A Brief Commentary on the ‘Isms
Relativism
Ascribing equal validity to everything in life – aesthetics, religion, truth – is what has gone wrong with today’s postmodern euphemistic generation. Advocates of Relativism want us to embrace, not merely tolerate, diversity.
This suggests that, in art, we should equate Caravaggio with Mapplethorpe. Many would defer to the beauty of a Caravaggio but porn is as close to describing Mapplethorpe’s body of work as anyone could muster. And pardon this dilettante’s simple ratiocination of art appreciation, but we believe critics would concur nem con that only someone with a philistine interest in art would equate the detailed complexity of the works of Renaissance masters such as Michelangelo with the abstract drivel of a postmodernist like Andy Warhol.
No two things are more egregiously dissimilar than the teachings of the world’s main religions. In Christianity, Jesus calls Himself the Son of God. Conversely, Islam denies the divinity of Christ. Since Jesus says He is ‘the way, the truth and the life’ (John 14:6), then all other beliefs that contradict His teaching must be realized for what they are – lies.
The New Age maxim that all paths lead to the same God must also be a lie. For no other religious founder has ever claimed to be the way to God and salvation, even if their devotees wish to teach otherwise. As well, all religious founders cannot be teaching the truth if their core tenets are mutually exclusive. Either the one is telling the truth or the other a lie, but they cannot all be truths.
Because of Christians’ refusal to conform to the relativist's philosophy, we are called intolerant bigots. Yet, when you try to reason with a postmodernist, you cannot help but be assailed with his inability to accept your philosophy, either. So much for diversity.
For our beliefs, New Agers and relativists call us deviants at the bottom of the evolutionary totem pole that have yet to evolve into a higher state of consciousness. For theirs, God calls them deceived.
Pacifism
Isn’t it peculiar that atheists and liberals expect Bible-believers to be pacifists? Why do atheists care, unless they are going through an existential crisis? Liberals, on the other hand, justify pacifism by evoking a meek Jesus who taught us to turn the other cheek (and not much else). However, their effort is simply an invention to defend their apologetic.
Firstly, “turning the other cheek” is a teaching in refraining from retaliation, which is distinct from self-defense. For elsewhere in Scripture (e.g. Luke 22:36), we are given the precept to defend our home, country and ourselves if our freedom and peace were threatened by hostile invaders.
Second, as we have espoused time and again, Jesus is both the Prince of Peace and God of justice whose Second Coming will be as a Warrior King who will smite the rebellious nations of the world with the Sword of His Word:
“Now out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations. And He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God” (Revelation 19:15).
Solipsism
Continuing our meditation on the ‘isms, among the myriad untenable worldviews in existence, pantheism, atheism, New Ageism, dualism, and naturalism, we find Solipsism and its adherents the most riddled with inconsistencies. Obviously the solipsist, believing his own existence is all that he can be certain of, does not believe in God, miracles and angels; in fact, he believes that except for the self everything else may be a dream or figment of someone’s imagination. This includes the existence of his parents, his house, his offspring, his job, his pet Chihuahua, the cafeteria he likes to frequent to eat his favourite chicken croissant. With deference to the solipsist, if his existence is all he can be sure of, why not dive in front of a moving car to test if it exists? Ironically, one will note that the solipsist looks both ways before crossing the road.
The beliefs of the solipsist echo the Dream Argument of René Descartes (Meditations on First Philosophy, 1541). Since the solipsist’s beliefs are so entirely wrapped up in absurdities (Hobbes, 1651) we believe that their system of belief ought to be more aptly called Delusionism (this is not to appropriate the Wikipedians’ pursuit of middle ground between deletionism and inclusionism).
When all is said and done, the existence of all things can be known with certainty through the Word of God: “All things came into being through Him, and without Him not even one thing came into being that has come into being” (John 1:3 MKJV).
Fundamentalism vs. Evangelicalism
Of late there has been a rash of bad publicity in regard to the word Fundamentalism, making it a dirty word. Bible-believers are running in spate to deny the label in favour of calling themselves Evangelicals. It is a classic case of equivocation – they fear being associated with the militants of Islam who murder thousands of infidels in the name of religion.
We believe the label Evangelicalism has today even more negative associations and connotations in Christian circles. Evangelicalism and those in the Evangelical Left are at risk of being on the wayward path to first embracing ‘all religions lead to God’, an axiom of the Emerging church movement; then liberalism of the Jesus Seminar ilk; after that, Ecumenism, the ushering in of world peace through the unity of all faiths (anathema to Christ because of their mutually exclusive core tenets); and finally apostasy, the denial of Christ altogether, of which Paul prophesied in 2 Thessalonians 2:3:
“Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition (Antichrist).” (Parenthesis added.)
It would be prudent at this juncture to disabuse the ignorant of fundamentalism by delineating the origin of the term. The word Fundamentalist was first employed in 1920 by Curtis Lee Laws in reference to a Christian who held to the historical core doctrines of the Christian faith: (i) the inerrancy of Scriptures, (ii) the miracles of Christ (including His virgin birth), (iii) the literal, bodily resurrection of Christ, (iv) the substitutionary atonement of Christ, and (v) the deity of Christ.
From author David Robertson to commentator, Bill O'Reilly, fundamentalists today are copping a mother lode of negative press. Fundamentalists are blamed for everything that is negative about religion, from hate crimes, anti-intellectualism and persecution of homosexuals, to the mass carnage of devotees of extremist cults and sects such as the Branch Davidian.
Many a time, this equivocation is unjustifiably set up as a strawman by amnesty and civil rights groups in order to discredit and silence the Body of Christ and browbeat the courts into according more rights and privileges to the fringe groups they represent. Reason? It is Christians, in particular of the fundamentalist right wing persuasion, who are standing in the way of gay rights and climate change protocol and New Ageism and pro-choice.
As for us, we are proud to admit that we subscribe to Fundamentalism as our apologetic for it is validation that our beliefs are balanced on the fulcrum of the 5 Biblical fundamentals. An aside, if you are going to call yourself a Right Wing evangelical, you might as well retain the label fundamentalist, because they are not totally at variance. However, if your actions or beliefs contravene these, then, by definition, you do not pass the fundamentalist’s muster, so let us dispense with the strawman arguments already.
Eco- and Woke Activism
Many environmental activists headlining climate- and Eco-activism behave very much like the little children at supermarkets that make terrorist declarations on their parents so that the latter would surrender to their demands to buy them that bag of gummy bears or the latest Grogu doll.
In their campaigns against whaling and deep sea mining, Greenpeace International sometimes engage in terrorism in the high seas that endangers the lives of whalers and their own crew. On land, climate activists the likes of Greta Thunberg engage in acts of terrorism such as vandalising gas stations and defacing buildings and iconic artwork like the Mona Lisa and Van Gogh's Sunflowers . . . all in the name of saving the planet. They even block traffic and disrupt day-to-day business operations by gluing themselves to the road and chaining themselves to buildings.
Insidious behavior like these does nothing to win support or empathy for their causes – causes by the Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion movements, for instance – particularly when we realize many of these causes are being funded by billionaires. How many of these elites, while obnoxiously lecturing the peons about reducing their carbon footprints, audaciously travel in their private jets that leave behind massive CO2 emissions? As Paul Joseph Watson has eloquently put it: “As ever it has nothing to do with the environment but has everything to do with establishing faux environmentalism as the new religion; Neo-feudalism rebranded.”1
Surely radical climate- and Eco-activism is a religion as the leaders on its frontlines are known to worship the goddess Gaia.
Christians on the other hand are admonished by God to be good stewards of the environment that He has given man. This notwithstanding, God has also accorded man sovereignty over nature:
‘Then God blessed them (man and woman), and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth”’ (Genesis 1:28).
While it is true that we have dominion over nature, to make use of its resources for our living, our Christian responsibility toward caring for our environment entails managing these resources in a way that is sustainable so that they continue to be at the disposal of future generations. This without the need to engage in violence and coercion but is done out of love for our God, obedience to His precepts and faithfulness toward the meaning of environmental stewardship.
Another hot-button controversial topic heard in contemporary conversations – albeit having derived some of its fundamentals from the ideology of Political Correctness, popularised in the 1990s – is the Woke cult, or Wokeism.
Wokeism is the 21st Century answer to systemic racism and social injustice encompassing the variety of phobias such as transphobia and xenophobia. In a nutshell, the Woke culture attempts to tear apart many traditionally-held virtues that have been founded on Judeo-Christian precepts.
Included in the Woke progressives’ agenda are a litany of negative aspirations such as the dismantling of white patriarchy, installing of gender-neutral bathrooms in public / shared spaces, reframing masculinity (we think ‘toxic masculinity’ is a misandric illusion), maligning whiteness (we believe ‘white privilege’ is a baseless generalisation) and equal rights and protection for the so-called alphabet community (we think the notion of trans-genocide is a fabrication). The thrust of their ideology is tolerance, inclusivity and equal representation of all citizens regardless of gender, race and age.
Which is ironical, given what we have been witnessing, of late.
For if the Woke propagandists were serious and honest about advancing social justice, inclusivity and equal representation in all of society, they would protect the rights of Christians to preach the gospel and pray quietly on public sidewalks; they would support the rights of women to be protected from exposure to violence and injury that occur in gender-neutral bathrooms; and they would defend the rights of businesses to operate without fear of looters committing robberies in broad daylight on the pretext that their actions are a form of slavery reparation.
As well, they would protect the rights of children by decrying their early sexualisation via sex education at kindergarten level and drag queen story hour; they would support the rights of parents to determine how their children are raised or educated without interference from teachers, politicians and other non-elected ‘officials’; and they would defend the rights of women to be protected from having their equal opportunities stripped away by trans-athletes competing in women’s sports.
The list goes on and on – where we see the rights of certain individuals trampled upon and tolerance for them conspicuously absent.
What the Woke mafia really wants to accomplish is the complete erasure from the home, family and society of the authority of the Word of God, which stands in the way of the Wokesters’ agenda: a nightmarish and dystopian new social (dis)order where there is no distinction between boys and girls; men and women; and children and adults; and lines are blurred between good and evil, black and white, and father and son. It is the cult of Baphomet. All this for the end goal of extirpating the stigma surrounding fornication and adultery, and precipitating the normalization of sexual activity of every kind including homosexuality, pederasty, polygamy, bestiality and even incest.
Of this Scripture says,
“Now the works of the flesh are clearly revealed, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lustfulness” (Galatians 5:19 MKJV),
and
“Do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor abusers, nor homosexuals . . . shall inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 6:9 and 10b MKJV).
It is apparent that God regards all forms of sexual immorality as unrighteous and shall not permit into His kingdom anyone that indulges in acts of sexual immorality. Woe betide the LGBTQIA+ pastors and those that embrace the LGBTQIA+ cause who say otherwise.
Scripture in Luke 17 teaches that, in the last days, earth shall mirror the days of Lot when the Son of Man, who is Christ Jesus, is revealed.
The nephew of the Jewish patriarch, Abraham, Lot resided in Sodom and the sin of Sodom, for which God punished with fire and brimstone, was one of sexual immorality and perversion (Genesis 19:4-9):
“Now before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both old and young, all the people from every quarter, surrounded the house. And they called to Lot and said to him, ‘Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may know them carnally.’
“So Lot went out to them through the doorway, shut the door behind him, and said, ‘Please, my brethren, do not do so wickedly! See now, I have two daughters who have not known a man; please, let me bring them out to you, and you may do to them as you wish; only do nothing to these men, since this is the reason they have come under the shadow of my roof.’
“And they said, ‘Stand back!’ Then they said, ‘This one came in to stay here, and he keeps acting as a judge; now we will deal worse with you than with them.’ So they pressed hard against the man Lot, and came near to break down the door.”
We see many nations in the west today reflecting the culture of Lot’s day. We also see that a civilisation overrun by widespread sexual sin precedes judgment from God.
Before we cross the rubicon once and for all, the Church and like-minded conservatives must push back against the Woke onslaught on western culture and society, which is teetering on the precipice of a civilisation collapse, be that unto itself or owing to God’s judgment.
1. Paul Joseph Watson, “Oh, look, another posh t*at”, YouTube, uploaded by Paul Joseph Watson, April 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAqhyTI-C8Q.