Grace Thoughts

Guest (Male): Hello friends, welcome to Grace Thoughts, the radio ministry of Grace Connection Church with Pastor Tim Kelley. Grace Thoughts has been dedicated to preaching the clear gospel of grace for over 20 years. Here is Pastor Tim Kelley.

Tim Kelley: This particular message today will be the foundation of the next four messages. We're going to speak about some subjects that are politically incorrect and if we don't use this morning's message as our launching pad, you might find some of the things being offensive in the next four weeks. I try not to offend people. I wake up every day thinking who not to offend today, but I really do. I've offended people, you've offended people, we've all offended people. I try my best not to, but I felt very compelled to teach this series.

According to George Barna, 98% of the pastors in America won't teach on some of these subjects, though they are very biblical-based subjects. If you get mad at me in the next four weeks, I'm going to point you back to this week. This is my launching pad. This is why I believe what I believe. Next week, we're going to talk about whatever happened to Adam and Eve; that will be on naturalism and the theory of evolution. The following week, we're going to talk about whatever happened to sex, and the week after that, whatever happened to sexuality.

I'll tell you more about them that week. However, those messages are PG-13. So if you have young children, you might want to put a paper bag over their head or not bring them in because they are PG-13. We will be as sensitive as we can be, but I don't want you to leave not knowing what I was talking about. I'm going to be blunt as I have to be to get what we're trying to get out, out. Amen?

With that said, and again, there's not an offensive bone in me. I'm just a preacher and teacher of the Bible. I'll be in John 14 eventually. A few years ago, a young twenty-something—I say that now that I'm in my thirties—walked into my office. This was, I believe, 2008. Again, this is not a political statement. I'm not Republican, I'm not Democrat, I'm not Republicrat. I'm not making any statement like that. I'm just simply stating that I began seeing things a little differently after this conversation.

He was voting for a candidate that I wasn't going to vote for. That's okay; it's called America. This young man grew up in church and still goes to church. He has wonderful parents, he's a good young man, lived a pure life, and was active in the music ministry. When I asked him—and I didn't ask him to convince him otherwise, I was taken back by what he said and I wanted him to clarify—I said, "Why do you want to vote for him?" And he said, "It's time for a change."

I said, "I get that, but why?" outside of it being time for a change. In pressing him, I found out that he couldn't really articulate one reason to vote for that candidate. He just felt it was time for a change; that was his particular rationale. Then I showed some of the platform that this particular candidate had and where I felt as though they violated biblical Christianity and what Scripture teaches. He said, "Well, those are just a few of the issues." In pressing him a little bit more, I realized he didn't even know that.

My eyes were open that day. Biblical truth was not this young man's starting point. He grew up in church, knew church lingo, church vocabulary, and church culture. This was his upbringing. He knew how to fit in in a church crowd. He wasn't a bad kid; he was a good kid, just the opposite. Yet, when it came to his worldview, it was unbiblical. At least, it was a mongrel worldview. He viewed the world through a lens of relativism, not really through a lens of absolute truth.

Albert Mohler said this, and I thought it was interesting: "How are Christians to think about these new cultural changes? Some Christians prefer not to think seriously about these issues. This falls far short of an acceptable position, however. Those who do not think seriously of how a Christian should respond to these challenges of technology, media, and the educational system will find that the dominant culture will simply put them into its vortex and they will simply fail to live and think as Christians."

We've watched that happen. We've seen those who name the name of Christ live inside this culture and begin to morph and adopt the culture instead of bringing their Christian life and Christian light to the culture. There's a blending in more than a standing out. Yet, from the earliest days of church history, the church stood out. Nowhere did the church ever blend in. People would look and see that our love, conviction, and message stood out. They would look at the church and say, "Those people are different."

Let me read you something from a high school student. I'm stealing this from Chip Ingram, one of my favorite Bible programs I listen to when I work out. This California high school student wrote this within the last couple of years. The title of his paper was "God." He says, "There are too many things in Christian dogma that I can't accept. The first of which is a universal truth. Good and evil—I can't rationalize that. All religion is based on a subjective view of the universe."

"My problem is that in your opinion, God made the universe. In other people's opinions, somebody else made it. So on and on it goes. I do believe that everyone is entitled to their own subjective reality. I can't see how one opinion is right and the rest is wrong. That's called pluralism, which is a project of existentialism. I believe that all religions are right for particular groups, but there is not one religion that is right for everybody. My God is not a God of love, but a God of reason."

"Anything can be explained with facts and charts and seem reasonable to me. I worship the idea that nothing is intangible, that man can explain anything given enough time and data. My God is not a person or a being; He is an idea. That is rationalism and naturalism. We live in a mechanical universe. Your God doesn't exist here. We don't have an equation for love. You know what happens when we die in a mechanical universe? You rot. No clouds, no angels, no free candy bars. You rot, I rot. It's just my opinion of reality."

A young man wrote that. You can believe anything you want to believe. I'm not here to "aha" you or tell you I'm right and you're wrong. You can choose to believe anything you want to believe. My goal here in this series is to keep your belief system coherent. If you're going to believe this, I want you to believe it all the way through and not just take bits and pieces of truth, because that's not coherent and that's not honest.

I want you to be coherent from the beginning of your belief to the end of your belief. You could say, "Pastor Kelley, I don't believe anything you just said." That's between you and God. You will stand there and I will stand there alone, and that's okay. I can accept that and embrace that. I just want us to be honest and coherent and rational in how we come to conclusions and our logic.

Sean McDowell, the son of Josh McDowell, says, "Religion and morals are considered matters of personal preference, in taste over which the individual is autonomous. This is why if you've had a discussion with a younger person, you'll probably hear them say, 'Well, this may be true for you, but not for me,' or 'Who are you to judge?' or 'If that's what they choose, whatever.' This is not because of their postmodern sentiments, but because their thinking has been profoundly shaped by their modernist and secular culture."

They are just voicing what has been poured into them. I've always told our young people through the years that this Christian faith of ours needs to be your faith. It can't be your mom's faith or your dad's faith. You can grow up under your parents' umbrella, but at some point, it needs to be personal for you. It needs to be something that you comprehend, affirm, and embrace. I remember my Hannah Grace wanted to be baptized when she was nine. I said, "Honey, do you know what you're doing?" She said, "No." So we waited until she was 17.

To track how we ended up this way is helpful, but it's not essential. It started in about the 5th century when the church took the Bible out of the people's hands. The church said, "We will tell you what the Bible means and you just believe us because we're the church." Truth took its first major hit for almost a thousand years until the Reformation took place. It was only 60 years ago that the Ten Commandments stood as a pillar of undeniable truth.

Thou shalt not, thou shalt, thou shalt not—they were embraced. Now, you might not even be able to mention them in certain school systems. There have been many names which have impacted our modern thought, from the Darwins to the Kants to the Einsteins. Ultimately, my friends, we have ended up with a confused, unsustainable, and often hypocritical view of what truth really is. Let's look at this hodgepodge that is called truth today in our educational, philosophical, and even religious institutions.

First is pluralism. This is the acceptance of all religious paths as equally valid. I have these in the handout in your program. It is about promoting coexistence. You can believe what you want to believe and I can believe what I want to believe; it's all good. If it works for you and it works for me, what's wrong with that? That is pluralism. There is nothing absolute; it is whatever you embrace.

Relativism really can be an umbrella over all of them. You could put another ten subcategories under this one all by itself. This is the doctrine that knowledge, truth, and morality exist in relation to culture, society, or historical context and are not absolute. That may be your belief system and that's okay. I'll bring that home a little bit later in the message. There are many types of relativism out there. If it feels good, do it. Remember the "do your own thing" from the sixties?