Manipulating Facts and Denying the Truth: A Look at Christian Dogma
Once the God (or Gods (if your sect is Trinitarian)) speak via the written word (the Bible), divine truth is set for time and eternity. Since God is viewed as absolute truth, he and his “truth” are forever frozen in time and, as we have seen again and again here at DC, the God is so dogmatically connected to the ancient Near Eastern view of time an space, to admit change is to give God basically a theological death sentence.
Just as the Judaisms circled their wagons to apologetically defend their theology against the new Christian heresy with the Talmud, so to the original defense of Christianity was not against the non-believing secular word, but against believers be they fellow Christians (Heretics) or other God fearing people labeled “pagan” (a derogatory term used to belittle other God fearers just as African American were commonly called Niggers).
Since God acts and can only live via theological interpretations outside the Bible, to interpret an event in the wrong way can damage or even destroy faith. However, Christians have circled their wagons and issued dogmatic statements of faith called creeds drawn form selective readings of the Bible. This positive safe guard ensures that only positive or faith building interpretations are fed to the faithful laity it keeping all believers on the Yellow Brick Road to Oz (Heaven).
This can readily be seen in your local Mormon missionaries who are forbidden by their State Mission President not to read any book or view any video that is not officially approved by the LDS Church itself. All Mormons missionaries are familiar with the teaching that all non Mormons “lie in wait to deceive” (I attended the locale Ward here in Greenville for 20 years, though I never joined).
Likewise, the Southern Baptist purged all their colleges and universities of “liberal” professors when the conservatives took over the Convention in the late 80’s. Luckily, schools like Furman University saw the proverbial “hand writing on the wall” and left the control of the Convention for academic freedom. Once all dissenting professors were removed from questioning worked out Biblical dogmatics, the new Biblical patriarchs elites turned inward and terminate all women professors; not based on academic ability, but on St. Paul’s bias theology of Genesis that only men are created in God’s image and the woman was tricked by the talking serpent who later mislead the man. Thus, Biblical theology demands that gullible women be removed from areas were they may mislead men, especially those preparing to serve St. Paul’s God.
As a one time student at Bob Jones University I found it very ironic that while the University was anti Communist, they maintained their rigorous fundamentalism in exactly the same way dictators control the minds of their people (one thinks here of the policies of North Korea‘s Kim Jong ll). The rules dictated which radio stations students could listen to (I received 50 demerits for listen to Loretta Lynn sing a Gospel song on the local country station WESC), which church you could attend (a number of protestant churches are always off limits meaning a student could be expelled or a faculty or staff could be fired for attending).
Since the doctrine of Original Sin was pushed to its extreme, all students had to register for a one hour Discipline Committee per week each semester where all were students were required to weekly check a computer printout to see if his or her name had been list by one unknowingly being turned in by another student (doing God’s will). In other words, Original Sin for BJU meant you were considered guilty until your could prove yourself innocent.
Hatred for the secular world was only exceeded by the Universities hatred for other Christian denominations which the late Bob Jones Jr. considered “sold out wholesale to compromise and apostasy”. As such, the only man to exceed the deception of the Pope in Rome was Billy Graham. The last time Billy Graham had a crusade in Greenville, the University made it plain that any student who attended any of the services would be expelled. In fact, Bob Jones Jr. told the student body at chapel (I was there) that “Billy Graham has done more damage to Christianity than any man who has ever lived”. As such, all incoming Freshman had to attend a week long orientation fueled with anti Graham rhetoric.
As seen in the notice at the top of this post, all reading material was highly censored. The head of the Church History department told his un-graduate and graduate students that there never has been a truthful church history ever written. To lock this in, tenure for any professor at Bob Jones University a yearly signing a of a dogmatic creedal statement which demands adherence to the fundamental of the truths of the faith as listed in the university's creedal confession was required.
As Ed Babinski has often pointed out (now so in the Foreword to John’s newest book), all Christian sects including those running colleges believing the Bible as absolute truth, that is, believing a God breath verbally inspirited Bible as a fundamental bases for all faith and life only mellow with age. So be it Harvard or Bob Jones University, truth can only be denied for so long by manipulating the facts even if that be considered God‘s Word the Bible.
As sure as liberalism is a creeping indicator of reality; that truth demands attention, so to must all preachers and schools sooner or latter must face the fact that the only thing keeping God alive is yesterday’s faith deemed worth fighting for. It is in this sense that faith and hope are poor substitutes for truth, plus this new puppet labled "truth" must now dance to the tune church dogmatics. However, even when faith is renamed truth, objectivity can only continue to be denied in the trust that a positive interpretation can be maintained. Moreover, the circle of faith as sown to the masses is proof that circular reasoning has its place in the absolute truth of God and the Bible.
End the final analysis, just as the Jesus movements formed sects of emergent Christianity only to create dogmatic creedal institutions called churches which over time liberalized in the face of future facts, so too do new groups spring off from the stagnating formal churches to form new sects who, at least for a time are on fire for the truth and Jesus. But just as the old maxim states that “An apple does not fall far from the tree” so also these sect end up becoming the very thing that they despised in the first place. But then reality and objective truth can be denied for only so long!
Just as the Judaisms circled their wagons to apologetically defend their theology against the new Christian heresy with the Talmud, so to the original defense of Christianity was not against the non-believing secular word, but against believers be they fellow Christians (Heretics) or other God fearing people labeled “pagan” (a derogatory term used to belittle other God fearers just as African American were commonly called Niggers).
Since God acts and can only live via theological interpretations outside the Bible, to interpret an event in the wrong way can damage or even destroy faith. However, Christians have circled their wagons and issued dogmatic statements of faith called creeds drawn form selective readings of the Bible. This positive safe guard ensures that only positive or faith building interpretations are fed to the faithful laity it keeping all believers on the Yellow Brick Road to Oz (Heaven).
This can readily be seen in your local Mormon missionaries who are forbidden by their State Mission President not to read any book or view any video that is not officially approved by the LDS Church itself. All Mormons missionaries are familiar with the teaching that all non Mormons “lie in wait to deceive” (I attended the locale Ward here in Greenville for 20 years, though I never joined).
Likewise, the Southern Baptist purged all their colleges and universities of “liberal” professors when the conservatives took over the Convention in the late 80’s. Luckily, schools like Furman University saw the proverbial “hand writing on the wall” and left the control of the Convention for academic freedom. Once all dissenting professors were removed from questioning worked out Biblical dogmatics, the new Biblical patriarchs elites turned inward and terminate all women professors; not based on academic ability, but on St. Paul’s bias theology of Genesis that only men are created in God’s image and the woman was tricked by the talking serpent who later mislead the man. Thus, Biblical theology demands that gullible women be removed from areas were they may mislead men, especially those preparing to serve St. Paul’s God.
As a one time student at Bob Jones University I found it very ironic that while the University was anti Communist, they maintained their rigorous fundamentalism in exactly the same way dictators control the minds of their people (one thinks here of the policies of North Korea‘s Kim Jong ll). The rules dictated which radio stations students could listen to (I received 50 demerits for listen to Loretta Lynn sing a Gospel song on the local country station WESC), which church you could attend (a number of protestant churches are always off limits meaning a student could be expelled or a faculty or staff could be fired for attending).
Since the doctrine of Original Sin was pushed to its extreme, all students had to register for a one hour Discipline Committee per week each semester where all were students were required to weekly check a computer printout to see if his or her name had been list by one unknowingly being turned in by another student (doing God’s will). In other words, Original Sin for BJU meant you were considered guilty until your could prove yourself innocent.
Hatred for the secular world was only exceeded by the Universities hatred for other Christian denominations which the late Bob Jones Jr. considered “sold out wholesale to compromise and apostasy”. As such, the only man to exceed the deception of the Pope in Rome was Billy Graham. The last time Billy Graham had a crusade in Greenville, the University made it plain that any student who attended any of the services would be expelled. In fact, Bob Jones Jr. told the student body at chapel (I was there) that “Billy Graham has done more damage to Christianity than any man who has ever lived”. As such, all incoming Freshman had to attend a week long orientation fueled with anti Graham rhetoric.
As seen in the notice at the top of this post, all reading material was highly censored. The head of the Church History department told his un-graduate and graduate students that there never has been a truthful church history ever written. To lock this in, tenure for any professor at Bob Jones University a yearly signing a of a dogmatic creedal statement which demands adherence to the fundamental of the truths of the faith as listed in the university's creedal confession was required.
As Ed Babinski has often pointed out (now so in the Foreword to John’s newest book), all Christian sects including those running colleges believing the Bible as absolute truth, that is, believing a God breath verbally inspirited Bible as a fundamental bases for all faith and life only mellow with age. So be it Harvard or Bob Jones University, truth can only be denied for so long by manipulating the facts even if that be considered God‘s Word the Bible.
As sure as liberalism is a creeping indicator of reality; that truth demands attention, so to must all preachers and schools sooner or latter must face the fact that the only thing keeping God alive is yesterday’s faith deemed worth fighting for. It is in this sense that faith and hope are poor substitutes for truth, plus this new puppet labled "truth" must now dance to the tune church dogmatics. However, even when faith is renamed truth, objectivity can only continue to be denied in the trust that a positive interpretation can be maintained. Moreover, the circle of faith as sown to the masses is proof that circular reasoning has its place in the absolute truth of God and the Bible.
End the final analysis, just as the Jesus movements formed sects of emergent Christianity only to create dogmatic creedal institutions called churches which over time liberalized in the face of future facts, so too do new groups spring off from the stagnating formal churches to form new sects who, at least for a time are on fire for the truth and Jesus. But just as the old maxim states that “An apple does not fall far from the tree” so also these sect end up becoming the very thing that they despised in the first place. But then reality and objective truth can be denied for only so long!