Outrageous Truth...: Seven Absolutes You Can Still Believe - Softcover

Dr. Robert Jeffress is pastor of the 9500-member First Baptist Church of Wichita Falls, Texas. He is the Bible teacher on the internationally broadcast television program Pathway to Victory, seen on more than 900 cable systems and television stations. Dr. Jeffress is the author of twelve previous books including When Forgiveness Doesn’t Make Sense, The Solomon Secrets (2002 Gold Medallion Finalist), and I Want More!

Wimp-Free Christianity

Truth is abhorred by the masses,” cautioned the seventeenth-century Jesuit priest Baltasar Gracian. If you don’t accept that observation, try making any one of the following comments around the break room at work, or even in the Sunday-school room at church:

· “Only Christians will go to heaven; everyone else is going to hell.”

· “The husband is the head of the family.”

· “Homosexuality is a perversion.”

Then just sit back and watch the fireworks explode! You’ll most likely hear the terms intolerant, bigot, uneducated, and arrogant hurled at you (and those are just some of the nicer words you can expect). By the way, don’t be surprised if you hear such harsh judgments coming just as frequently and forcefully from the lips of Christians as from non-Christians. In increasing numbers believers are either abandoning or holding much less tightly to the truths that have been historically embraced by Christians. Such a charge certainly demands support, so let me offer some from both personal experience and statistical evidence. First, my story.
Big Stink in a Small Town

I pastor a large church in a medium-size town two hours away from Dallas, Texas. Situated right in the middle of the Bible Belt, our church has been described by Christianity Today as the new “Mecca” of evangelical Christianity. A few years ago a member of our church brought me copies of two children’s books from our local library: Daddy’s Roommate and Heather Has Two Mommies. Both books tell the story of a child being raised by a homosexual couple. In Daddy’s Roommate, a young boy’s parents divorce so that “Daddy” can live with his homosexual lover, Frank. The little boy is understandably perplexed by the relationship and asks his mother about his father’s new “friend.” The mother gently explains that “being gay is just one more kind of love” and that “Daddy and his roommate are very happy together.”1 When the little boy asks what Daddy and Frank do, Mom explains that Daddy and Frank live together, eat together, and sleep together. Each activity the mother explains is accompanied by a drawing, including one showing Daddy and Frank together in bed.2

It just so happened that the week the books were brought to my attention, my sermon–part of a series on the book of Genesis–was on God’s destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. One of the applications I made at the close of the message was that no society can afford to condone what God has condemned and that there comes a time when Christians need to take a stand against evil. I read from Daddy’s Roommate and focused on the picture of two men in bed together. “Here is a library book–purchased with your tax dollars–promoting sodomy, which is illegal in the state of Texas, is largely responsible for one of the deadliest epidemics in history (AIDS), and is an abomination to God....

It is time for God’s people to say, ‘Enough!’”

I explained that I had already spoken with the librarian about removing the books, but she had refused to do so. So I asked our church to petition the city council to remove the books. To make it easier for the city council, I also decided not to return the books to the library so that the council’s decision would be whether or not to repurchase the books I was keeping. (I later wrote a check to the library to cover the cost of the books.)

I could never have imagined the firestorm that ignited as a result of that message. Media outlets including the New York Times, Associated Press, NBC television, ABC radio, and Rush Limbaugh carried the story. PBS sent a crew to Wichita Falls and filmed a documentary on the furor that divided our city. I was fervently denounced by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), People for the American Way (PFAW), the American Library Association (ALA), and Americans United for Separation of Church and State (which later threatened our church’s tax-exempt status). The editor of the local newspaper wrote an editorial condemning me for promoting censorship and suggesting that I should be jailed for my act of civil disobedience.

When we eventually persuaded the city council to pass a compromise regulation giving three hundred adults the right to request that a book deemed offensive be moved from the children’s area to the adult section of the library, the ACLU filed suit in federal court to overturn the council’s action. According to some legal experts, the ACLU won that challenge, not because the regulation itself was unconstitutional, but because the council’s actions were influenced by people of faith.

But what surprised me most during that two-year ordeal was the reaction of many Christians to our church’s stand against homosexuality. One prominent minister of a large denominational church in our community stood in his pulpit one Sunday during the furor and said that he was “not called upon to judge, but to tell others about love.” A letter to the editor of the Times Record News several days later praised the open-minded pastor:

Hurray for Dr. _________.... None of us are here to judge and those who choose to actively seek to influence others should do so in a positive manner. We have enough trouble already with hatred and intolerance. Churches have too long been a place where people go to elevate themselves above others, to look down their
noses in disdain at the rest of the world. These people have ruined the meaning of the word “worship.”... Pastors such as Jeffress who have such hatred in their hearts toward any group or individual should be immediately dismissed from any position of influence.... I urge the congregation of First Baptist Church to replace Jeffress with a kinder, more compassionate pastor.3

Apparently the letter writer’s tolerance and compassion extend to everyone except pastors who don’t share her viewpoint. Other Christians piled on charges of intolerance, bigotry, hatred, or simply poor judgment in causing a division in our community by taking on a “political” issue. Most alarmingly, when these Christians were reminded of the biblical teaching on homosexuality, common replies included:

· “Those prohibitions were unique to the culture then, but they don’t apply today.”

· “Science has taught us a lot about homosexuality since the Bible was written.”

· “That may be what we believe, but not everyone accepts the Bible.”

Of course, all of those responses beg the same question: Are there absolute truths that apply to all people at all times, regardless of their faith–or lack of faith?
The Rise of Relativism

Recent surveys tell us that the majority of both Christians and non-Christians answer that question with a resounding “No!” Researcher George Barna already knew that only a minority of both Christians and
non-Christians believed in moral absolutes that transcended time and culture. One would think the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, which were almost universally denounced as evil, would increase the
number of people believing in moral absolutes. In reality, the opposite occurred. A survey conducted in the aftermath of the attacks revealed that fewer Americans accepted the notion of absolute truth than prior
to September 11. By a 3-to-1 margin, adults said that truth is always relative to a person’s individual situation. This view was even more prevalent among teenagers–only 6 percent believed that there is such a thing as absolute moral truth.4

But surely the statistics would be different among Christians who would naturally regard the Bible as the source of absolute truth, right? Don’t be so sure. Barna’s survey revealed that 68 percent of born-again adults and 91 percent of born-again teenagers rejected the concept of absolute truth.5

Now you can understand why the three incendiary statements mentioned at the beginning of this chapter are guaranteed to illicit such a negative reaction not only from unbelievers but from professing Christians as well. We have bought into the concept of relative truth, a concept that is best explained by the simple dictum “Everything is right sometime, and nothing is right every time.”

It’s no wonder, Barna notes, that substantial numbers of Christians believe that activities such as homosexuality, cohabitation, and pornography are permissible in some circumstances. “Without some firm and compelling basis for suggesting that such acts are inappropriate, people are left with philosophies such as ‘if it feels good, do it.’ ”6 Or as another writer says, “Being good is now defined as feeling good.”

But the fallout from the wholesale rejection of absolute truth (which, as we will see later, is really just a replacement of one set of absolutes for another) is not confined to morality. The all-out war against absolute truth in favor of relative truth explains why people bristle when someone says, “Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven,” “America is a Christian nation,” or “Abortion is murder.” The greatest sin in our culture today is to claim to be right about anything. Author Allan Bloom, in his book The Closing of the American Mind, writes,

The study of history and of culture teaches that all the world was mad in the past; men always thought they were right, and that led to wars, persecutions, slavery, xenophobia, racism, and chauvinism. The point is not to correct the mistakes and really be right; rather it is not to think you are right at all.7

So what? you may wonder. While we may sigh and shake our heads over our culture’s rejection of absolute truth, what real difference does it make in our lives? Let me cite just three of many ramifications that occur when a society embraces relativism (the rejection of absolute truth).

1. Relativism encourages immorality. This is the most obvious result of jettisoning the concept of absolute truth–and it will eventually touch your family. For example, if there are no moral absolutes, then why shouldn’t all sexual activity be permitted, including pedophilia (sex between adults and children)? “But,” you may say, “that’s different because it involves an adult forcing a child to have sex. Coercion in sex is wrong.”

Yet if there are no absolute moral principles that transcend time and culture, who has the right to say that the rape of a child is wrong? The relativist will answer, “Society has the right to formulate its own standards of morality, and in our society we have decided that pedophilia is wrong.”

May I remind you that only forty years ago society deemed homosexuality a psychological aberration and outlawed homosexual practice in most states. Yet today it is generally accepted–even among Christians–that while homosexuality may be wrong, every person has a right to choose his or her own sexual behavior.

Forty years from now we may hear the same arguments for legitimizing pedophilia that have been so successful in normalizing homosexuality:

· “Pedophiles do not choose pedophilia; they are born that way.”

· “Why force pedophiles to hide their sexuality and live in
shame?”

· “Don’t pedophiles have a right to happiness through the full
expression of their sexuality?”

This possibility is not as far-fetched as it first appears. Carson Holloway, a political science professor at the University of Nebraska, claims that a growing movement toward normalizing pedophilia is the latest manifestation of the trend toward discarding moral absolutes. In a lecture presented at the Family Research Council on July 10, 2002, Professor Holloway discussed how our nation’s standard for morality has digressed to the point where “anything sexual is morally permissible, so long as it takes place between ‘consenting adults.’ ”8 But Holloway has strong reason to believe such a standard is fluid. Why deny a twelve- or thirteen-year-old child the right to “consent” to sex with an adult?

Those who defend pedophilia claim that children today are “so much more worldly-wise about these matters...that they can, in some cases, be the instigators of intergenerational sexual activity.”9 This trend toward normalizing pedophilia can be seen in the decision of the United States Supreme Court in April 2002 that permitted the distribution and possession of virtual child pornography. The Court reasoned that the federal statute prohibiting virtual child pornography did not apply if the pornography had social, political, scientific, or cultural value.10 In essence, their ruling followed the lines of the one-man’spornography-is-another-man’s-art argument.

Some psychiatrists are also jumping on the bandwagon to normalize pedophilia. In July 1998 the American Psychological Association’s Psychological Bulletin published “A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples” by Bruce Rind, Philip Tromovitch, and Robert Bauserman. The paper contended that sex with a child may not always be harmful to the child as long as the child “enjoys” it. Although the American Psychological Association (APA) did not endorse the paper, Dr. Laura Schlessinger observes that its willingness to publish such a paper without careful scrutiny is a thinly veiled attempt to normalize pedophilia.11 Although the APA at present has an anti—child molestation policy, what is to keep that policy from changing just as the APA’s designation of homosexuality changed to one of acceptance in the 1970s? After all, in a world of no absolutes, any kind of behavior is permissible.

2. Relativism discourages evangelism. Recently I was watching a popular talk show, and the topic was “Is There Only One Way to Heaven?” The host allowed various audience members to voice their predictable complaints that insisting on one way of salvation was arrogant and hateful. However, one poor soul summoned the courage to stand up and say, “My Lord and Savior Jesus Christ said, ‘I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No man comes to the Father but by Me.’” The host responded, “My dear, I am glad you believe that. You have every right to believe that for yourself. But you have no right to try and coerce me to believe that way.” Notice the two assumptions that undergirded the host’s comments.

First, the host assumed that Jesus’s claim that He is the only Source of salvation applies only to those who choose to believe it! Put another way, truth is truth only to those who choose to accept it as truth. The absurdity of such a premise will be explored further in the next section.

The other assumption is not quite so obvious, but it is extremely dangerous. In the host’s mind, voicing your belief in absolute truth is “coercion.” To claim that Jesus’s words apply to everyone is to engage in intolerant and hateful speech. This assumption leads to another frightening consequence of relativism.

3. Relativism promotes persecution. In a society that rejects absolute truth, the only vice that cannot be tolerated is the sin of intolerance. Thus, those who assert that Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven or that homosexuality is wrong are engaging in hate speech. Why? Because, according to the relativist, such assertions, by inference, mean that the Hindu or the homosexual is inferior and deserving of mistreatment by society. Thus, “hateful” speech must be silenced even if it means violating constitutional rights.