We must never forget that in any move away from the God that is defined in the Bible, it is a move into the realm of unrighteousness that is defined in the Bible (See Rm 1:28-32). The reason for this is simple. One moves away from God because he or she is often seeking an escape from moral accountability. He is at least seeking to behave narcissistically according to his own codes of moral behavior. The Bible can never stand as a final authority in a society of either atheistic philosophies or narcissistic religiosity.
For those who are seeking to establish their own moral norms, the Bible becomes a hindrance to their moral move away from any standards of morality because it is a reminder of being accountable to a final Judge of our behavior. In the mind of the liberal progressive, therefore, there can never be a constant standard of morality. Such is simply contrary to the thinking of the liberal.
The definition of a “liberal” is one who is seeking to be liberated from any standards of moral authority. And since the Bible seeks to be the final moral standard of authority in all matters of morality, then the Bible must, in the minds of the liberal, be discarded. Since the Bible establishes a constant moral standard, then the Bible must at least be marginalized in its influence on society. In order to do this, the first attack against the Bible is to affirm that the Bible is a book of fables.
Those who have moved away from the God of creation, and subsequently created a god after their own imagination, usually do not consider any moral standards in the Bible that are unchangeable. If they do look back from where they once believed in the Bible, then they will look back and realize that their move into unbelief was not painful. It was not painful because there was no violation of one’s conscience in reference to the breaking any moral laws. Unbelief is like a cancer that unknowingly grows within the body. This was the path to moral apostasy that was followed by Israel through the many times in their history when they walked away from God. Therefore, these things concerning their apostasy “were written for our learning, so that we through patience and encouragement of the Scriptures might have hope” (Rm 15:4). We must remember that “these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come” (1 Co 10:11).
A moral cancer has grown in many places in the present world of Christendom over the past centuries. With the rise of the “science god” there has come also the demise of the word of God as the final research library to establish moral standards of conduct. This does not mean that people have knowingly become “religious atheists” in reference to the moral standards of the Bible. It simply means that people who once believed in a God of creation now believe in a god who cannot create, or at least a deistic god who supposedly manipulates innate matter into motion and life. These religionists are now harboring and abating those philosophies that are contrary to the world view of the Bible. In their efforts to conform to the philosophical and scientific world in which they live, they have sacrificed on the altar of humanism their own faith. They are truly “of those who draw back to destruction” because they are walking away from King Jesus (Hb 10:39).
Because of the impending destruction that awaits all who would deny the gospel of the one true and living God, we would repeat the warning of the Hebrew writer that was directed to all those who were walking away from King Jesus: “We must give more earnest attention to the things that we have heard so that we do not drift away” (Hb 2:1). “For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened … if they fall away, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame” (Hb 6:4,6). “For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth [of the gospel], there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins” (Hb 10:26).
[Next in series: May 26]