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Today's Little Lift
by Jim Bullington
Pluralism and the Bible simply will not mix. The rub comes from the fact that the God of the Bible always demanded that His people recognize Him as the ONLY true and living God. That was the basis of the first commandment as recorded in Exodus 20.3 - “You shall have no other gods before Me.” This point of fact was THE issue that always precipitated animosity between Israel and her neighbours. Israel’s neighbours were polytheists and Israel was monotheistic. Pluralism, by definition, can be polytheistic. Hence, Pluralism and the Bible simply will not mix.
Maybe you have decided that today’s message really has no relevant application since you do not know any pluralists. However, if you are still with me, I beg your indulgence for a few moments more. Lest you be lulled to sleep by the silence of the culture, the concept of Pluralism is literally taking our country by storm; it is, by definition, supplanting the fundamentals which have underpinned our society for hundreds of years. The Judeo-Christian value system was and is at the very heart of our government. We did not decide what was right and wrong in the late 1700’s; it had been decided for years and the framers of our legal system simply adopted that moral code as the basis for our government. Our roots, as a nation, are in monotheism generally, and the One God of the BIble specifically.
I invite you to read slowly and deliberately the following text from one of John’s general epistles. “And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God.” (1 John 5.11-13). The first verse states that eternal life is in the Son. The second sentence states that this [eternal] life does not exist outside the Son. Had John not written the second sentence, I could have found room for some other source of eternal life, but when he said that it exists ONLY in the Son, that removed all other possibilities.
Now, whether we like it or not, right and wrong (a moral code) is determined by our Creator. We can attempt to divorce right and wrong from our Maker, but when we do we end up with a system of relativity that changes as our collective minds change. I suggest that this is pretty much where we are as a society. We used to know that life was sacred, even if we didn’t always honour it as we should have. We used to know that God intended for marriage to be between a male and a female, even if we didn’t honour it as we should have. We used to know that there were righteous bases upon which one nation had the responsibility to stop another nation from egregious sins against humanity, even if we didn’t always honour the principle as we should have. We used to know that some crimes formed such a threat that they had to be punished severely and swiftly to prevent their influences from deteriorating the society they were intended to protect (even if we did not always respect that principle as we should have).
The issue here is not pluralism, per se. Rather, it is the unannounced and almost unnoticed promotion of humanity to the role of lawgiver. Some today don’t claim to know what is right, but they know what is wrong; they know that it is wrong to disagree with: 1) Those who take human life for their own convenience, 2) Those who approve same-sex marriage, 3) Those who oppose the principle of "righteous warfare,” 4) Those who oppose swift and severe punishment of some crimes against society. That, even if you don’t call it such, is pluralism; it and the Bible simply do not mix!
Questions:
1. What does the first commandment have to do with pluralism and/or polytheism?
2. What was THE bone of contention between Israel and her neighbors in the promised land?
3. When a polytheist and a monotheist meet, who is most likely to draw the line when it comes to their respective religions? Why?
4. How is pluralism connected to the inability to know the absolutes of what is right and what is wrong?
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