Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Dennis Prager Strikes Again
A couple of weeks ago I posted on Dennis Prager's column series on Judeo-Christian ethics. Today, he adds to that series, with the best entry yet.
Dennis discusses the underlying motivation behind leftists stances on a variety of issues.
I have been reflecting on that in relationship to the church, How many issues facing the church today are a result of people feeling when they should be thinking? Issues related to homosexual ordination and marriage are because people "feel" that it is wrong to deny homosexuals "happiness." (As if, that is the only way they can be happy.)
What really gets to me is when we start shaping our theology. Parableman just yesterday discussed annihilationism. Adrian Warnock has been doing yeoman's work trying to maintain the concept of penal substitution. The decline of penal substitution and the rise of annihilationism have both come as people have increasing "felt" that a loving God cannot be punitive. This feeling comes from people that did not like being punished by their parents, so they decided that it was wrong to punish kids, and the idea blossomed from there.
Just because punishment felt bad when we were kids, we are going to overturn theology? Besides, isn't a bad feeling what punishment is supposed to be about? If you associate a bad feeling with something, you won't do it anymore.
Based on that, avoiding bad feelings can result in inappropriate behavior. Can we really want feelings to be the basis of morality, values, or theology?
Dennis discusses the underlying motivation behind leftists stances on a variety of issues.
With the decline of the authority of Judeo-Christian values in the West, many people stopped looking to external sources of moral standards in order to decide what is right and wrong. Instead of being guided by God, the Bible and religion, great numbers -- in Western Europe, the great majority -- have looked elsewhere for moral and social guidelines.Doesn't that ring so true? Read the full piece and you'll really get the idea. Austin Bay Blog, Hugh Hewitt's "Blog of the Month," posts some of his experiences with the "feeling" phenomena.
For many millions in the twentieth century, those guidelines were provided by Marxism, Communism, Fascism or Nazism. For many millions today, those guidelines are . feelings. With the ascendancy of leftist values that has followed the decline of Judeo-Christian religion, personal feelings have supplanted universal standards. In fact, feelings are the major unifying characteristic among contemporary liberal positions.
I have been reflecting on that in relationship to the church, How many issues facing the church today are a result of people feeling when they should be thinking? Issues related to homosexual ordination and marriage are because people "feel" that it is wrong to deny homosexuals "happiness." (As if, that is the only way they can be happy.)
What really gets to me is when we start shaping our theology. Parableman just yesterday discussed annihilationism. Adrian Warnock has been doing yeoman's work trying to maintain the concept of penal substitution. The decline of penal substitution and the rise of annihilationism have both come as people have increasing "felt" that a loving God cannot be punitive. This feeling comes from people that did not like being punished by their parents, so they decided that it was wrong to punish kids, and the idea blossomed from there.
Just because punishment felt bad when we were kids, we are going to overturn theology? Besides, isn't a bad feeling what punishment is supposed to be about? If you associate a bad feeling with something, you won't do it anymore.
Based on that, avoiding bad feelings can result in inappropriate behavior. Can we really want feelings to be the basis of morality, values, or theology?
