Fragments of truth wrapped in untruths

Fragments of truth wrapped in untruths

This past week an amateur filmmaker took to the campus of Yale University with a petition that he asked students to sign. It was a petition to repeal the First Amendment.

Amendment I

Ratified December 15, 1791

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The filmmaker did this to prove a point. He did not personally believe in repealing the amendment. Dozens of students signed the petition with some even praising the petitioner for bravery in his efforts. These unthinking, uneducated Yale students never thought of the fact that they were signing a petition to repeal their right to sign a petition.

Many in this generation are caught in the net of fragments of truths wrapped in untruths. Many of them are right in believing that we shouldn't use our right of free speech to discriminate against another, but that one truth of morality taken out of the whole context of free speech makes for an ideology that actually eliminates free speech. In it we also lose the right to give someone the good news of the gospel or of being kind and gracious to someone in a way that might offend some other witness of that kindness. The fragment of truth taken out of the context of the whole truth causes that fragment to lose its meaning. And then, if that now falsified fragment is swollen into its own system of truth, that system or ideology is completely false. Yet those who proclaim such ideology as infallible point to the original fragment in its context as the foundation of their own untruthful system, using it as evidence for validity of an evil system.

The same has become true of the progressive movement, which has been in the works for well over one hundred years, and now fully accepted by many young people (as well as some old). They declare that there is no absolute source of truth. They proclaim that truth is in the interpretation, feelings, and culture of the one claiming it. If a person believes something enough and is sincere about it then it is defined by them as truth. However, what they fail to see is that their so-called logic destroys all truth, even the "truth" that there is no absolute truth (brain-freeze). They claim that it is only right to think in their way, but they have literally stated that there are no absolute standards of "right," therefore, they cannot, by their own ideology claim to be right. This explains their savage and sometimes violent attacks on those who disagree with them. They cannot intelligently (and calmly) argue their case based on any principles so the only defense of their rightness is emotionalism and violence. When did the world completely stop thinking? Popular opinion has changed from "what is good" to "what feels good," and this is disastrous.  

All truth comes from God. ISA 65:16 Because he who is blessed in the earth Shall be blessed by the God of truth.

1JO 4:6 We are from God; he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

Therefore, the fragments that are taken that are used to create stupid ideologies as well as pagan and legalistic religions are actually taken from God's truth and then they alone, taken out of context so that they lose their substance of truth, are greatly enlarged to make systems of religion or behavior that dupe mankind.

Another great push of late, related to the story of the petitioner at Yale, is the so-called problem of diversity on university campuses. This has led to free-speech zones and safe-zones. In the safe-zones no speech or action is allowed that might hurt feelings, challenge, or even make another person feel uncomfortable. Once again, the falsehood destroys its own very premise. Diversity means two societies while university means "whole" or one society. They have created a safe-zone where everyone has to think the same and they call it diverse, a word meaning that there are at least two forms of thinking.

What stopped people from thinking is man's two great enemies that are brothers in the war against his salvation and freedom and they are ignorance and arrogance. Oba 3 "The arrogance of your heart has deceived you,"

EPH 4:18 being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart

Arrogance and ignorance are always found together, as is beautifully portrayed in Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Near the end of the time of the second spirit's visit to Scrooge, from the foldings of the spirit's robe, appeared a boy and a girl.

"They were a boy and a girl. Yellow, meager, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shriveled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread. Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude. "Spirit! are they yours?" Scrooge could say no more. "They are Man's," said the sprit, looking down upon them. "And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased." [Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol]

The girl called Want was so called because of the greed of others. Such greed is that which will not even provide for a "yellow, meager, ragged, scowling, wolfish child. Such a person of greed, said the Lord, deserves to have a millstone hung around his neck and be cast into the sea. LUK 12:15 And He said to them, "Beware, and be on your guard against every form of greed; for not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions." Those who design the false systems that possess some truth fragments are pushed and motivated by greed. It is the same greed that pushes those who follow the system. Greed comes in many forms, it is not always lust for wealth. It consists of all lusts from which the practitioners follow a singular, inordinate desire for a thing that is not of the foundation of truth. Single mindedness of worldly lust is a goal or purpose that overrules all thinking and all considerations. 2PE 2:12 But these, like unreasoning animals, born as creatures of instinct to be captured and killed, reviling where they have no knowledge, will in the destruction of those creatures also be destroyed. Think of those who want safe-zones, no foundational truths, PC speech, etc.; do they desire nothing? In fact they desire much, and it is always in accordance with some form of lust.

I would like to expound on this theme with an example from history, particularly from the First World War. *

During the course of the war the fatal weakness of the German Empire was that its military leaders, who knew every detail of their profession and nothing outside it, considered themselves, and became, arbiters of the whole policy of the state. In Germany, there was no one to stand against the General Staff and to bring their will-power and special point of view into harmony with the general salvation of the state. In charge of this Staff was General Ludendorff. Russia bowed out of the war in 1917, which meant that the Germans no longer had an Eastern front to defend. This freed up a million extra men and three thousand extra heavy guns for the German war effort on the Western front with Britain and France. This was the perfect opportunity for peace. By conceding some of the conquered land back to the Allies, and with the greater German forces now in the West, a basis for negotiation might well have been established, but Ludendorff had other ideas.

Ludendorff decided that a full, all or nothing, offensive in the spring of 1918 was the ticket to a complete and utter victory in the war. He knew what he was risking and he knew that the German people had grown tired of the war. The cessation of the fighting in the winter of 1917/1918 gave the peoples time to feel their wounds and they found them ghastly. The people wanted peace. With the Americans entering the war and on their way across the Atlantic to help the Allies, Ludendorff had to act fast and so instead of brokering peace and saving countless lives and monies, and not to mention the nation of Germany itself (for he was well aware of the amazing amount of dead that this war was causing in every battle), Ludendorff commenced his offensive in March of 1918.

Using mustard gas, his big guns, and his storm troopers he pounded the Allied lines and made great strides, but he overextended himself, his supply lines failed, the Americans landed faster than expected, and he lost all. In the end, after only four months, 270,000 German soldiers died and almost as many Allied soldiers perished, including an uncountable number of civilians. Single mindedness that overrules all thinking and all considerations always ends up hurting many others, as well as many who are innocent of it. It is a grave evil in this world.

Ludendorff had fragments in his thinking that were right and true. He had a love of country, he looked for victory over his enemy, he was a sound military man, and he risked all for the sake of victory. But notice how he took these things that are good in the context of the whole of truth and made them evil by taking them out of that context. He loved his country, but he loved his task more. He loved victory, but he loved it at all costs. He was a sound military man, but he was not a statesman in the political void that was Germany at the time. He loved to risk all for the sake of victory, but it wasn't just his all, but that of hundreds of thousands of young soldiers and innocent civilians with their farms and homes. Fragments of truths taken out of their contexts become evil and ugly.

The First World War was the first of its kind in which war had grown huge with huge numbers of casualties and in which there was no such thing left of an art of war but only of a gigantic agency of the impersonal slaughter of men by machinery. It was reduced to a business like a stockyard. Ludendorff, a veteran of the war, knew this well before he began his all or nothing spring offensive in 1918, but none of that mattered to his single minded goal of all or nothing victory. By war's end, nine million combatants and seven million civilians perished. The long term effect for Germany was considerably bleak in which the government and the economy collapsed, opening a void for the National Socialist German Workers party, also known as the Nazi party. Ludendorff was blinded by one ambition and while he had some truths to embolden him, his entire modus operandi was deeply flawed, and as always happens, others suffered from it.  

HEB 12:15-16 See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled; that there be no immoral or godless person like Esau, who sold his own birthright for a single meal.

Esau was also singular of mind, even for such a small thing as a hunger pang.

Even the positive Christian must be careful not to become and expert at only one aspect of doctrine to the neglect of the others. The more he understands about the entire realm of the scripture the more he will understand its fragments, for he will be forever increasing is his understanding of the entire context, which breathes life and truth into the fragments. Don't become an expert at eschatology and neglect the many other aspects of the spiritual life. Your system of faith will warp and it will become entangled with evil, and by it, you will only end up defiling your own soul and also many others. By means of the Spirit we must be humble students of the entire text that God has so graciously given to us from the library of heaven - the mind of Christ.

Grace and peace to all who hear,

Pastor Joe Sugrue

Grace and Truth Ministries.

*Much of the writing about Ludendorff in the war was taken from Winston Churchill's essay, Ludendorff's 'All-or Nothing'.