So many people say, “Oh, you Christians. We need empirical evidence. We need it scientifically based.” We’re being sold a world view right now, whether it’s on gender identity, transgender or anything else, which has got nothing to do with science and has got everything to do with a social construct. It’s ignoring the biology and it’s ignoring the objective world.
This week, in the last Quantum for 2016, I look at some of the world view messages that we’re hearing (or not hearing) being expressed through the media.
| LINKS |
1) Gender / Transgender Update.
2) University and Education
“Social constructionism is the doctrine that all human roles are socially constructed. They’re detached from the underlying biology and from the underlying objective world.”Dr Jordan Petersen
3) Secular swimming pools
BBC – Funds raised to open pool in Lewis on Sabbath
National Secular Society – Sabbath swimming campaign succeeds, thanks to islanders and secularists
SPIN ALERT – Of course, another way of looking at this story is that, since the Indiegogo 60 day crowdfunding campaign was about to expire without meeting its fundraising pledge target, the ‘All-or-Nothing’ campaign would have collapsed without raising a penny unless the NSS had stepped in at the end to fund 20% themselves.
“The special mark of the modern world is not that it is skeptical, but that it is dogmatic without knowing it. It says, in mockery of old devotees, that they believed without knowing why they believed. But the moderns believe without knowing what they believe – and without even knowing that they do believe it. Their freedom consists in first freely assuming a creed, and then freely forgetting that they are assuming it. In short, they have always an unconscious dogma; and an unconscious dogma is the definition of a prejudice.”G.K. Chesterton, from an article in the Illustrated London News, March 15, 1919.
Death.
Is this objectively true? 100% reliably equal to all.
It’s amazing that only the great, good and heroic have prominent deaths, those who lived in the public eye, one way or another; whose deaths may bring connecting remembrances of our own life, but in a detached way. They may or may not bring questions of the passing of our own lives and pondering the meaning of life.
This week I attended the funeral, in Edinburg, of a school friend of my wife, who married a Scot and emigrated to Scotland. As far as we know she was a non believer. She died suddenly, alone. Although it was stated that it was taken by a “minister” only a believer would have recognised a reading from Ecclesiastes which combined with what I took to be a prayer of committal of the body – the Gaelic blessing “May the road rise up to meet you……..” left an impression of unbelieving or even pagan hopelessness.
There was Buddy Holly and Jim Reeves that expressed a longing for a permanent continuing everlasting supreme love and significance, a yearning for an eternity that God has placed in our heart. And clapping for family eulogies, for a life lived. But nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing offered from the “minister.” And at the end my wife and I wondered if, in fact, it was a humanist service.
What is the value of an ordinary life lived and died, of dreams unfulfilled, of millions dying in anonymity, and unremembered. What is a successful life? Why ARE we here?
In the beginning was Me, is not the story of mankind. It is not the story of dust to dust, ashes to ashes. It is not the story of no hope, for atheistic no hopers.
It is the story of a life of eternal significance , identity, satisfaction, joy, enjoyment. worship, love and life, and glorification. through our union in the death and resurrection of Christ, God with us, He in us and us in Him
It is the relationship for which we were created.
I was down after the service, because of it a life summed up in 15 minutes. The minister didn’t quote this:
2
“Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.”
3
What do people gain from all their labors
at which they toil under the sun?
4
Generations come and generations go,
but the earth remains forever.
5
The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises.
6
The wind blows to the south
and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
ever returning on its course.
7
All streams flow into the sea,
yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
there they return again.
8
All things are wearisome,
more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
nor the ear its fill of hearing.
9
What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
10
Is there anything of which one can say,
“Look! This is something new”?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.
11
No one remembers the former generations,
and even those yet to come
will not be remembered
by those who follow them.
But without Christ, who wasn’t mentioned at all, that was ultimately his message. Shame on him. even though he did not personally know my wife’s schoolgirl friend.
And yet. No one there, other than my wife knew that her friend had been in the Salvation Army as a youth , nor the conversations they had after my wife’s conversion.
Sorry to go on
Just watched on ITV news a young autistic Irish girl singing Hallelujah. Marvellous uplifting and much needed reviving of spirit, of worship,missing from the service.
What a joy, a much recommended Web viewing.