A few nights ago, I watched a video podcast with four highly respected intellectuals struggling with the new orthodoxies currently being enshrined in the hallowed halls of academia. They were despondent over the fact that postmodernism, which originally said, there was no truth and that truth was merely a social construct, is now declaring radical beliefs that are completely divorced from science.  They all sounded weary and one of them confessed to locking himself away in his room and not eating for three or four days as he faced total irrationality being adopted as scholarship by the greatest institutions of higher learning. I thought to myself “if this man is brought to despair by the false conclusions he sees coming from academia, what in the world are the regular folks who don’t have the time or the training to grapple with academic research papers supposed to do?  They don’t even realize what is in the air. They don’t even realize that the journalist, the screenwriters, the corporate CEOs and teachers that shape our world are downstream from these supposed sources of knowledge?”

As I sat and pondered, bits and pieces of passages that I learned in childhood taught to me by a faithful mom, who took little cut out figures of Bible characters which stuck conveniently to the back of our fuzzy couch, a faithful dad who left scraps of paper with scriptures on them left from his favorite old chair, faithful pastors and Sunday School teachers.  It occured to me what the solution to my dilemma was, that we need to get back to believing the Word of God and making it our source of absolute truth. I had to look up the scriptures to get the whole text but here’s the complete text of some of these passages that begin floating up from deep in my psyche.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 1  All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,   so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

1 Thessalonians 2:13 (NIV)   And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is at work in you who believe.

Hebrews 4:12-13 (NIV)   For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.    Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

Matthew 7:24 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.

Psalm 119:69-73   Though the arrogant have smeared me with lies, I keep your precepts with all my heart …   The law from your mouth is more precious to me than thousands of pieces of silver and gold.  Your hands made me and formed me; give me understanding to learn your commands.

There’s been a trend for some time now to move away from viewing the Bible as a book with authority.  It’s still viewed a book for inspiration, motivation and perhaps even guidance, but authority? Not so much.  Many church leaders decided a while back that folks like you really couldn’t handle dogma and absolute truth; what you could digest, was just a few promises and platitudes to help you with your hurts and hang ups.  The abandonment of Biblical authority has created a vacuum that the newly revised version of postmodernism is now rushing in to fill. You see, we are wired for moral absolutes and we know at the deepest part of our psyche we must have an unshakeable code of ethics to restrain the strong and protect the oppressed.  Of course we are incompetent gods; totally incapable of a creating coherent ethical structure; at least that’s my observation. Most importantly Judeo/Christian scriptures are the only religious documents that have at their epicenter a redeemer who saves humanity from it’s sin.

• The Bible is balanced.  (Example: it honors women without dishonoring men)
• The Bible is unbiased.  (Example: Jesus rebukes the Pharisees & his disciples)
• The Bible is honest. (The sins of Israel’s leaders and pagan leaders are equally exposed)
• The Bible is reliable. (The Bible has more empirical (observational) support, a shorter time between original writing and surviving copies, and a greater number of source manuscripts than any other ancient work, by far.)  
• The Bible is helpful. ( There is clear direction on how to handle your emotions, raise your children, relate to your spouse and take care of you body.  No other book comes close to being as helpful as the Bible.)
• The Bible is accurate.  (The stories and archetypes of scripture reliably predict exactly how the natural world around us works.)

So support whatever causes or candidates you feel are best for our world but put the the Word of God at the top of your hierarchy.  Sure, this will take some effort. You can’t be sloppy and ignorant even with the Scripture and have good results, but there’s a lot of help and a lot of resources for you to understand accurate Biblical Doctrine about the stuff that matters.  Much quicker than you may realize, you can understand what the word of God is saying about the treatment of women, the behavior of men, ethics for our sexuality, gender, race, immigrants, borders, the unborn, nations, globalism, victims, victimization, restitution, consequences, money, marriage and forgiveness.  If you feel you have to make the choice between grasping everything being written and spoken by everybody in the world and the 783,137 words in the typical translation of the Bible, choose the Word of God. When people criticize you for believing the Bible just day, “okay, go get your doctrine and let’s put it under that same scrutiny that your are putting the Bible under and let’s see which one comes out ahead.  If you want to find your sanity in a world that’s gone mad, make God’s word, the last word.