When I visit a church I look at a number of things to get a feel for who they are. One item I check out is the translation of the pew Bibles and the translation the pastor uses. If they use one of the admitted paraphrases such as the New Living Translation or one that pretends to not be a paraphrase when it is, like the New International Version, I know that there is a serious problem with serious thought.
The same problem shows up in education and in what parents expect from their children. If you are in a home and find “edited” versions of classics like Treasure Island, or even worse, “graphic novels”, you know you have a problem. If they watch the cartoon version of the book you know it is all over. That is the direction that schools have gone.
People justify new translations of the Bible and dumbed down text books by claiming some of the words are just too hard to understand. This is a bogus smoke screen. I don’t know if you have ever tried to listen to the jargon that is used by these same children. You might wonder what language they are speaking. The kids make up words and misuse words. It works for them because they want to be cool and fit in. They make the effort to learn. If people would spend as much time trying to understand the big words in the Bible as they do figuring out the latest slang on their current You Tube videos they would have no trouble.
This is new age philosophy at work. It actually has a title, “Deconstruction”. It has been around longer than I have and I am getting old. It has a lot of fancy explanations but for the average person it means that there is no meaning. Words don’t mean what they are defined to mean. They don’t mean what everyone accepts them to mean. They mean what the speaker wants them to mean. Thus there is no objective truth. It is no coincidence that our schools are turning out snowflakes that are triggered by every challenge.
There is right and wrong. There is good and evil. There are acceptable standards. For instance the issue of fidelity in marriage. Every culture has a concept of being faithful in marriage. It may vary in how it is applied. Some cultures have multiple spouses. Some cultures have a place for concubines. They all have a line you are not allowed to cross.
Stand up for objective truth and reject any pastor, politician, teacher or leader that believes that truth is relative.
homo unius libri
We're from the old school, the new generation is from the "non-school."
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DeleteGrace and peace