Biblical Framework
Charles Clough
Lesson
140
Last time we started reviewing this article
out of U.S. News and World Report and I said I wanted to use this as a tool to
review how to use the framework, so I want to cover two of the techniques that
are used in the world system. Then I
want to complete the article so we can get into the notes and get moving again
in the material.
The first thing to remember that is involved
in all these discussions, this is always involved, that anytime we’re involved
in a discussion there’s certain baggage that’s brought to the table, and we
talk about strategic envelopment, we’ve done this again and again, but it needs
repetition. You cannot talk about any
particular subject without setting it inside of a worldview. It’s either going to be a self-consciously
thought through worldview or a sloppily, almost unperceived worldview, but
worldview there will be. This article
is an eloquent illustration of this.
We saw that the Apostle Paul used strategic
envelopment at Athens in Acts 17; he used it again in Acts 14, in that when he
went in to the people he immediately began discussing (quote) “religion” from
within the Creator/creature distinction.
He took it for granted. There’s no argument for that. That’s the
presupposition of this whole approach that he used there. Then we said that besides the tactic of
strategic envelopment there’s the tactical use of words. I should have said actually the tactical use
of language and sentences in particular, it’s not just words, there are
sentences. So we’ve got the strategic
envelopment, and we’ve got the tactical use of language. In the tactical use of language we pointed
out several things. One of those things
is that words and language are very deeply and profoundly spiritual. We used Prov. 1:23 to show that.
This was understood in the times of the
Bible; it is not well understood in our time.
For about 100-120 years we’ve lived in an intellectual climate that
distinguishes between the written word and the spirit. And this is because we live in a highly
mystical age, and the word is considered to be dry, dry orthodoxy, you’ve heard
that term expressed. And the spirit is
over here. That’s not Scriptural,
because how do you explain passages like Prov. 1:23 where it says listen to me
while I pour out my spirit and make my words known. How do you explain that?
That’s synonymous parallelism. That’s not bifurcation between the spirit
and the word. One isn’t dead and the
other alive. We showed parallels with
Ephesians and Colossians; we went through that. My point in going through that was that when we talk about the
tactical use of language and we gave those illustrations last week that it
reminds us we’re in a spiritual conflict.
Ultimately when ideas are bounced back and forth there’s spirits
associated with those ideas. Ideas are
not some little pieces of information that are just kind of like bits in a
computer. That’s a very naïve way of
looking at things. The Bible is far
deeper than that; there is more to this than just surface information.
We gave some illustrations. We used such
sentences as: even you could learn something that simple. An innocent looking sentence but full of
accuse accusations. That’s a tactic we
want to look at as we continue and finish critiquing this article.
We started in by noting that in the title of
this U. S. News & World Report article you have the subtitle that says “It
may be a many-splendored thing, but romance relies on Stone Age rules to get
started.” We discussed that and we said
that here’s a classic instance of strategic envelopment. In the tactical use of language in that
sentence the topic appears to be love and romance. Actually what’s going on is there’s a strategic envelopment of the
whole topic complete with an evolutionary frame of reference and the whole
article actually has a deeper agenda.
Whether it’s conscious, this guy who wrote it, Josh Fischman, whether he
really thinks this way or not I don’t know, but we don’t have to argue that the
man consciously chose to do this, because the god of this world is a deceiver,
and he controls; he controls the mind of the unregenerate. He controls enough of our minds; leave alone
the minds of the unregenerate. So it
doesn’t have to mean that he consciously set out to do this, but whether the
man set out to do this or not, that’s what the article, in fact, does.
We showed how everything is phrased within
this evolutionary worldview; the classic instance on page 42 where the
anthropologist doing the research says “the issue is: How do two bodies get
close enough together to procreate?”
That’s the issue as far as he’s concerned, because that is the issue in
evolution, survival of the fittest, so all of that is taken for granted. The
article doesn’t start out saying we will now discuss evolutionary theories
application to love. It’s not stated
that clearly and that’s why it’s so deceptive.
You have to watch this and we have to guard and protect our children
against this. This is going out all the
time, on every subject that we can find.
We went to Deut. 6 where we are instructed in our homes to teach
children constantly in terms of Scripture.
It doesn’t mean telling them Bible stories every waking hour. That’s not what Deut. 6 is talking about.
What it’s talking about is that whatever you speak of, whatever you do, put it
and let it be enveloped inside a Biblical frame of reference.
Let’s back up a moment and look at the
subtitle again, and image if instead of the subtitle being what it is, imagine
if we read the following: “Why we Fall in Love. It may be a many-splendored
thing, but romance relies on the Creator’s design to get started.” What does that do immediately? It changes the whole discussion. What have I done? I’ve changed no more than six words in the sentence and in
changing six words in that sentence we’ve totally altered the whole discussion,
right from the start. The whole thing’s
a completely different ballgame; we’ve gone football to baseball immediately,
just altering six words in the subtitle.
That shows the power of language.
If you’ve read this article you know that the
whole thing is just basically about reproduction. Love and romance exists as triggers to further procreation to
further survival of the fittest. That’s
the whole theory, that’s the whole thing in it. What we want to do as we go through this and they make their
points, this little piece of research did this, and this little piece of
research did that, etc. we want to say what does the Scripture say? Always ask what saith the Scripture? Don’t let the idea just float in your mind.
They’re dangerous, they float in your mind and they’ll corrupt, so you have to
put them against Scripture, and sometimes you won’t know what Scripture
says. That’s okay. At least you’re asking the right question,
what does Scripture say? I don’t know
what Scripture says on this subject but I’ve got to find out sometime. Maybe it will make you a better listener
when the Bible is taught, because now you’ve got more questions that you want
to find answers to, and it might make you a better reader of the Scriptures so
when you read the Scripture, verse after verse, chapter after chapter, you’re
looking for things that you know you need to know.
One of the things that we want to do when we
approach this issue is go back to the framework and ask ourselves, in Scripture
where do we encounter first the divine institution of marriage. We encounter it in creation, so let’s go
back to Gen. 1 and 2, and let’s find out in Gen. 1 and 2 how God phrases the
issue. Then armed with that we’re going
to come back and see how clever a deception we’re facing here, because remember,
Satan cannot deceive by presenting bulk error.
Satan never deceives us… if we were total morons he probably could do
it, he could probably deceive us by presenting bulk, gross, clear cut
error. But most of us are a little more
sophisticated than that, so Satan never comes in with bulk error. He always comes in with enough truth that’s
undeniable so you can’t deny the truth part without really acting like you’re
stupid or something. So what he tries to do is attach to the truth this entire
enveloping framework so when you get into the truth all of a sudden you’re
sucked in to the whole worldview that he’s packed with it.
Let’s go to the Scripture, Gen. 1:28-30, all
the way back to original creation. I have in mind the sentence on page 42 that
says “How do two bodies get close enough together to procreate?” The rest of it is all peripheral to
that. We’ll show some of the peripheral
stuff, but that’s the big idea, and that’s really the substance of this article. Gen. 1:28 is God’s address about
procreation. “And God blessed them,”
who did God bless first of all? Who is
the “them?” “Them” is a pronoun,
pronouns always refer to a previous noun, what is the antecedent of the pronoun
“them?” Is it a singular pronoun, or is
it a plural? It’s a plural pronoun; it
refers back to two nouns. What are the
previous nouns? They must be in the previous verses… sure enough, verse 26,
“Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness; and let them rule
over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and
over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.
[27] And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him;
male and female He created He them.” So
the maleness and the femaleness that is described for man is described in this
text differently than the procreation of animals. What marks off men from animals here? There are a lot of things that mark it off in the text. Let’s observe.
In verse 24 God makes the land animals, and
He tells them, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind:
cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind, and it was
so. [25] And God made the beasts of the
earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that
creeps on the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good. [26] Then
God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness,” so right
away whatever this maleness and femaleness is in man, it is not the same as
maleness and femaleness in animals.
There is not the Continuity of Being, the idea that you have a scale and
all of creation can be scaled off in degrees, there’s no qualitative
difference, everything is just a quantitative difference. The Bible isn’t that way; the Bible says
that reality is structured. There’s
God, way up here, He’s the Creator, and under Him there is man, and below man
there are animals. And the difference between man and animals is that man is
created as an analogue of God, or what we said is that he is a theomorph, he is
made in the form of God. It doesn’t say
God is made in the form of man, it says man is made in the form of God, so it’s
a theomorph. It’s not the other way
around.
So you have man, made in God’s image. After
that grand point is made, what is man said to do in verse 26, is he given a
mandate merely to survive and out compete?
What is the mission of the man?
The mission of the man is to rule, to have dominion. So now we have something else, man is not
only separated from the animal kingdom, he is the ruler of the animal
kingdom. Ooh, how offensive today when
we worship Mother Earth day, because of Dr. Professor White who years ago wrote
this article and blamed Christianity for all the garbage in the world, very
foolish because the Bible teaches stewardship.
White was frankly wrong, historically he is incorrect; the Christian
worldview stresses stewardship over the creation. The place where Christianity interacts with ecology in the
environment is precisely the area where they don’t want to listen, which is what? That we made the entire universe a junkyard
by our sin. Oh, we’re not that responsible for the environment, oh
no, we can’t tolerate that level of responsibility. We don’t want to talk about ecology that radically. But the Bible teaches that we are to have
dominion, with all due respect to PETA and all the rest of the groups.
So here we have the reproduction in order to
do what? To reproduce in order to
reproduce in order to reproduce? Or is
it to reproduce the rulers in history.
The cosmic reason is to build a population of godly men and women who
will rule. That’s the purpose of the
procreation, it’s not to survive, and it’s not to pass the genes on. There’s a higher purpose involved here. The
genes themselves are only to serve a purpose.
We come to Gen. 2 and we have the situation
where man is starting to dominate, starting to rule, and in verse 19 God
allows him to start naming, starting to understand his environment. In verse 18, “Then the LORD God said, ‘It
is not good for the man to be alone,” and in verse 18 He defines the male and
the female at the high level of the image of God, not at the low level of the
animals procreation. It says “It is not
good for the man to be alone; I will make a helper suitable for him.’” The picture, remember, is that God gave a
call to Adam. Even wasn’t around when that call came, the instructions of what
Adam was to do in the garden were given before Eve was there. The call came to the man. But the man, the male, solitary male being
alone could not fulfill the calling, so here is a marvelous thing. We have the call of God which is impossible
for the single solitary man to execute without a helper; the word “helper” here
is not a diminutive term, it is the same word, Azar,
that is used for God, God is my Asar,
Eliaser. What does that
mean? Eli
is El=God, e=my God, Azar=my helper, My God is my
helper. That’s the word that’s used for the female here. So she is brought in and the man has to go
out and figure out that he can’t execute the plan without somebody there that’s
competent to help him execute the plan so he has to have the female.
What is he executing? Getting his genes passed to the next
generation? Is that the call of
Adam? I don’t notice anything about
genes here. Do you see anything about
genes in verse 18? For that matter
anywhere in Gen. 1-2? God just says go
out and make babies so the babies can make babies so the babies can make babies
and more babies. Is that what this is
all about? No. There’s a purpose for man, and the
reproduction is to produce the godly family to rule the cosmos. That’s the setting.
There’s something else here. Man is to produce fruit from the
creation. Remember the garden, he’s to
tend it, and he is to produce. So let’s
look at the production. God sets
forward in His creation designs that are revelatory. God forbid they should ever teach this in public school, but when
you deal with mathematics, language, music, art, science, physics, chemistry,
biology, what are you dealing with?
Creation structures. Whose handiwork is that? God’s handiwork. Learning
in any of these areas is what we were made to do to produce out of this
universe that God put us in fruit to His glory. That’s what we’re supposed to be doing. And that’s the purpose of our life, to produce that sort of
fruit. Involved, of course, in that is
a profound worship of God, and out of that comes moral character and
integrity. All of that is
involved. Now here’s the catch; there
is an analogy between the production of man and the production of animals. And it’s this analogy that is a tool and a
channel of deception, because these investigators, being anthropologists,
psychologists and biologists that are quoted in this article, see this
parallelism. There’s very strong
parallelism physiologically, anatomically, between animals and men. So what do we make of that analogy as
Christians, Bible-believing Christians.
How do we integrate that with the text?
If man is made in God’s image and animals are
not made in God’s image, then it follows that what is the same about animals
and what is the same about men must have some revelatory function, so when
plants and animals reproduce the very method of production becomes a physical
and temporal revelation of this spiritual production that God has wanted from
eternity past for His creatures. The
physical structures are analogues to the spiritual truths. This is not some hokey-pokey kind of
excuse. We all know from reading the
New Testament what is the marriage institution revelatory of? Every wedding we go through the same text,
same thing, always in the New Testament, and what are we talking about? Christ and the Church. Does that have to do with cats, dogs and
doves? No, that has to do with the
heart of God’s plan for His cosmos.
So let’s try something that will really
stress … I mean this takes brilliant IQ to do this, 200 IQ level to make this
deduction. God is designing these
physical pictures in order to point where?
Is the arrow pointing down from man and saying look man, you go down
here to learn, so that you can come back up here? NO. What we do is we go
down here, we see certain things in the light of the Lord, the Creator, and we
come back here. We actually are coming
up; we are saying look at what God has designed down here that is an analogue
to the truths up here. It’s what I call
top-down thinking. The article is all
bottom-up thinking. The article
establishes the truths down at the animal level and tries to raise them for
insights into the human level. You see
that in sentence after sentence in this article. Yet as Christians that is exactly opposite to what we’re supposed
to be doing. We are to think God’s
thoughts after Him, and we are to take His thoughts that are higher than the highest
mountains and bring them down into the valleys of our experience so that we can
enjoy Him. So we are top-down thinkers;
the unregenerate is a bottom-up thinker.
Let’s continue in the article and see how
this works out—tactical use of language. It’s all through the article.
I’ve tried with a highlighter to go through the article and I’ve got
most of the article highlighted, because I was going to highlight every place
that I could find an example of the tactical use of language. What I should have done is highlight the
places in green that are free of it. He
goes on, the paragraph, “And then the talk flows more easily…” and then this
couple gets involved, and the last sentence is that paragraph, “And to promises
to have and to hold, forever and ever,” a little sarcastic remark about
marriage. Now watch the bottom-up
thinking. What he does here in
transitioning from the last sentence of that paragraph to the first sentence of
the next one is he sets marriage as something to be explained and gather
insights from the animal level—bottom-up.
We first get our insights here and then we carry them up. What does Paul do in Ephesians about
marriage? He gets in the high order of
the Trinity and brings them down.
He says, in the first sentence in the next
paragraph, “This is all well and good.
But beneath love’s ineffable mysteries and majesty,” notice the
preposition “beneath,” “beneath love’s ineffable…” in other words, the
foundation of it all is not God and the structures of His Word, but beneath it
all “there lie some basic principles of biology and genetics. Mother Nature,” notice it’s capitalized, one
must always revere deity, “Mother Nature casts her strong shadow over much of
that initial activity that sparks the cascade of events leading to love. Flirting, for example, has rules that cross
cultures and countries, based on gestures that seem,” now this is good, I love
how this goes, “Flirting,” we’re talking about flirting now, and we just can’t
avoid getting Darwin involved in flirting, we’ve just got to trot in the
evolutionary worldview in the middle of the flirting. So the sentence reads “gestures that seem anchored deep within
our evolutionary history.” We supposed
to read this with a spooky voice now.
We go on, “And those gestures, scientists are
now discovering, following codes of attraction” this is the sentence I pointed
out last time, this is really a ripper when you think about this one, “codes of
attraction and beauty that may be millions of years old. Those codes, in turn,
have evolved” and I pointed out now isn’t that stupid, did you ever see a code
that evolves? Did you ever see a
computer program evolve and still work?
Again, this is all metaphor, it’s cheap metaphor, but it’s all
manipulatory, very manipulating. And if
you don’t learn proper kinds of literacy to unravel this you’d be a
victim. Yes, you can laugh at it, but
you’ve got to know why you’re laughing at it.
Let’s go on further and see some more of how
this tactical use of language occurs.
This is another interesting sentence.
“Men, for instance, have been drawn to certain-size hips and waists for
more than 20,000 years.” Now isn’t that interesting, I wonder where they got
that information from. Did they take
measurements of Neanderthal? For 20,000 years, you’d think this would be
documented somewhere. It isn’t, there’s
no documentation of this. This is just
a statement. What they observe is a
behavior and then they attribute it to a 20,000 year history. That’s not the
way it is. But watch what’s happening
here. There’s no argumentation, it’s
just put in connotation. It’s argument
by connotation, never directly addressed.
Not once in this article is the truthfulness of the evolutionary
worldview ever dealt with in explicit fashion.
It’s all taken for granted, and that’s what makes it so insidious. If you don’t think this is insidious, turn
it around, go home and rewrite parts of this article as you would write if you
were the Christian writer. Write it
Biblically and watch what happens when you get done writing it. Then put them side by side, both articles
talking about exactly the same subject and you come away with two totally
different spirits. Why? This is the power of the Word.
Look at the next one discussing a
couple. They talk about the guy’s
reaction. “…researchers contend has
come deeply rooted biology behind it; that waist and hip size is better linked
to having babies than is a less curvaceous figure.” I’ve never noticed that in any romantic novel or any great novel,
the only time I can remember reading anything like this was G. Gordon Liddy’s
book Will, when he deliberately
married a wide-hipped German lady because he wanted strong boys. I’ve never heard a guy think of mixing his
genes and picking out his girlfriend on the basis of what genetic materials she
carried. Nevertheless, this is the
intent of these authors, that all of the higher functions of man don’t count,
it’s all down here, bottom-up thinking.
We first explain it down here, and then we explain the higher in terms
of the lower. People… that’s exactly
wrong! What are we taught in the
Christian life, when we encounter all the grunge in our lives? Do we go from bottom-up? Or are we supposed to take the truths of God
and the truths of His Word, the big plans of God, and bring them down to our
situation, claiming the promises of God?
Take Rom. 8:28, “All things work together for good to them love God, to
them that are called according to His purpose.” Called according to what? “Called according to His purpose.” Who’s doing the calling, his genes? God is doing the calling. So right there, see the very structure of
that promise, its top-down thinking.
This is of the earth; this is bottom-up thinking.
It goes on, we can cite sentence after
sentence, but look at this one, I love this expression, “… the name of the game
of life—in the long run—is to move your genes into succeeding
generations.” Like I said, this would
not make a good wedding service.
“Millions of years ago, human ancestors had to find a mate to do this
without help from Internet dating services,” well isn’t that good, “DNA
analysis, social clubs, or village matchmakers. All they had to go on was outside appearance.” This is all conjecture, absolutely all
conjecture, there’s not one argument in here for the proof of this. It’s just piled up, sentence after sentence
after sentence. And do you know the sad
thing is, as poorly educated as we are in our generation today a kid or an
adult can read this and walk away thinking, you know, that guy had some good
points. Let’s go on.
It says, “After all, mating with a creature
who produces sickly children, or who dies before raising them, is a fast trip
down an evolutionary dead end.” Now
watch how he follows that. “Birds, with
their elaborate plumage, actually figured this one out long before humans
did.” Now isn’t that… go to your bird
feeder and have a discussion with all the lessons that the sparrows and
starlings have learned and they’ll share with you all these insights that
they’ve had in the past. See how stupid
this is when you start unraveling it.
It’s just one continuous… that’s why I picked this article out; this has
got to be a classic. It goes on and it
talks about evolutionary advantages, etc.
What I want to do to finish out the article,
there’s another quote, “So it makes sense, from the long-term view of
evolutionary success, to be most attracted to fertile youth.” Let’s think about something here. There is a truth to the fact that God’s
creatures were designed to produce and survive in history, to over-produce
because of the fall and everything else.
But why? Why is that design in
there? Not so that they can survive in
the evolutionary term, but rather that the kingdom of God can come, that this
great family of mankind can be taught to rule and subdue the earth. That’s what
makes the difference.
Notice the paragraph that starts, “There are
several signals about safety that remain constant from Spokane to Bali, and
from people to apes, indicating their evolutionary importance,” see how
everything is structured in order to produce evolutionary advantages. Keep that in mind because we’re going to
draw a moral conclusion shortly. I
want you to be convinced that this author is making his case that you evaluate
good and bad behavior with your bottom-up thinking. The good and the bad, good equals what? Good is what survives, that’s the highest good, what survives.
And what’s bad? The evolutionary dead,
non-survival. Now look at this
one. “The shoulder shrug is a prime
example,” did you ever see a cat shrug their shoulder. I never have. “The reflex is a sign of uncertainty, part of an age-old startle
response intended to protect the vulnerable neck. A chagrined Bill Clinton did it on national television when he
apologized for his illicit relationship with Monica Lewinsky, the
anthropologist notes.”
“A tilted head uses some of these same
muscles and nerve circuits.”Watch this one, we’re talking about gestures that
go back millions of years, and why is that the psychologist asks. No sooner does the behavioral psychologist
ask the question but he has a friend over here, he’s a professor of biology and
he says I’ve got the answer for you Mr. Psychologist. So the psychologist turns to the biologist, one expert to
another, and now in this sentence the expert biologist is brought into the
discussion, in physiology. “Both gestures, using muscles and nerve circuits
that can be traced back through millions of years of animal history and seen in
animals today, are signs of withdrawal, not what you’d see in a prelude to an
attack. Nor is holding your hands palm
up, as one of the men talking to the dark-haired woman in Havanas does. The gesture is controlled by neural circuits
found in anatomy as simple as fish brains and spinal cords, so it even predates
palms.”
What’s the point here? It’s very clever how they’re doing
this. How did the biologist make the
conclusion that those circuits, those neuro circuits are primary? Because there’s parallel in the design
between animals, same designer. You
know most cars have four wheels; that’s why Volkswagens evolved from
Dodge’s. We see that there’s a
parallelism between animals, so he goes to the most simple animal first, picks
the parallel, and then discards the rest.
Now he’s building inferences from an inference. The inference is that I
explain similarity by evolutionary descent rather than explain it how? How do we as Christians explain
similarity? The same designer. But he has chosen to phrase…, enveloping,
see frame of reference, here’s strategic envelopment, we’ve enveloped our
topic in an evolutionary frame of reference, so what do we not have available
any longer? We can’t explain the
similarities in terms of common design so we have to explain the similarities
in terms of temporal descent over time.
And if we do that when it’s ordered to the primitive things, that’s why
you can come to the end of the sentence and it says “fish brains and spinal
cords…predate palms.” Fishes don’t have
hands; they represent an earlier evolution.
But they do share spinal columns.
So that means a spinal column is more primitive in the most advanced
creature. All that’s saying is that’s
the evolutionary premise. I’ve heard
that 150 times, I haven’t heard any proof of it, I’ve just heard it repeated
endlessly in the article.
Now we come down to the end, and to watch how
things conclude turn to the last page.
I don’t know whether the authors… the more I read this article the more
I can’t help but think there’s a tongue in cheek to this whole thing, that the
authors may have intended. But if you
follow the logic, what did I say? I
said that in an evolutionary basis, what is good and evil? How do you define good and evil? Good is what survives, evil is what doesn’t
survive. By the way, does anyone see
the moral flaw in that argument? Right
there there’s a moral flaw. Why is surviving good? Lots of people commit suicide; they don’t believe surviving is
good. They believe taking their life is
better. So why is it obvious
intuitively that surviving is good? Where are you getting that from? This is a moral imposition, this is how
morals and ethics are rooted in worldviews, and why it does matter what you
believe, and it does matter what worldview is taught because it affects your
ethical judgments.
We have that to contend with. We’ve made the point that man is just a
developed animal, and we know that animals have stimulus response. What about men? What do we know that’s different because we are made in God’s
image? How do we plot the stimulus
response equation for us? It’s stimulus
choice response, that is the first divine institution, that is what separates
man from animals; it’s called free will.
By the way, if you’re an atheist you can’t believe in free will. So here you have a case where all this is
set up. Now we come to the grand finale
of the article, the fight over the evolution of rape. What have I said?
Remember you’ve heard me say if you want to learn unbelief, don’t get it
from a sloppy Christian campus. Go to
an unbeliever that’s skilled, that has the courage to take his unbelief and his
paganism out to its logical conclusion.
You can learn so much from an honest articulate pagan. You’ve got to find one and make a friend
because they’ll teach you a lot about this, if you can’t find one in reality in
person, find a good book, read some of the great atheists of history because
they really will teach you something.
These people who have written a book,
published by MIT, A Natural History of Rape,
and the argument simply is that rape is part of our evolutionary heritage. Who’s stronger physically, male or
female? Not emotionally but physically. Here we’ve been talking yak, yak, yak, yak
for five pages about evolution, there’s no romance in love. Remember the Q&A, we can cut all that
out because fish don’t have romance but they have reproduction, so that’s the
most basic thing, bottom-up thinking.
Now all of a sudden we’re faced with an oh-oh, where does this lead
us.
Down what primrose path are we traversing
now? And sure enough, these authors
have been smart enough to see, oh, let’s take this a little further friends,
and what they’re arguing, “Biologist Randy Thornhill, and anthropologist Craig
Palmer, in a new book that’s become a lightning rod for controversy, argue that
rape has evolved, over millions of years, as a strategy to help men
reproduce.” What did we say was
good? What did we define good to be? Now what are you going to do with this? See why this book has become so controversial. You set this thing up stupid, and now you
have to live with the consequences; you don’t like them do you, but you can’t
do anything about it.
[blank spot]
…relating to the whole idea. So
in the first paragraph, we have the feeling of incense on the part of the
women. “They’re saying men evolved to
be rapists? Teri Gutierrez cries incredulously. That’s absurd. Women are
getting seriously hurt and they’re saying that it’s evolution?” Yes as a matter of fact Teri, that’s what
they’re saying. That’s what they
learned in 6th grade biology class I believe, creationists wanted to
say something and couldn’t say it in biology class, so you teach the guys in
biology about survival of the fittest, you implicitly program them year after
year in this framework, what’s your problem if they draw the conclusion. What’s the problem here? Well, I don’t like it. Hon, what you like and what you don’t like
has nothing to do with it. You might
not like hot water but we still have hot water.
If your only opposition is you don’t like it,
that’s not an opposition, I don’t care if you like it or not, maybe I do. So you’re in a very weak position to say
that must be wrong because I don’t like it.
What’s wrong with that thinking? Because you’re not appealing to a transcendent
standard, you’re just saying it’s your personal subjective dislike to be
hurt. Sure, cats don’t like to be hurt
either, dogs don’t like to be hurt, horses don’t like to be hurt. It’s painful, but how do you show it’s
bad. You can’t, unless you have a
standard that you’re bringing into the discussion, and the standard went out
with this. It got shot, it got kicked
out of the house with the first step, now we’re living in the house and now we
don’t like what we’re living in the house with, do we?
This whole end of this article is tremendous,
and they go through all the mealy-mouth ways of trying to side-step it, well I
don’t like that and I don’t think they’ve proved their case and all the rest of
it. They don’t have to prove their case; all they have to do is show the
worldview exists. This worldview leads
to that conclusion.
We want to conclude with some Scriptures that
show how the Word of God speaks to what we have spent two evenings going
through. We’ve taken an article by a
modern group of writers in one of the best selling magazines in the United
States, and I don’t think this is atypical.
U.S. News & World Report, Time Magazine, and Newsweek, don’t sell as
magazines because they are way out on the left or the right. Those magazines are being designed, sold,
written, and published to sell numbers and you’ve got to sell and pitch it to
the center of the population. So these
articles are written to what our culture wants to hear. They have to be, they wouldn’t sell the
magazine if it wasn’t that way; that’s stupid, pragmatism, follow the
money. So they pitch these articles to
the way our society and our neighbors and our institutions think. And this is how they think.
Let’s look at a series of Bible verses. We said that there’s a technical term the
Scriptures use to describe what we’re talking about, the deceptions of this
world’s thinking are called in the Scripture “vanity.” What is the one book in the Bible that is
the most thorough exposition of vanity?
Ecclesiastes. Prov. 26:4-5, at
first this is one of those so-called contradictions in the text, it’s not a
contradiction in the text, this is the way young men and young women were
taught in these days. They were taught
largely by means of proverbs. It
required… they did not have to have formal literacy, they could memorize these,
but they were passed on from father to son, father to son, for generations
after generations after generations.
Solomon enscripturated these in his own time at the height of this
wisdom school in Israel.
Verse 4, “Do not answer a fool according to
his folly, lest you also be like him.” What that means, among other things, is
that when you answer, don’t start on the same set of presuppositions as the
fool or you will become just like him.
You cannot answer these authors of this article on what their view of
romance is while you’re still accepting the basis from which they’re
proceeding. If you believe in your
heart that the evolutionary worldview is basically correct, somehow you’ve
managed to mishmash the Bible along with that, don’t try to argue with these
people because if you try to argue with them and try to take this worldview
you’re going to come right out on the same path, you will become like
them. So Proverbs warns us, “Do not
answer a fool according to his foolishness, lest you become like him.” Okay, that goes back, remember a simple
thing, don’t answer a question until you’ve thought about it. A simple illustration, how many times last
week did you beat your wife? You can’t
answer the question without condemning yourself. Why? Because you ran into a trap, you’ve bought in to the whole
way the question was designed in the first place. You’re not obligated to accept the basis of the question; you
have a right to redefine the question, claim it, it’s your privilege in
conversation.
The next verse looks like it conflicts with
the previous verse; it says “Answer a fool as his folly deserves, lest he be
wise in his own eyes.” What that’s
talking about is what Francis Schaeffer developed back in the 70’s when he said
one of the things that you can often do when you’re dealing, even in your own
mind with your own flesh and it wants to do something, you quote Scripture
against it and it’s like water off a duck’s back, it doesn’t work. A technique
to use in that situation is to simply turn right around and say okay, if I do
this, where is it going to lead. Take
it to the logical conclusion. What did
we do with this article? Took it to the
logical conclusion. It leads to
rape. Duh! Why do we do that?
Because we’re not, apparently… apparently
we’re not bringing the Bible in to set up defense mechanisms. We haven’t mentioned the Bible, haven’t
mentioned it once, all we’re saying, oh, that’s an interesting view, let’s see
if I understand that. That means if I
believe that, then I should be able to do this, and this, and this, oh, you say
I can’t do that, why is it that I can’t do that? That’s what you’re doing, you’re pulling out of the deception and
exposing it by showing its foolishness when you keep on operating in that
direction.
So that’s the point of this verse, “Answer a
fool as his folly deserves, lest he be wise in his own eyes.” See, what that
does, it gets to them because now humility is forced up. He can be prideful of his viewpoint and if
you attack him directly, pride will put up a shield. But if you say, well I
want to understand how you really think, I want to get inside your head, and
say well now if I believe this way, then can I do this, or can I do that, or doesn’t
this lead to this. Now the problem is
he can’t really attack you because it’s his position, and he doesn’t want to be
put in the position of attacking himself.
So it’s a humbling type of approach.
Sometimes you have to do this, and sometimes it’s very hard to do, and
sometimes it takes a long time to do, because if you think about sanctification
in your own personal life, isn’t that how God does it, often times? We ignore Him, we turn our backs on Him, He
doesn’t turn His back on us, but instead of dealing with us directly He says
okay, I’ll cut you some slack, I’ll cut you some more, I’ll cut you some more,
oh, you’re in the ditch now, gee, how did you get there? How did God work with the prodigal son? Want to go to the pigpen? Do you like the pigs, okay, have a ball,
take a vacation down there, spend all your money, see how you like it. So God
we find in His sanctifying work operates exactly the same way. Why? Because He’s a wise guy and this is His
wisdom.
Turn in the New Testament to 1 Tim.
6:20. This is just to kind of conclude
with learning about vanity and learning about these silly beliefs that permeate
our culture. We don’t face something
that earlier Christians didn’t also face.
Look at this closing admonition to young pastor Timothy, “O Timothy,
guard what has been entrusted to you, avoiding worldly and empty chatter and
the opposing arguments of what is falsely called ‘knowledge.’” Did you notice throughout this whole article
they were always quoting research?
“Research has shown,” and it’s all behavioral psychology, that kind of
thing, research… oh, this is knowledge, this is knowledge! What does Paul say? It’s knowledge in name but not in substance. It’s knowledge that is “falsely called
knowledge.” You see, when you start
thinking about this, the Bible is very radical, extremely radical and extremely
skeptical. I always love to hear
unbelievers say I’m skeptical when they are the most naïve people… naïve people
that haven’t examined their own belief systems, and you’re telling me that
you’re skeptical. You haven’t seen my
skepticism yet. And this is divine
Biblical skepticism, knowledge falsely so-called.”
2 Tim. 2:24, this is advice to Timothy and
about teaching Christians, teaching us, and it’s to deal with the issue of
getting slammed. “And the Lord’s
bond-servant must not be quarrelsome,” in other words, not going around and
arguing for the sake of arguing, “must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all,
able to teach, patient when wronged, [25] with gentleness” doing what?
“correcting those who are in opposition; if perhaps God may grant them
repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth.” What he’s saying is we have to strive not to get angry in the
flesh, but we are not to be doormats, and we are not to be passive. The Church has more passive people than any
other segment of society. It’s just
amazing in this country. We talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk about oh, what’s
going on in this country… you know, if half the Christians would go down and
register to vote instead of 10%, and put their feet where their mouth is, we
wouldn’t have half the problems. We
can’t even get people to register to vote, and then they’ll spend 364 days of
the year fussing about what’s going on in the country.
So here’s an example. It’s saying you take your stand, you think
out on the basis of the Word of God, you be ready to teach, which means you
have to have a lesson plan and you have to think about it and pray about what
you’re going to say, and don’t be afraid to correct those who are in
opposition. Yes you’ll be castigated,
yes you will be laughed at, called narrow-minded and all the rest of it, but
I’ll tell you what, I’ve found in my experience that people who come to know
the Lord through your taking a stand are eternally grateful to you. You talk about being accepted, people who
are led to the Lord because you had the courage to stand firm, take all the
hits, take all the gross remarks, take all the junk, but you held firm and you
corrected those who are in opposition. It doesn’t matter what they say with their big mouths, their
conscience agrees with you. If you are
articulating the Word of God, no matter what they say with their mouth, their
conscience bears witness to what you’re saying is true. So just ignore all the hot air, it’s just
hot air and bologna, just constantly go for the conscience, go for the
conscience, go for the conscience.
Grace and truth, grace and truth, grace and truth!
--------------------------------------
We had one good contribution, that if you
have the article, look at the last page of the article, and what do you
see? I didn’t notice this, this is
good. There’s a little fine, in small
print, down at the bottom, the last page, does it say anything about romance
there, does it say anything about love there?
No. “For more information about
evolution genetics…” so what were they peddling all the time? This is a great article to train on.
Question asked, something about so they can
propagate the species: Clough replies: I
don’t think there are many men doing that, by the way. [person says something else about global
consciousness, Mother Nature consciousness, and you think of the Christians
and you get accused of being a mindless automaton, now whose the mindless
automaton when people don’t even know that they’re being attracted to
somebody…] Clough says: But it’s an evolutionary thing, and if you think about
it, that yes, the article has made the point that there’s super mystical
evolutionary thing that’s working in the heart of all that supposedly draws
people together. Well, there’s something that in truth corresponds to that that
we’re all very conscious of as Christians.
What is that? The calling of God.
It’s a sovereign calling of God.
Same guy says something: Clough replies: What
I’m just trying to say is these deceptions are counterfeits of something;
they’re not just wholesale creation… Satan is really not too original. What he
does is he perverts something that is actually true. Whereas we could say when we meet our mates that we’ve been
brought to them, and we can say oh well, I saw them and we can narrate it on a
human level, but as Christians we have to acknowledge but God’s sovereignty was
involved in all of that, that we didn’t know about. So that that call of God, that sovereign working in our lives,
that’s what’s being perverted here, and you have to have something to replace
it, so what you have it this esoteric, spooky, evolutionary drive that is
subliminal or something.
Same guy says something: Clough says: There’s
also a prophetic crown because the crown that man ultimately gets is with Jesus
Christ, because Psalm 8 is the very quote taken in Hebrews to describe Jesus as
the Second Adam, because Jesus successfully fulfills the destiny of the human
race. And isn’t this interesting that
Jesus Christ does it and He’s never married.
He must have forgotten to propagate, didn’t get His genes in. How does Jesus pull it off? It has nothing to do with His genes. Here’s the God-man who’s our model; He fulfills
the calling of God and genes aren’t involved.
Something else is propagated that’s analogous to genetic propagation,
because what does 1 John say, His what dwells in us? His seed dwells in us. So there’s an analogy in regeneration that
Jesus does propagate Himself in history, but in a different way than what you
think. So the biological propagation is
a physical analogue to this other thing that goes on.
Same guy says how does that relate to…:
Clough says: Jesus is of Abraham’s seed that way, backwards, up to, but that’s
because of the promise of God in Abraham’s life. By the way, what was Abraham’s first seed, the godly seed? Was it by natural propagation? In one sense it was but he and Sarah
couldn’t propagate, so what went on there.
See, the whole structure, every part of the story conflicts, we’re in
total collision on this point.
Same guy says something else about the
comment he just brought out, something about changing the title of the article
to get a lot of people to read it: Clough replies: They might have done that, I
don’t know. [same guy says something
about man exercising his sovereignty over nature, did I hear you talk about
that in relation to our reign with Christ] Clough: Yes, because ultimately what
is said of Jesus is that all things have not been put under His feet, but
eventually all things will be put under His feet, the whole creation, not just
planet earth, that little mandate in Genesis 1 concerns the plants, the fish
and the bees, that’s the first set, the first stage of this, but man’s rule is
to exercise dominion over the whole universe.
Jesus Christ starts it, so there’s a lot to that, and we’re going to
learn through all eternity. This is why
eternity cannot be conceived as, you know, you sit in church service for a
billion years, it’s going to be active ruling, active doing things, it doesn’t
stop just because we’re in eternity. What’s different is we don’t live in a
sinful environment any more, but the fact is that there’s worship and work to
do.
Next week we’re going to get back into the
death of Christ. This is a rather
difficult section. I don’t apologize
for it because it’s an issue that has to be discussed. Some of you have people that are very strong
in the Reformed faith, some of you have friends that are in the Methodist
Church or the Arminian type churches and they have one view and the Reformed
people have another view, so you need to know what’s going on with this.