Have you been to a protest lately? Perhaps you’ve been to your state capitol to see about having your state re-opened from COVID house arrest. Perhaps you’ve marched in a BLM protest to defund the police. Maybe it’s been a different civic argument.
But do you know why you’re fighting? Have you a bedrock conviction on which you are basing your dissatisfaction? More importantly, is your conviction based in truth and how do you know it’s true?
These are important questions and are largely dependent upon your worldview. Are you convinced that there is such a thing as truth? Is there an enduring definition of good? Of evil? How do you define justice?
These are huge issues and yet what’s even more important is whether you’ve adopted your views consciously or unconsciously. In other words, do you know why you believe what you believe?
If you can’t answer positively, then perhaps you should not be attending any rallies or counter-rallies because your convictions may not be your own. They may be the convictions of the “crowd.” And what if the crowd is wrong?
Consider this quote from G.K. Chesterton:
“When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”
He’s getting at what this essay is about. Only a Christian worldview allows you to resist the often-wrong crowd, because only a Christian worldview is rooted in eternal truth. Oh, and if truth isn’t eternal, then it’s not really truth, is it?
So, I’m arguing that you need to be able to answer the question, “What I am fighting for,” and that ultimately the fight needs to be rooted in the truths of the Bible. Christ came not just to save His people from eternal torment, but to usher in a more thorough understanding of the rights and wrongs that God has laid out through His word and prophets.
Are you arguing against government shutdowns because of COVID? Make your argument from the Bible. Are you arguing to defund the police? Ditto. Think civil government is too big? What does the Bible say about it? Think government doesn’t do enough for you? Make your case from the Bible.
If we don’t argue from an unchanging standard, what’s to say that tomorrow we won’t make the opposite argument? If we’ve adopted the current mood of the crowd, we may need to change our opinion tomorrow when the crowd sways another way. And if that’s the case, we’re just wasting our time.
There’s an answer to the question, “What am I fighting for?”
It’s this: Read and understand the eternal wisdom of the Bible. It promotes the discernment of error and truth in the shouting of a crowd.
~John Bingaman
August 2020
