The Purpose of the Sacrifices [Part 6]

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The Purpose of the Sacrifices [Part 5]

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Who’s Afraid of Science?

I often refer to Wikipedia, that unassailable bastion of compiled wisdom, not because I believe it to be particularly accurate, but because it provides as good an understanding of how people currently use language as can possibly be obtained. A Wikipedia definition is the gold standard for lowest common denominator human knowledge. So while it may not represent what everyone down through human history understood by the term “science”, let’s give their definition a browse:

“Science (from Latin scientia, meaning “knowledge”) is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.”

Sounds reasonable, no? So let’s get some things clear here:

I am not anti-science — and more importantly, neither Christians nor the Scripture itself are anti-science — if by “science” we mean using our God-given intelligence to puzzle out how things work and make life better for each other. Who could reasonably be against the search for objective truth? Who wouldn’t like better hygiene, a cure for cancer or buildings that remain standing in earthquakes?

“Science” in this sense is a perfectly sensible concept, and something man was clearly designed for. It’s in our nature to ask questions and look for answers.

I am, however, profoundly anti-science, if by “science” you mean what most people actually mean by it: agenda-driven, government- or special interest-funded pseudo-authority masquerading as universal truth. 

Boiled down to its essence, it is a propaganda hammer used to bludgeon the most malleable minds into what are — today, at least — the most politically acceptable shapes.

It is about as far from the original concept as it is possible to have come.

Leave Scripture Out of It

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Safely and Painfully Dead

The worst of all evils is death, or so modern thought has it. Death is to be avoided, evaded, delayed and denied at all costs. And definitely not discussed.

This prioritizing of the length of human existence over its actual quality is the reason that in most countries of the world there is no longer a death penalty. Even in U.S. states where it’s still legal, almost nobody gets executed anymore. Older concepts of justice, fairness and “an eye for an eye” have given way to a frantic collective scrambling around to keep everyone on the planet as long as possible, whether they deserve it or not.

Except for unborn children. Logical consistency is not our strong point.

In Need of Analysis: Does it Build?

Earlier this year I sat in a small local church full of nice, friendly people who had come to hear what turned out to be a pretty decent, relevant and biblical message from a visiting preacher. Prior to introducing the speaker, the man designated to open the meeting led the congregation in a hymn. We opened beat-up, dog-eared hardcover hymnals to the hymn number he gave us and together we sang the following:

“Brightly beams our Father’s mercy,
From His lighthouse evermore,
But to us He gives the keeping
Of the lights along the shore.

Let the lower lights be burning!
Send a gleam across the wave!
Some poor fainting, struggling seaman
You may rescue, you may save.

Dark the night of sin has settled,
Loud the angry billows roar;
Eager eyes are watching, longing,
For the lights along the shore.

Trim your feeble lamp, my brother;
Some poor sailor, tempest-tossed,
Trying now to make the harbor,
In the darkness may be lost.”

Say what? “Trim my feeble lamp”? Trim your own feeble lamp, pal! It was actually the second time we’d sung this hymn in the four weeks I’d been dropping in to that particular church.

A Chosen Instrument

When the Lord Jesus appeared to Saul on the road to Damascus, he was blinded and spent three days fasting and praying until the Lord healed him through the hands of Ananias.

Speaking about his conversion to the Jews in Jerusalem much later, he said:

 “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city, educated at the feet of Gamaliel according to the strict manner of the law of our fathers, being zealous for God as all of you are this day” (Acts 22:3)

A Jew: Was being a Jew useful to Paul in the Lord’s service? No kidding. Had he been only a Gentile, it would have been extremely difficult for Paul to convince anyone, especially Jews, of the critical truth that salvation was now offered freely outside of the legal prescriptions of Judaism. Instead, he could endorse Gentile membership in the body of Christ (and for that matter, salvation by faith rather than works) without any apparent personal agenda.

Conspiracy Theory

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