PHARISEES OF LUUV

There is a new Pharisee in town. Like the Pharisee of old, she is pompous. Unlike the Pharisee of old, she cloaks her sin in a false righteousness of love, instead of a false righteousness of law keeping. By using the term “she” I am not implying that all the new Pharisees are female, only that they are feminine.

I. Identity of the Pharisees of Luuv.


The Pharisees of Luuv major on religion and minor on obedience. They are the uptight, white-knuckled, super religious folks in every Evangelical church bent on making sure everyone else knows just how “loving” they are. They hate others, forbid to speak much of sin and righteousness, and ban terms like “false-teacher,” “liar,” or “repent.”

Sometimes other names for these modern zealots come to mind. Here are a few of my favorites. Take and keep the ones you like. I call them the Laodecians of Luuv, the Willowy Wusses of Wimpism, the Uptight Ultra-religious, the Sultans of Smarm, the Sadducees of Sap, or simply Smarmisees. Make up your own and share them with your friends. The Spirit used humorous terms for the terminally pious like White-washed Walls, Dung Heaps, Dogs, Liars, and many more. So this is a scriptural practice, a sound learning device, and loads of fun. Your kids will love it.

II. Evangelical Luuv defined.

A. How in the world can I pair up the idea of love with the idea of Pharisees? I don’t.

There is a difference between what the Scripture calls love and what an American Evangelical (I am one) calls love. For this article I will spell Evangelical love “Luuv,” capitalizing the noun form to indicate deity in the mind of its disciples. When spoken the vowel sound of Luuv is to be lengthened for emphasis. Add a churchy accent of your favorite flavor and you’ll have it. (Rick Warren did this in his address to the Baptist World Congress in Birmingham, England.) Scriptural love will be spelled in the conventional way—“love” because that’s what it is.

B. Evangelical Luuv may be scripturally defined as the pursuit, glorification, or valuing of that which is soft, smooth, and not likely to cause offense or controversy.

C. Luuv appears in Scripture as a vice, not a virtue.

Clergy that cow tow to this idol are threatened with God’s wrath. In Malachi God promises to seed their faces with the dung of their own religion, pronounce against their children and grandchildren, and then take the clergy out with the garbage (chapter 2, verse 3.) Evangelical Luuv is, at heart, a pursuit of things that are smooth and comforting. On the part of the clergy, it is a failure to point out the sins in our midst because the pastor doesn’t want to be ridiculed. In Malachi’s words they “show partiality in the Law.”

D. God is NOT Luuv and He never has been.

“God is Luuv,” the mantra of the spiritually mediocre, is a VERY precious lie to us Evangelicals. We depend on it to spare us from twinges of conscience and to forget passages of Scripture that tell us God is righteousness or God is truth. It is the antidote to those passages, our big eraser, a very spiritual-sounding shield against all who dare make an embarrassing observation or ask an awkward question about our conduct—especially God.


III. The Pharisees of Luuv are ungodly persons that oppose God.

Just as the Pharisees of the New Testament pretended to themselves and others that they loved God, so their modern counterparts are proved by the Lord Jesus to be imposters because they have substituted their particular brand of religion, tradition, and set of rules for the truth. Their substitute is beguiling. It seems so godly and biblical—god is Luuv. Most Pharisees believe they are godly and saved. They are not godly and most of them are not saved. They ARE supremely religious—even smarmy. Religion oozes out like syrupy poison.

Jesus, on the other hand, was a carpenter who read the Scripture and obeyed it.

IV. Rules of Pharisees of Luuv.

A. Rules are added.

The Smarmisees love to add rules. Unlike their forebears they only add a few rules, because their aim is to feel religious, by ignoring God’s rules. This is so they rarely think about their sin. The original Pharisees felt religious by adding rule upon rule in order to cover over their sin with buckets full of religious deeds and poses. The similarity is that both are aiming to feel more religious, by obscuring their sin, subtly highlighting the misdeeds of others even if those “sins” are only the violation of Pharisee Law. Both hate God and use people for their own glory.

We can break down all the rules added by the Pharisees of Luuv to just seven basics.

Rule One. Never—and I mean NEVER—tell anyone what they are doing is wrong.

Rule Two. Tell anyone who is breaking Rule One that what they are doing is wrong--WAY wrong.

Rule Three. Work “god is Luuv” into any conversation you have. That way others will know you’re luvving and they’re not.

Rule Four. Attend only discussion style Sunday School classes and Bible studies so you can get in at least three god-is-Luuv’s before the final prayer.

Rule Five. Speak very softly, like a young girl in severe pain, in order to rid the congregation of men and so others will know you’re luuving and they’re not.

Rule Six. Perfect a really good smarmy face. Try for that special my-dog-just-died-of-a-hideous- wasting-disease-but-I’m-holding-up-just-fine-thank-you-for-asking kind of smile.

Rule Seven. Frown and object any time words like sin, judgment, or repent are used, especially if the speaker really seems to mean it. Remind that big meany god is Luuv. A furrowed brow helps.

V. Rules are taken away.

This is the important part. Smarmisees don’t really take a scissors to their Bibles and cut out commandments. That would make them all lumpy and kind of thin and they don’t actually READ their Bibles anyway. They already KNOW the three IMPORTANT parts—god is Luuv, knowledge puffs up, and don’t judge (that’s their job.) Instead, they simply repeat their mantra in willowy voices every time sin and righteousness is mentioned. I think it’s kind of like x-ies when we were kids. If some big meany says “God” just say “god is luuv” and the big meany has to go away. If he doesn’t, then bring his name up in prayer meeting when he isn’t there. Use your most girlish voice when asking prayer for his un-luuving attitude. Boy, does THAT score points!

VI. Self absorption of Pharisees of Luuv.

The new Pharisees are self-oriented liars. While the emphasis seems to be right and good, centered on others, self is the over riding concern. Thus appearance is more important than substance. For instance, how many times in discussions with Smarmisees have you heard someone rebuked harshly (but in Luuv) because he spoke the truth to someone who rejected it angrily? The clueless critic will say something to the effect that the sinner would have accepted Jesus if only the speaker had spoken in the Proper Way and at the Proper Time, both of which we non-Pharisees are way too stupid to figure out on our own. The Proper Way has something to do with the painted-on cry-smile and girly voice. The Proper Time never actually comes because the scorn of a sinner will ALWAYS cause the Swamis of Swish to wet their collective pants.

They cannot tolerate rejection because they are disobedient to God or because they are not new creatures in Christ. Even a vicarious rejection through someone else in their church group is too insulting to their inner selves.

VII. Generation of Pharisees of Luuv.

Okay, here is some good news from the bad news. The bad news is that my generation did this to the church. (I bought into these lies, too.) The good news is we are getting old enough that we are becoming irrelevant and many will soon be dead. There are strong indications that God is giving us a younger generation that are more God and truth centered. For instance, today’s students in many Bible colleges are much more apt to embrace the sovereign authority of God over man’s will. Here are the names of some very good Christian leaders that are solidly scriptural: Todd Wilkin of Issues Etc., Michael Horton of The White Horse Inn, Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, John Piper, John McArthur, and others. Many of these good men are in their early forties, promising the church 20 years of productive leadership. This is very good news.

VIII. On-Purpose Ignorance of Pharisees of Luuv.

I use the term ignorance here in its most derogatory sense. I do not mean they are unwitting, unknowing, or ill informed, though some certainly are misled by a predominately effeminate Evangelical clergy. That would be an accident, not their fault. I am referring to the act mentioned in Romans 1 and lots of other Scripture involving the outright suppression of knowable truth. They ignore it. It is a deep-in-the-soul dishonesty, a sin inviting the wrath of God.

A. Pharisees of Luuv are ignorant of Scripture and scriptural love, ON PURPOSE.

The Pharisees of Luuv carry themselves as if they had great wisdom and insight. The truth is that they are ignorant about love—their favorite subject.

To illustrate, try this. Are love and righteousness opposite or the same? If you said “opposite,” you have full blown SOTS, Smarminess of the Soul. Get help.

God’s love is defined by the Apostle of Love, John, as obedience to God. John, after all, is he who said “God is love” in Chapter 4 of his first epistle. He also says in Chapter 5 that the Spirit of God is truth, in the first verse of his gospel that the Son of God is truth, and in Chapter 10 of his gospel that those who do not obey truth are not the Son’s sheep. But those passages don’t seem very important to the Idolaters of Luuv.

B. Pharisees of Luuv are ignorant of God, ON PURPOSE.

One evening in a laundromat, I visited with an idolater. His license plate said “REDEEMD” and he was a teacher at a reputable local church. “Great,” I thought, “he’s a brother.” We each began talking about our respective gods—mine the God of Scripture and his “the god of the New Testament.” I use quotes here because they are his words, not mine. And his words are blasphemous. He informed me that “the god of the Old Testament” killed women and children. “I will not worship that kind of god!” he said with an upturned lip and a feminine superiority in his eyes. I think he expected me to be impressed. I warned him that he was an idolater, worshipping an idol.

This is the most damning sin of the demonically syrupy. Many are like him. Convinced that the God of the Old Testament who promised to “make loving kindness on thousands of those that love Me and keep my commandments” is harsh and that the God of the New Testament who said, some “are prepared for destruction” is tender. This is plainly ignorant. They ignore the Scriptures, ON PURPOSE, to ignore God, ON PURPOSE.

C. Pharisees of Luuv are ignorant of the real outcome of their actions.

The Uptight Ultra-religious commit three errors having to do with the results of the way they act, speak, and believe. First, they believe that their syrupiness will curry favor with God. Remember Malachi? Much of the writings of the prophets have to do with people seeking comfort, not obedience. This is a sin and the outcome will be perdition for many.

Second, they believe they are doing God a favor by representing Him to others as a wuss. We can have more members if only we can be more tolerant, they say. While this mollifies the sinfully religious and pets women and children, men are repulsed by both the wuss god and the wuss preacher.

Third, they believe they are going to curry favor with unbelievers by not acting like Christians.

If getting others to like us means not being us, who do they really like? Obviously it isn’t us. After forty years of being relevant, luuving, charming, winsome, or whatever the new buzz word is from the latest Evangelical wunderkind, Americans hate Christians more than ever before. We deserve it, because we have been lying to them.

IX. Arrogance of Pharisees of Luuv.

The old Pharisees arrogantly rejected the Lord Jesus and His Father. So do the modern ones. Their rejection of God’s person will be dealt with in the next section on idolatry. In addition, they arrogantly reject His wisdom and His words.

In Sunday School I was being lectured by one of the dozen or so Smarmisees in our church. She is a good-hearted lady that is new in the faith, one of those swayed unduly by our predominately effeminate clergy. Her point was typical Evangelical syrup. We cannot be very aggressive or forceful because that is sinful. I asked her if it would be sinful to call a recalcitrant believer foolish or a false teacher a dog. Of course, it was horrible in her mind to do such a thing. I revealed these were the words of Jude and Paul and she laughed, a little embarrassed.

Jesus called the terminally pious dung heaps and more. God calls His people that stray to another god prostitutes. In Hosea, we read “you have loved the wages of a whore on every barn floor.” He obviously would not pass the smarminess test of my Sunday School friend.

Leaders and long-time churchgoers that spout such filth are so unspeakably arrogant they condemn God and all His prophets and apostles. They think they know more and are better than God and all His prophets and apostles. After all, the way God talks is sinful to them. God must be instructed in the god-is-Luuv doctrine. Then, perhaps, if He minds His manners, He can become as moral and luuving and they.

X. Idolatry of Pharisees of Luuv.

The Pharisees of Luuv despise the God of Scripture. They demonstrate this by their insistence on the down grading of God to the god-is-Luuv god. Like my idolater friend in the laundromat, they will not worship the severe God that has revealed Himself in the Bible.

“…for I, Yahweh, your (m,s) God, am a jealous God, reckoning the iniquities of the fathers upon the sons, upon the third generation, and upon the fourth generation for those who hate Me, and making loving kindness for thousands of those who love Me and keep My commandments.”

Did you recognize that quote? Where is it from? It is the second half of the Second Commandment and if you are a churchgoer and did not know that, you are probably an Evangelical or a Catholic. The first half goes like this: “Never make for yourself (m,s) an idol or any image of anything in the heavens above, in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth. Never worship them and never serve them, for I Yahweh am a jealous God…” Exodus 20: 4-6.

So then, the White-knucklers will only worship the god of sappiness and syrup. According to Moses’ tablets, they do NOT love God. THEY HATE HIM DEEPLY. They have so earnestly feigned love of God they have been fooled their own act. What it is important for Christians everywhere to understand is these preachers and church members are haters of God, not lovers of God, according to the Word of God.

And they will hate YOU. Remember, John defined love as obedience to God (not goosh) in I John 5: 3 and II John 6. In I John 5:2 he gives us a test to see if we love the children of God. The test is not gooshy talk, a smarmy gaze, or marshmallows on your brain. Read it here below.

“By this we know if we love the children of God, if God we are loving and His commandments we are doing. For this is the love God, that His commandments we keep, and His commandments are not hard.”

The Worshippers of Luuv FAIL the test of Scripture. They major in NOT keeping His commandments if they are outside their tradition or opinion. After all, god is Luuv so they do not have to concern themselves with a lot of Scripture.

XI. Solution to Pharisees of Luuv.
Lit me suggest four steps every church can take to end this new legalism.
A. Pastors, pull your skirts back down and preach the Bible.

Pastors, you must start being men and stop being wusses. Stop selling out for convenience and approval. Many of you have been lazy in the study and cowards in the sanctuary. Study the Scripture and just tell us what it says. Those of us that leave were not really of us.

B. Bible schools and seminaries, stress Scripture, not psychology.

Decide if you believe in the sufficiency of Scripture or not. If the Scripture is good enough “so the man of God may be adequately equipped for every good work,” then you can teach Paul and David, without Jung, Rogers, and Winfrey. You contradict your own doctrinal statements when you insist the pastor must also be trained in psychology as well as Scripture. Psychology treats sin. Scripture calls for repentance and offers redemption. There is not a happy medium between these two views.

C. Church members, hire and encourage Scripture-loving pastors.

Look for, hire, and keep pastors that major in Scripture. Good examples are John MacArthur and J. Vernon Magee. You want a man that teaches Bible and lots of it. If your pastor is weak pray for him and encourage him. He may be a good man with a sensitive nature. Special care must be given to such a man. However, if a pastor persists in mushy, unclear teaching you MUST fire him. He is not of a godly character. Weenie men often compensate for instances of cowardice by gossip and back-biting. When faced with a struggle between truth and lie, they will often attack the truth in gossip because the truth makes them face the lie. I have seen this over and over in both secular and religious settings.

D. Church boards, get rid of physical images of “Jesus.”

“Jesus” pictures glorify effeminacy.

Contrary to the Second Commandment we Evangelicals have a taste for painted images of various guys in long hair and robes. We lie to our children and say these guys are Jesus, thus condemning our children, grand children, and great grand children according to the Second commandment. All the so-called images of Jesus I have ever seen picture some idiot that just had his nails done, to paraphrase Larry Norman. The Sallman picture of the Dork at the Door (Christ at the Door to idolaters) would have us believe that the Jesus of John’s Revelation is NOT arrayed with snow white head and hair, feet of burnished bronze, a sword coming out His mouth, and eyes on FIRE! His face shone like the SUN! Revelation says that He is. You can trust John the Apostle or the clerk at the Bible Book Store. Your choice. As for me and my house, we will stick with the apostle’s version. It seems safer to me.

Sallman’s Dork at the Door is an effeminate fellow just hoping for dear life you’ll let him in. Don’t. He might ask you for a date.

Scriptureless Pulpits

It’s Thursday afternoon. I am running to get material for my shop and I turn the truck radio to the local religious station. Chuck Swindoll is laughing and promising to tell me how his passage of Scripture can help me stay young. Naturally, my curiosity is piqued beyond anything any middle-aged man could possibly stand! Still, I turn the station.

It’s Friday morning. I’m up early. O goody, goody, goosebumps. Benny Hinn is on healing hemorrhoids, taming tumors, and sellin’ the spirit cheap. Call in now. Glory be to Benny’s god, whoever THAT is. I turn the station. Doubly excited, I discover another faith healer that has found it pays more to hock health food than do the healing himself. Hey, it HAS to be easier than sweating buckets into a microphone and pushing some overweight guy to the floor to cure his arthritis, leaving him still curiously overweight. (Benny’s god is very modest that way, I guess. Only heals the stuff that ain’t real showy.)

It’s Sunday Morning. The preacher is simply THRILLED by his cute story. So are several others. It’s all about himself, his car, his wife, his dreams, or his whatever. It helps manage the 36 minutes left in a 40 minute sermon block because he only studied two verses this week. Even HE isn’t able to stretch the spiritual lesson he got from his dog, Poopsie, for 36 minutes. No worries, though. He will slip in five or ten more words from those two verses. You know, the two that are so profound he just has to spend the entire 40 minutes on them. Then and only then will he go into the story about what he saw on that disgusting TV no good Christian should watch and what his neighbor did to his cat. That will leave about 4 minutes for the last phrase of the last verse, and a quick song about accepting Jesus because He really, really, really, really, really, really wants—no NEEDS—you to love Him. Feeding the sheep, right? Yeah, huh.

Fascinated by the story of the time the pastor’s fish tank blah, blah, blah…I somehow force myself to go back to studying and memorizing Scriptures on my own in the pew because I ought to make good use of the time used to get here and sit here. But I’m worried. There’s that lady who dressed me down for twenty minutes for not walking around and talking enough during Greeting Time (another great pastoral time management tool.) She might just light into me for studying the Bible instead of learning about Judge Judy and the pastor’s reaction to the case of the bad hair dryer that made the dog bite the neighbor who got thirteen stitches and an infection and dented his left rear right front fender on the way to the clinic, all of which cost twelve hundred, seventy-eight dollars and thirteen cents. This worries me until I look over to her and see her husband is fast asleep. Alright! I’m home safe for one more week.

I’m jealous, though. Amazingly, many Evangelicals get MORE than two verses! That’s right, they do. I didn’t believe it either until I tuned in Charles Stanley. They may get seven ways to improve your (insert the most disconcerting subject you can think of here) mixed with parts of twelve quickly spurted excuse verses. Excuse verses—some call them proof texts—are very important passages of Scripture that only the speaker could possibly have figured out had ANYTHING to do with the subject he MADE UP for this morning’s sermonette on dating, buying a car, raising pigeons, bicycling, swimming the back stroke, or whatever to the glory of God and the giant cardboard thermometer in the foyer.

If you can relate to any of this, lobby hard to fire your pastor and change the channel. Quickly.

Jim Bublitz Quote

Over at the sliceoflaodicea.com (a great, great site) yesterday I found this from JimBublitz. He is quoting John Flavel.

"Whatever religion or doctrine condones or makes allowances for sin is not of Christ. The Doctrine of Christ everywhere teaches self-denial and mortification of worldliness and sin. The whole stream of the gospel runs against those things. Scripture emphasizes the 'holy' and the 'heavenly' (not the sinful and the worldly). The true gospel has not even the slightest tendency to extol corrupt nature, or feed it's pride by magnifying it's freedom and power. And it rejects everything that undermines or obscures the merit of Christ, or tries to give any credit to man, in any way. And it certainly never makes the death of Christ a cloak to cover sin, but rather it always speaks of it as an instrument that destroys it!"

Amen.

The Blessings of Having a Hard Headed Dad

I was thinking of the great contrast between the way my dad thought and acted and the way we moderns and postmoderns act. To him tolerance was about adjusting valve lash, not approving of sin or some preacher that finds it easier to tell funny stories, than to actually crack the Book and deliver some grass and water to the sheep.

I can tell you all thrity-five billion things wrong with Dad. Got a week? Yeah, he's a son of Adam, just like his kid. If you have two weeks you can hear about mine, but add another week to take a VERY long shower.

My dad is very hard headed. He won't give you a lot of time to spout about some opinion. Not unless you're quoting Scripture. Then he will listen and wrestle with it. And he'll tell you if you're right or wrong or if he doesn't know. He wouldn't DREAM of just nodding approval because it "touched" him.

Why isn't anyone like that anymore? Dad is likely to call you a liar, so don't lie. Try that in church sometime and see if you're still in good graces. You may be called "mean." And you certainly will NOT be asked to give the blessing--EVER. People will just barely tolerate you. (Actually, not everyone--just the vocal ones.)

Dad is lonely right now. In fact, there is a deep-seated loneliness that comes from always feeling like the one others see as odd. And many think he is. In today's terms he is. In God's terms, he's normal.

I suppose I'm odd, too. I thank my Dad for that. And I thank God for Dad. What a blessing.

God bless you, Dad. You're a tremendous blessing. I love you.

Phil Perkins.

A Theology of Truth, Information, and the Love of Knowledge

The following article is an outline of my beginnings of a solution to a multifaceted problem that may seem obscure to the average Christian. However, it is very important. The fact that we do not love knowledge is a measure of two things. First, it is a measure of how much we love God. Second, it is a measure of doctrinal troubles to come in the church.

I openly invite any and all to criticize this article. Examine it critically. Do not spare my feelings. I am still in process of synthesizing its final form. I especially invite those of you that are theologically trained, philosophically trained, or just good critical thinkers. I will take correction. The only ones that I do not wish to hear from on this particular blog are the postmoderns. I am not being mean. It is just a simple fact that their thoughts will be irrelevant because of their worldview.

I will be expanding on the individual sections in upcoming blogs.

Thanks. Phil Perkins.


A THEOLOGY OF TRUTH, INFORMATION, AND THE LOVE OF KNOWLEDGE
Why Christians Are Obligated To Achieve Mental Excellence
Why Christians Are Obligated To Be Propositional Thinkers

What is the proper role of knowledge in the life of a Christian? Christianity is primarily spiritual, not intellectual, isn’t it? Doesn’t the Bible teach us that “knowledge puffs up?” We are to be humble, simple folk, right? After all, Faith is the opposite of Reason, right?

It will come as a soft surprise to many Evangelicals that the answer to all the above questions after the first one is a biblical NO. Unfortunately, the view of knowledge in much of the Evangelical church is very unbiblical and spiritually harmful in a multitude of ways. It has left us vulnerable to the attacks of those that claim that all that counts is science and to the attacks of the New Age (aka old paganism) that has come into our churches at the hands of men like Henry Blackaby, Karl Barth, Robert Schuller, Rick Warren, Ken Blanchard, Benny Hinn, and many, many more. The latest consequence of our nonchalance toward knowledge is the Emergent heresy, in which the leaders make outlandish statements, such as sodomy is not necessarily a sin (a la Brian McLaren) and then turn right around and say they believe in the authority of Scripture. (Specifically, this is postmodernism, which is an eschewal of absolute truth, which is really just another way of getting along without paying much attention to truth at all so that one may feel righteous in one’s debauchery.)

I. We will start with some definitions. We will use these definitions because it is best to be precise.

A. Truth is how things really are, were, or will be. It is objective. This is the biblical definition, but it is not the usual definition.

1. Dictionary definitions of truth usually describe it as accuracy. The problem with this definition of truth for Biblicists is that it limits truth to residing in a description of the way things really are or in the mind of the describer or perceiver. This is not reflective of a Biblical world view. For one thing the Bible always places truth outside of us and our language. That is to say, it is objective. Placing truth in language or in our minds makes it subjective and then the postmodernists are right in their statement that there is no absolute truth. (I am ignoring the logical weirdness of asserting that the absolute truth is there is no absolute truth. I suppose they really mean there is no absolute truth but that one, which leads one to ask by just what principles they discovered this no-absolute-truth principle since no other principles could possibly exist.)

2. Truth is objectively existent in God’s mind and in the rest of reality by way of God’s acts of creating and sustaining all that is outside of Him.

3. Truth is also objectively existent in God’s Revelation. That is to say, His words, whether written as part of Scripture or unwritten prophecy is truth. This is different than any created being. A created being can only say things that are true. They cannot create truth.

B. Information is a representation or description of truth. It consists in differences. More on this later.

C. Falsehood is a description of things as they really are not, were not, or will not be. It is misinformation.

1. Falsehood may be accidental from simply being mistaken.

2. Falsehood may be intended to mislead others.

D. Lying is the use of falsehood to intentionally mislead others.

E. Knowledge is the perception, memory, and use of truth represented in information.

F. True is an adjective that means accurate with respect to a representation of truth.

G. Objective is an adjective here used to describe truth. By this we mean that truth has its origin and it’s truthness outside of any sort of human perception, perceiver, knowledge, knower, communication, or communicator. In other words, it depends on no human. It is true no matter what you or I think or say.

H. Subjective is an adjective used here to indicate the state of a propositional statement having its origin in the mind or emotions of a human or group of humans by consensus or convention.

I. Propositional statement denotes a statements that the speaker or writer presents as true in declarative sentences.

J. Faithfulness is the act of doing what correlates with the truth or the state of being true.

K. Faith is the quality of acting faithfully.

II. Truth comes from God.

A. God decides what is true in all areas of life: morality, history, and science. These are the three overlapping spheres of reality and our knowledge of it.

1. Morality, the first sphere of knowledge, is God’s Personality.

a. Inner morality is what one knows of God’s Personality. It is innate, learned from nature, and learned from Revelation.

b. Outer morality is God’s Personality imitated. This is called obedience to God.

2. History, the second sphere of knowledge, is what happens, past, present, and future, material and spiritual.

3. Science, the third sphere of knowledge, is how things are, how God acts as He sustains the material universe. For the purposes of this article we will place math and logic under the umbrella of science. So we refer to science in the older sense of the word. Whether math and logic flow directly from God’s mind or from His activity, this writer currently cannot ascertain.

B. Therefore, the central aspect of God’s godness (the biblical term is holiness) in character is truth, holiness being the state or characteristic of being wholly separate from all that is created, that is, being like God, which He is. Truth and holiness cannot be separated. (The central aspect of God’s godness in capacity for action is power, but that is not our subject here.)

1. Obedience to God is obeying truth.

2. Love is the application of truth to how one acts towards others and God.

C. The dichotomy between faith and reason is false.

1. The idea that faith and reason informed by objective observation of the universe and Revelation are opposite is a mistake on the part of some, a lie on the part of others.

2. The Evangelical idea that worship is to be primarily emotional, not intellectual is paganism.

3. The valuing of devotional reading of Revelation over intellectual reading and critical analysis is pagan. What a passage means to you is of no importance. What God intended to communicate is what matters.

D. Morality flows from God’s heart. Morality is true because that is what God is like. He is truth, so don’t lie. He is love, so don’t steal or commit adultery. He is sovereign, so take the proper authority God has appointed to you in whatever roles you fill, submit to those in authority over you, and own things.

E. History flows from God’s mind. (Let there be light…) The things that take place are history. This is not formal history like history class or the history that is written by historians. That kind of history, in so far as it is true and not a part of the historian’s agenda, is a very small part of general history, as we are using the term here. All that happens is what God has planned for ages.

F. Science flows from God’s activity, ordered by God’s mind. It is a subset of history, but it is so important in our world that we categorize it by itself in our minds and in our academy.

1. God sustains all material things.

2. The laws of science are patterns God has decided to follow.

3. Being the Sustainer of the entire universe, God has His hand on all things at all times.
Therefore, gravity works because He does it. Electricity works because He does it.

4. God can make exceptions to the usual patterns of His work in matter. These exceptions are commonly called miracles.

5. Prayer is asking God to surprise us.

III. Because truth comes from God, information and knowledge cannot be divorced from God.

IV. Information is differences in perception and language that encode differences in reality (truth.)

A. Sensory input is always differential.

B. White noise and monochromatic visual fields are the closest we can come to non-differential sensory input. Uniform, or non-differential, sensory input leads to sensory break down, the inability to perceive anything. Prolonged exposure to it can lead to hallucinations.

C. Perception is the recognition of differences.

D. Data in a computer are binary choices.

1. Data to the eye are differences in light’s intensity and hue.

2. Data to touch are texture, the differences of surfaces and shapes.

3. Data to the ear are differences of air pressure (vibrations) and differences in the frequency and harmonic patterns of those differences of air pressure.

E. Data in morals are differences in good and evil.

F. Knowledge is the memory of these differences. See the definition section.

G. Evil consists in the purposeful confusion or denial of these differences in thought or action. This is a way of denying God by denying His wisdom, work, and authority.

H. Therefore, it is natural that the godly value knowledge and that a measure of the ungodliness of the ungodly is their disdain for knowledge of God and that disdain eventually extends to disdain for knowledge in general.

V. Knowledge is possible only because God directly causes us to know.

A. God has given truth that we can know.

1. God has given us the physical universe to perceive and ponder. This is God’s objective truth for us to see, taste, smell, hear, and feel with our skin.

2. God has given us the Revelation to perceive and ponder. This is God’s objective truth for us to read, hear, and teach others.

B. God has given us the capacity to perceive and ponder.

1. He has given us our five senses.

2. He has given us our conscience, or the innate knowledge of God’s Personality.

3. He has given us our intellects.

VI. Love of knowledge is part of love for God.

A. The Shama in Deuteronomy 6:4-5 requires that we involve our whole being in pursuit of God. This includes our minds.

B. I John 4-5 and the test of truth….The Spirit is Truth.

C. Exodus 33:13. Knowledge is both a reward from God for obedience and an aid to further obedience in order to find further favor with God.

D. Thy word is truth.

VII. Hatred of God leads directly to hatred of knowledge.

A. Romans chapter one indicates the strong link between the rejection of God and the rejection of knowledge.

B. Proverbs indicates that foolishness is ungodliness.

VIII. Communication is the ability to use differences to encode differences.

A. Language, oral or written involves differences.

B. Language is information encoded.

IX. The Fallacy from Incomplete Knowledge is an excuse for mental laziness and other sins.

A. Some claim that because we cannot know anything with complete accuracy that we then must assume that there is no absolute truth. This is a sham. The argument will start by asking deep questions. The answers will show that various people will give various and even contradictory answers to difficult questions. The wag will then assert the nonsequitor. Namely, no truth really exists.

B. This is easily demonstrated to be nonsense. Once upon a time, no one knew lightning was electricity. But it was. The lack of knowledge by humans simply means that we are not as smart as we would like to be. This is only a clever argument meant to intimidate the easily bent among us.

X. The Fallacy from Inaccurate Language is another excuse for mental laziness and other sins.

XI. The Fallacy from the Arbitrary Nature of Language is still another excuse.

A. Another argument for the denial of absolute truth is illustrated by a recent radio ad touting the need to educate girls. A young girl asks her father, “Daddy, did you know that the concept of odd and even is a philosophical illusion?” Besides the bigotry of valuing the education of girls over that of boys, the big sounding assertion that her father, being a stupid male, could not possibly have known is wrong. It is based on the idea that numbers are the invention of man.

B. Language is arbitrarily designed to encode information. However, that does not mean that which is encoded is not real, subjective, or arbitrary. For instance, if Morse code were used to indicate a delay in a train’s arrival, the fact that Mr. Morse chose what patterns of dots and dashes indicated what letters will not make the train arrive on time.

XII. The Fallacy from the Certainty of Scientific Knowledge.

A. The seeming certainty of knowledge gives rise to another sort of fallacy. This fallacy does not deny the existence of knowledge. No, in fact, it is the opposite. It gives us the idea that we can know so much more than we really can. I posit that we cannot really actually understand in an absolute sense.

B. What we call scientific knowledge is nothing more than a more detailed description of what we observe.

Introduction.

The theme of this blog is simple. It is a call to be biblical again. It is my prayer that the church in America will repent of its penchant for fads and love Jesus again. Hence the title. Al tosap al davaraiv is an approximate pronunciation of the first four Hebrew words of Proverbs 30:5-6. In English it is "Do not add to His words." The blog address comes from Deuteronomy 4:2, where we read,. "Never add to the word which I commanded you (mp) and never take from it, in order that you may keep the commandments of Yahweh your (mp) God which I commanded you (mp)."

In the coming days we will start with a biblical, common sense view of knowledge (epistemology). This is because I teach Greek and Hebrew at a small Christian Bible college and it behooves me to motivate students to learn. It is a godly endeavor to know.

There is, however, another reason for the emphasis on knowing. It is in answer the the Emergent heresy. Brian McLaren, Dan Kimball, and theooze.com are pulling a lot of unsuspecting Christians out of good churches, into an apostate movement that is neither emerging nor Christian. They hate propositional truth. It is my contention, then, that they also hate God and His People, whether they know it or not.

Phil Perkins.