe it's both of those reasons.
Today, for Guest Blogger Friday, I'm featuring one of my favorite bloggers, a Nigerian Blog Awards 2010 nominee for "Most Intellectual Blog"- Doug. I once read his blog post, "Call Me "Man," and I Shall Love You for It" and it made my head swirl in appreciation to God for using him to write a post that pierced my heart.
On the Matter of God's Blind Side:
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| [Image by Danny Night] |
‘I know...that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.’ Revelation 3: 15-17
Of my many quirks, I have found that the tone and content of my dialogues is the most likely to get me on the wrong side of persons whose acquaintances I have just made or who have newly been elevated to a nearer rung within my concentric circles of intimacy.
I find that I generally ask questions that require a person to place himself on either side of an ideological fence as it concerns the matter in consideration. This unsettles people because though they like to profess rather dogmatic opinions on broad topics, when the scope is focused on specific sensitive matters, they will often balk rather than expose their opinions to scrutiny.
Even the smarter ones demonstrate the very same queer propensity to scuttle for the fence using nonsensical post-modern constructs like “political correctness” or “progressivism”, thus implying that the morality of the matter under deliberation be regarded subjectively. The world appears to have been colonized by subjectivists and cultural relativists, leaving proponents of any kind of moral absolutes running for cover. These people hold that no moral absolutes can exist since a variation in opinion will dissolve the truth in question, making it effectively relative.
Even Christians Do It Too:
This ideology has seeped so deeply into the fabric of society as a whole that even Christians ignorantly profess it with little thought to the significance of this alien philosophy and its total inconsistency with fundamental Christian morals and scripture.
The totality of Christian doctrine is predicated upon the ‘self-evident’ truth of a Supreme God, against whom all points of morality are measured, consequentially generating all absolute judgments. He is the Root of all Absolute Truth. Thus this Truth must be independent, definite, singular and immutable. Black must always be black; cold, cold; white, white and so forth. These foundational pillars of theism are the most difficult for the post-modern man to accept.
The problem with subjectivism is that its concept of truth can become very nebulous. When a subjective person holds a thing to be true, it really has little meaning at all since any change in circumstances nullifies that truth, progressively subjecting the concept of truth as a whole to personal opinion, and will ultimately make the individual sceptical of every truth claim, leading to a nihilistic view of life. Lying would no longer be wrong; the ethics of abortion and embryonic stem cell research would be situational; euthanasia would be economically expedient; homosexuality would be a sexual “preference” and not a sexual “orientation”; the institution of marriage would be optional and so forth.
How is it that a large number of Christians go on about “personal truths” and the culinary preferences of geese and ganders?
‘I know...that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either...’
On the Question of Abortion:
For instance, I have posed the question about abortion to quite a number of women and received responses in the direction of two major extremes; the more radical being that the foetus, being unable to subsist independently of its mother is a ‘parasite’ and expendable, and the less radical being that the choice of termination should be predicated upon many varied reasons inclusive of economic, psychological and so forth, and not on any moralistic value judgments pertaining to the authenticity of the foetus’s life (judgments which they considered to be subjective and outlandish).
However the question this poses to me is that if the life of the foetus IS in fact authentic, and its being DOES in fact emerge at a decisive moment defined as the point of fertilization, then don’t the same dynamics that pertain to all human life, apply to this burgeoning one?
The “Roe vs. Wade” and “Doe vs. Bolton” cases which ignited the pro-choice movement define the scope of extenuating circumstances under which abortion is legal to be “all factors – physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age – relevant to the well-being of the patient”. This incredibly sweeping definition effectively legalized abortion on demand in the US for the entire nine months of pregnancy and cast a blanket which enveloped unborn children of EVERY stage within the pro-choice debate.
Consequently, the argument for my friends who consider unborn children to be “parasitic” is expanded to include pregnancies throughout all three trimesters.
But does ‘feeble and dependent’ equal ‘parasitic and expendable’ (a definition which would include quadriplegics, the elderly etc) or is all life sacrosanct and inviolable? Is the question of life not intrinsically moralistic and absolute?
‘I know...that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either...’
On the Matter of Homosexuality:
On a related note, the ultra-sensitive battle on the matter of homosexuality will be won or lost based on the seductive and ambiguous construct of ‘sexual orientation’. This psychosocial concept has triggered extensive influences on the postmodern man and is thought to be based on credible scientific research. Yet this concept, which strangely is of recent vintage, was an intentional and quite successful attempt to redefine the debate over homosexuality from same-gender sexual acts to homosexual “identity” – in other words, from what homosexuals do, to who homosexuals are.
In the recent past, the concept more commonly employed by the homosexual movement was “sexual preference”. On closer scrutiny, the reason for the shift becomes obvious: “preference” implied a voluntary choice, so the clinical category of “orientation” was more useful in public arguments.
As a result, the prevailing argument becomes that of relegating the matter to a ‘personal’ or relative one instead of an absolute. But what dangers do the complex philosophies of these and many other relativist categorizations portend for man?
‘I know...that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either...’
The Doctrine of Moral Laxity:
In his seminal classic ‘The Abolition of Man’, CS Lewis speaks of the hazards of a philosophy where the very possibility of a sentiment being in itself reasonable or unreasonable, true or false, has been destroyed and can only be established if it conforms or fails to conform to something else. It is a total rejection of ‘absolute value’. It is the doctrine of moral laxity and anarchy and the direct converse of everything that Truth represents, warring ceaselessly with the nature of man.
‘I know...that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either...! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.’
With God, Black is Black and white, white:
I took it for granted that my understanding of God carried the implication of comprehensive faculties of perception. Upon retrospection however, I realize that I must have disregarded the point of Him being unable to perceive the colour grey. For you see with Him, black is black and white, white.
Question(s) for the Day: Tell me, what do you think about any of the issues he has raised? Do you think black is black and white is white? Or do you think there is a smear of grey lying around somewhere? And how do you relate these colors to God?
You can find Doug on his BLOG or on TWITTER @TheArtofMusing. Follow him. Have a lovely weekend readers :)
