Friday, September 7, 2018

The Clarity Of Biblical Ethics

The reason there is so much debate among evangelicals about the morality of miscellaneous activities is because evangelicalism adopts a model of morality that is pseudo-Christian at best.  When one pits Old Testament morality against New Testament morality, as if they differ in any significant way, Christian morality seems serpentine, complicated, and perhaps even self-contradictory.  This artificial divide between the Old and New Testament is responsible for the vast majority of moral controversies within the American church.

Christian ethics only seems to be indecipherable and vague if one embraces the contra-Biblical evangelical understanding of morality: that significant, core moral obligations change depending on time and geography.  This cultural relativism is at the heart of any "Christian" ideology claiming that something must be condemned or encouraged by the New Testament for modern Christians to have an obligation to avoid or participate in it.

Biblical commands are scarcely, if ever, unclear in themselves.  In many cases, they only seem unclear if one approaches them with an assumption-based framework foreign to the Bible itself.  This is the problem: many Christians only parrot what they've been told by imbecilic leaders.  It is far from a Christian problem, for most people, whatever their worldviews, live ignorant of their own staggering ignorance.

In order to see anything with clarity--not just Biblical ethics--one must reject all assumptions.  Only those who do so will intentionally see things as they are, not as the fallacious perceive them.  Those who pretend otherwise are guilty of encouraging or preserving a legacy of stupidity for the next generation to inherit.  Anyone who does not seek to identify and overturn assumptions is implicitly content to allow them to continue to exist, yet only those who reject them can have access to actual knowledge.

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