Relativism is the belief that morals are determined by the person who holds them. Absolutism is the belief that morals are determined from outside the person and are true no matter who holds them. In our generation, relativism is making huge progress in supplanting the absolutism of the past. This is something of great importance to us as evangelists carrying forth the gospel of the kingdom because the instruction to those who believe the gospel is to repent. If someone believes that he or she has the right to define what is right for them then repentance becomes another relative term easily sluffed off with the comment “repentance is not for me.”
Recently I went to a church in Vermont where the preacher focused on the Scriptures leading up to Matthew 6.33 “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added unto you.” As he progressed in the sermon it became apparent that he understood the kingdom of God to be one-to-one equivalent with the church/body of Christ. He even went to Mat 6.9-10 to show that “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven” means that through the church God’s will is being done on earth. Often I hear from Christians the rhetoric of “building the kingdom,” “expanding God’s kingdom,” or “being kingdom oriented not local church focused,” etc. It would appear that the majority of Christianity believes that the kingdom of God is the church. I believe that this is probably the most wide-spread belief about the kingdom and therefore it is something to which we must have an answer.
Often when speaking to people, I have come across a certain line of reasoning that is difficult to overcome. Usually, they will suggest that Christianity is narrow-minded because we think that there is only one way to God (cf. John 14.6), whereas “mature” people have come to accept a plurality of religious paths to enlightenment. Some have said to me, “you are intolerant of other religions.” To a certain extent, this is probably quite true. However, that is not because I haven’t looked into other religions but because other religions don’t appear to offer realistic solutions to mankind’s universal problems of sin and death.
How would one go about trying to prove that there is such a thing as a builder? All one needs to do is find one building and that building would be absolute proof that a builder exists. In like manner, how would one prove that painters exist? Just find one painting and you would have proof that there must be a painter. How about a tree? When one comes across a tree, what are the typical thoughts that come to mind? [Nature produced this. This tree has always been here. Evolution produced this tree over millions of years of genetic mutations from grass.] Why is it that we don’t immediately conclude that there is a tree maker? If buildings prove that there are builders and paintings prove there are painters then trees should prove that there are tree makers!
Rantz Grotto, an athiest has just put together a blog about the Bible. He wants to know why we believe the Bible is true. He also wants to talk about matters of faith. Here is an excerpt from his original posting:
In a nutshell, I have been saying that because there are so many diffenent versions of the Bible it makes it hard to know what the true word of God is (assuming that the word of God is given in the Bible). Also, knowing that the Bible was transcribed by mortals, who is to say that somewhere in the transcription there was not a misspelling or wrong word inserted which chould inadvertanly change the meaning of one passage or another…