Logic & Worldviews
Randy Peterman · Oct 16, 2005
Apologetics, No. 03
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262334447346

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Well, this morning we're talking about logic and worldviews. Jessica asked me why I was wearing this shirt to church. For those of you who are listening to this in a recorded format, it says, ha, now you can't see me, and it's camouflage. Really, there's a point to this. The thing is that we're going to talk about logic, and the thing is, how many of you use logic every day? How many of you feel comfortable saying, I use logic every day?

Steve does. Three or four. Some of you. Not all of you. Okay. Well, I'm going to say that everyone could raise their hand to that. The thing is that logic is an important part of what is happening right now. When you listen to the words that come out of my head, you're using logic. Your brain is developing thoughts.

But before we dive into logic and then into worldviews, I want to discuss briefly some vocabulary. If you'll look at your handout, I want to point out last week You may have noticed that I had the word logic last week, but we didn't talk about logic, did we? I just kind of passed over that. The reason is I'm putting in some of these vocabulary words so that weekly you get infused with some knowledge and sometimes it will get used here, sometimes it will be used outside of this class, but I think it's important to have these words in your vocabulary and be able to understand what they are. Firstly, let's take a look here.

Inductive reasoning is reasoning from detailed facts to general principles. Observations that are singular and unique and then drawing a hypothesis from that. Deductive reasoning is saying because of, for example, the law of gravity that Sir Isaac Newton postulated for us, because I know that, as a general principle, then I know in this particular instance that if I let go of this paper, it'll fall on the ground and then I'll have to pick it up and it'll delay the class. So, that's the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning.

You may not need to know that very often, but it is important when you're listening. Let's say you're... I'll just give you a practical example of why you might want to know that. If you're talking to somebody who is taking an opposite position from whatever you are holding, they're going to use certain arguments to say, hey, you're wrong. Either I didn't run the red light, or I did run the red light, or any other spiritual or philosophical issue, you're going to need to be able to have an understanding of what type of argument they're using. Because the type of argument that they're using is going to impact what you're going to look for as weaknesses in the argument. If I say, I'm wearing a green shirt, I'm saying that's a specific you're going to have to be able to identify is that an inductive or a deductive statement that I would pull from that, which is that I'm wearing... If I wore...

I just totally flubbed that example. I apologize. I'm wearing a green shirt. It has brown splotches on it. That's an observation of things. If I'm speaking in a general sense, the general sense is it's mostly green, but there's brown spots on it. Now, that's being a little nitpicky, but when you're getting into arguments, debates, you're going to have to be able to identify specifically what kind of reasoning a person is using. Next word on here, worldview. We will definitely get into that deeper. The way one interprets life, its meaning, and how one reacts or thinks one would react to scenarios. One's paradigm with which they operate or one operates.

Is everybody familiar with paradigms, if I say a paradigm? Yeah, 20 cents. Does paradigm mean anything to people? Seriously, because I learned that when I was in junior high at a summer youth camp, strangely enough, but that doesn't mean that everybody else went to the same summer youth camp.

A paradigm is a general set of practices that you use to deal with situations. Okay, I'm going to use the most recent practical example that I can think of, which is dealing with, in spiritual growth, when we look at life, Often young believers will look at it from a self-oriented perspective. I'm looking at it from me to the situation in life. As we grow, our paradigm, the way we look at things, shifts up to being from God's perspective. It's the way that we handle things.

Hopefully that's a more clear example than my deductive and inductive reasoning example. What? A succinct? It's basically like a worldview. It's a general approach to dealing with a situation or looking at something, but it's not like a law or a rule, necessarily, as it might be an approach to something.

Syllogism, we're not going to be talking about syllogisms too much, but when you get into debates or arguments or listening to someone tell you that you're a moron for being a Christian or whatever else it is, you're going to hear that they're going to, and here's the definition, use a pair of propositions that are used to prove a third proposition. It's a form of logic. My example here is one from my home life.

Randy and Jessica have one girl, Abby, that's one proposition. It's a statement and it happens to be true. Jessica is pregnant with a second girl, Evie, which is also true. Now, there are two conclusions that I'm going to draw. One is good and one is bad. One is that Randy and Jessica will have two girls.

That is a true statement. Someday in the future, Lord willing, that will all take place where the rapture will happen. Example of a bad conclusion, and this is one I take personal offence to, is that Randy can only produce girls. Randy has only produced girls till now, that does not mean in the future that it could not happen, okay?

It's a logical fallacy based on taking two propositions and inherently drawing a conclusion from them. So that's a syllogism. Actually, it's interesting, knowing that, read through the Psalms and Proverbs, there's some really interesting places where you'll see syllogisms.

Now, let's dig into the fun stuff here. Let's take a look here at logic. is an integral part of our ability to have thoughts and to comprehend words, sentences, and ideas. Now I'm going to explain why I'm wearing this shirt. When you look at this shirt, it's either stupid or funny. It depends on the type of person who reads it. Logic says that just because I'm reading this, I am seeing the person. What's funny is that you can see the person.

You have to have logic. I've actually experienced in my own life running into people who have maybe done excessive amounts of drugs or something like that where it hampers their logic skills where they have a tough time dealing with humor. They don't understand jokes because they can't logic and reason their way through why that's ironic or humorous. because their brain just doesn't function that way anymore, which is a real problem because I like to joke a lot. So in pointing that out, you're using logic all the time. Now here's why you're going to use logic. We're going to go over the three core rules for logic.

I got these from a book called Baker's Dictionary of Apologetics. Norm Geiser was the general editor. I have it at my house. You're welcome to borrow it to take a look at it at some point in time. It's definitely full of all kinds of really good resources good definitions and explanations of philosophical and apologetical viewpoints. The first one here is the law of non-contradiction. And that is that A does not equal non-A.

Now that's a really generic, almost as a programmer I would write that in a different way, but that's a very generic technical programming thing. A practical example, is that we cannot say that God is God and God is the devil. That's probably one of the most perfect extreme examples of the law of non-contradiction. God cannot be God and the devil at the same time. God is A in this example, as we're going to go over A and B in the next section here with the second law, the law of identity.

The example of that in the very terse definition is A is A. It binds the name of whatever something is to the object. This took me a long time to get my brain wrapped around when I was programming, so hopefully I'll explain this in a clear, non-programming sort of a way. The example here is that I cannot be me and I cannot be a chair at the same time. If we're describing object A as Randy, then object A cannot also be the pew in front of me. Object A has to be Randy.

Everybody follow me there? I don't want to lose people with this, because this is the fundamentals of logic. You're using it, I just have to explain it in a way so that you realize you're using it. Everybody got that? Alright. The third one is the law of excluded middle. Now that's...

I don't know why they call it that. They need more user-friendly terms for these. I put the word binary there, Jessica's probably going to smirk, but the idea is that something is either on or off, or it's A or not A, but it's nothing in between. Often in the world, we're presented with situations that somebody says that's fuzzy or it's gray. In logic, you deal with a lot. You have some very serious issues if you're dealing with gray or fuzzy areas because you can't say that's true or not. And then of course, trying to build a conclusion off of something that you don't know is true or not is impossible. You can't say anything with any absolute certainty.

So does everybody follow the law of excluded middle? Okay, nobody's saying no, so I hope so. Last week, does anybody remember me running my mouth off about... I'm sorry, I did this. I said that you can't prove that God exists with logical arguments, okay? And then Steve came up to me afterwards saying, hey Randy, and he wanted me to clarify something. I'll clarify it now for everybody.

The idea is that you can reason to a higher being. In a worldview that most worldviews that people have, you can logically reason them to the existence of a higher being. You cannot reason them to the God of the Bible simply because God revealed himself in that way. If they go about trying to find God outside of scripture, they're not going to find the exact God of the Bible because God said, I'm here, I want to know you, let me reveal myself to you, and they're rejecting that as a source.

I envision somebody being blind, you're going to feel around something, but because you are unable to see whatever it is, you're going to draw a conclusion roughly, but not an exact representation. I'll go into that in a little bit more detail, but real quick, I do want to make sure that that's at least roughly clear. Is that unclear to anyone? The idea is that with logic, you can bring somebody to a point of recognizing there's a higher being. but without Scripture and God revealing Himself, they're not going to logically jump to the faith-based position of Christ and the God revealed in the Bible.

Not too many glassy eyes there, and glassy stares. I want to emphasize that in there, that requires the work of the Holy Spirit to bring them to that point. Man cannot do it on man's own merits. the Holy Spirit has to work in the life of a person for them to become a believer.

I already covered this one. Logic is part of humor. I have to emphasize that because I like humor so much. Last week, now that we've talked about logic, I guess I should say one more thing here. Logic is self-consistent within a system, hopefully. If somebody holds a philosophical view. Hopefully their reasoning and their logic within that system is going to be self-consistent, but at some point in time they're going to be starting off with a foundation of faith on something. Last week we talked about truth. The foundation was faith in God or man's ability to handle reality. Remember that roughly because we're going to dig in deeper.

Last week we talked about Romans 1.18-25 this week, we're going to talk about the rest of Romans chapter 1. So if you can open up your Bibles, or I've got it printed out here, we're going to discuss that in further detail.

Can anybody give us a brief recap of Romans 1.18-25 last week? What was one of the main points? I'm hoping you remember for a week. That really is just a test.

Man suppresses the truth of God, and he exchanges the glory of God for mankind, or animals, or some other thing that he's going to put in that position. Now, I'm going to go ahead and read Romans 1, 16-32 here, and then we'll discuss this a little further. And I apologize for the graphic nature, except that the Holy Spirit inspired Paul to write it, so bear with me.

For this reason, God gave them over to degrading passions. For their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural. And in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another. Men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.

And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind to do things which were not proper. being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful, and although they know the ordinance of God, and those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them. That's a really, really long list of yucky things.

I think we can all agree with that. Although, when I was a kid, I really had a hard time with the disobeying your parents thing. For some reason, I thought that was okay sometimes. Real quick, the sexual shift here is not one that is normally what we consider part of our worldview. Our culture right now is bombarding us with the idea that sexuality is independent from the rest of our lives, just like spirituality is independent from the rest of our lives.

Paul does not make that distinction. So when people talk about these things, it is part of their worldview. It is part of their whole life. We're going to deal with that probably in another class. It sounds like you guys wanted to discuss homosexuality in further detail, so I'm going to postpone that. So hopefully everybody will make it upcoming class when we discuss that.

A real quick question, how much of this kind of stuff is inside of people? What does Paul say about the content? I'm looking for the beginning of verse 29. What does it say? How much of it do they have? They're filled. Now, does that mean that they have 100% of all of these all the time?

No, but they have some of these all of the time simply because some people do not murder. That doesn't mean that in their minds they have not cultivated murderous thoughts. I've at times in the flesh been really angry and thought, man, it would have been so much more convenient if that person wasn't here, which of course was disgustingly wicked, but the flesh is wicked and I think that's Paul's point here. When we look at these things here, they know the ordinances of God, and those who practice such things are worthy of death. They only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.

What we're going to talk about with the worldviews this morning here in the upcoming charts is going to be how these different areas work out, and then we'll ask some questions and see where you've come in contact. with these particular worldviews. I have two questions down at the bottom of your handout here, so we'll do those before we jump to the next section. What are some of the logical assumptions of these immoral attitudes? Not the conclusions, but the assumptions.

Where do they start out before when they're validating or justifying these? Okay, everybody else is doing it. which is funny because the last part says that they want everybody else to do it. Let's say haters of God. The assumption is that I know better than God.

If you go down through the list, you're going to see a selfish, self-focused attitude on each one of these things. And it's pretty intense. Even with gossips, that's something that I have to be very careful when I communicate. If somebody says, oh, what's going on with so-and-so in your life? I need to make sure that when I answer that, as a believer, that I'm going to pass on edifying information. However, when we gossip, often it's selfishly motivated.

They're screwed up. You wouldn't believe what so-and-so did. So the assumptions are all based on the self. If you check that out, you'll see pretty consistently that it's selfishness. And then, kind of a rhetorical question there, does this look like an upward spiral to you?

The answer is a resounding no. There's a chart here next that says, Mind the Gap, which is a British phrase. I've never been there, but Jessica showed me pictures. I want you to recognize that there's a gap between God's character, which is given to believers, and that which man can come up with on their own. You'll see on the top, or on the right-hand side, is God's character. and He moves that through the graciousness of the cross into the life of a believer. Positionally, we've got it. Conditionally, we're working it out. If man tries to build his own character and his own righteousness, it's hindered by sin. Does that make sense?

Because when we get into these next charts, you're going to need to keep that in mind. Before we get into them, we're going to ask the following six questions. How does the following worldviews deal with pain Trials, pleasure, eternity, God, and truth. So be prepared to think about those things as we look at these charts. The first chart you'll have up here is humanism. Everybody has got that. These are supposed to be sort of like temples or houses.

The idea is not to overly analyze what the structure is, more than to just convey the idea. The bottom here on humanism is is the foundation, is nature. At the top, the high point of the worldview is reason, and then the things that are structurally part of it are chance.

There is no God. Man is free. Progress, which we could say is good, or progress is inevitable. And then, in the middle, the statement, if they were to make a t-shirt or a bumper sticker, is glory to man in the highest. Man is the measure of all things.

How many of you have talked about or studied humanism before? Is that foreign as a term? A couple of you, okay. I'm just trying to make sure I know who's been dealing with philosophy and who hasn't. The best way I can describe humanism is that it starts out with humans, and we're it, and humans, we can do it. I was telling Matt earlier, this is the Bob the Builder. There's a kid's cartoon called Bob the Builder, and my daughter has at times seen it on television, and I'll walk by, and their little motto is, we can do it, yes we can. And so this is humanism. The thing is, is that as a foundation, there is nature.

Nature exists, it's self-evident, and everything that we conclude from nature is going to be valuable, and we'll use it, come to grow in our understanding of reality. As believers, do we believe in chance? Does God's word instruct us about chance, or does it give us a different perspective? The answer is obviously, yes, it gives us a different perspective. We're going to go over that. It's on the back side of this page. We'll go over to Christianity last so that you can have that hopefully strongest in your mind.

There is no God. That's the second one, the second pillar of support there. Their being no God is pretty critical to their argument, and even if there was a God, they're just going to ignore Him. Sometimes you get an agnostic perspective within humanism. I don't know if there's a God or not, but we'll just ignore the issue and we'll keep going on like we have all the answers.

Man is free. How many of you feel free in Christ? The answer is, hopefully all of us will feel free in Christ because we know who we are in Christ, Without God, man's freedom is what? What does scripture say man's freedom is? It doesn't actually say freedom.

Yes, it's not really freedom. It calls it bondage. Bondage to sin and slavery. I'm going to go out and I'm going to do it. I am free to do it. I actually had an instant messaging conversation with a co-worker recently where he was like, oh, I think we should all have more freedom. And I was like, yeah, that's not the answer.

The next pillar over you'll see is progress. Progress is one of those things that sounds good. How many of you have recently heard of the various ethical debates going on over things like stem cells? Stem cell research, I think that's pretty prominent in the news.

The idea is, oh, we have the science, we can do it. We should do it because we can do it. We have the freedom to do it and it is progress. It's in many ways just an embodiment of humanism in a scientific environment, because there are not moral restraints, because we're free. And then at the top here you'll see reason, I have here as the roof of this structure. We will use our reason to achieve all these things, and we will worship the reason, because it has brought us such a magnificent structure so far.

You'll see that man is obviously the focus there in the middle. Glory to man in the highest. Man is the measure of all things. I will measure and I will evaluate and I will bring together everything and I will come up with a cumulative and, as best as I know, answer for things. And I will be the measure of all things.

That's pretty dangerous if you think about it. We've all heard of people like Charles Manson. Obviously he's a pretty scary guy, but he's just doing the best he knows how. If man is the measure of all things, then what do you do if you've got a pretty freaky man? What do you do if you've got a freaky woman? I look at the entertainment industry today, and we validate all kinds of corruption and perversion and all kinds of other things for the name of either entertainment or because we can. I'm free to do that, and it's really a dangerous perspective.

Do you remember from last week in Romans, chapter 1, where it says they exchanged... If you will take a look there with me. Romans, chapter 1. I should have had my Bible flipped open to that. verse 23 says, "...and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures." I think that humanism is definitely and clearly outlined in that verse. We're going to exchange what God has given us for what man can do and what man will be. So man is definitely worshipped there.

Now another The next chart down here is existentialism. Is anybody familiar with existentialism? That's a fun one. Existentialism, you'll notice the first part of that word is the word exist. The idea of this view is that existence is all that there is.

I exist, I don't know why, I don't know how. You'll see the foundation for this is the foundation of despair. What kind of a foundation is that? That's got to be a real chipper place to start from. There is no reason. I don't know. So my foundation for everything is really a void. It's a big hole.

You'll see the next pillar here is evil cannot be redeemed. They recognize evil. The problem of evil, that some worldviews reject sin or various other things, they recognize evil, but you can't do anything about it. They reject Christ and the cross. There's no resolution. There you go, it exists, deal with it.

Which is a really helpful answer. Probably. I've run into some people saying, oh yeah, I screw up, but there's nothing I can do about it, so I just do... And the next thing that we're going to talk about here, well, we'll talk about it in just a moment here, is that existence means that you basically just focus on experience.

What's the greatest experience I can have while I'm in this existence? which is problematic. So they recognize their evil, but that doesn't matter. They're just going to go experience whatever it is during that time period, even if it is evil. That may not be an invalid thing. It's just an experience. Experience is all that matters.

There is no God. That's similar, as you'll see, to humanism. It's got to be a fundamental part. They have to reject God because then there might be some kind of moral absolute. That's problematic for the world. Man is condemned to be free. Instead of man just being free, yay, it's like, oh, we're free. That's a real bummer. Why? Because the freedom comes from a foundation of despair. Oh, well, I'm just here, all I have is experience. It's a condemnation, it's not a blessing the way that the humanist would take it to be.

The bankruptcy of human wisdom. Now, this is the real critical thing. This right here, the bankruptcy of human wisdom, they realize that humans are flawed. They realize that it is impossible for us to know everything and be everywhere at once. So they don't really account for human wisdom as being all that valuable.

Yeah, he said that the humanist is the optimist and the existentialist is the pessimist. Both of them are focused on man. You'll see at the top, it says act without hope, and that is Yeah, it's Eeyore. Existentialist is in Eeyore. Yeah, it's oh so true. I can't watch Eeyore too long, I get a little bummed. Act without hope. You're going to act, you're going to do it, but there is no hope involved. Your foundation is despair. There's no excitement of what's going to happen.

The humanist says, yay, we're going to do it. So we have Bob the Builder for the humanist and Eeyore for the existentialist. So if there are ever children listening to this, they'll feel right, just fit in. But because experience is everything, you can see what a problem that is. There is another worldview, which I'm not going to go into now because we'll go into it next week, called postmodernism. Has anybody heard of postmodernism? I see that word in the news more than most other philosophical views, believe it or not. The idea is a bit hard to explain because Their point is that they don't want to be explained. They don't believe in absolute definitions of words.

Remember Bill Clinton, when he got into the Monica Lewinsky situation, decided that he would ask the deep philosophical question, what is, is? What he was trying to do was use what sounds like logic to undermine logic. Postmodernism says, We agree, there is bankruptcy of wisdom, but they're trying to want to mix in some more of the positive of humanism, where we're going to be intellectually ignorant. We're going to pursue intellectual... I just think of a cloud or something. It's hard to define and mix in. I'll have a better definition next week, but the idea is to say that it gets worse. That humanism or existentialism, it's more recent, It leads to all kinds of confusion. What is, is, is a classical example of, or a classic example of using logic to destroy logic so that you can get away with something.

A postmodernist, there was a postmodernist who contracted HIV who was in France and he just decided he was going to go out and spread that amongst other people because it didn't matter. He had no moral absolutes. So some of the things that are in here, with existentialism being pessimistic, it carries that to an all new extreme. So the idea is, when you look at man, and you see that man is, I am is the middle for existentialism, that's the bumper sticker. I am, and that's all that matters. The presuppositionalist can't even say that. He's not even sure that he is. On the back of that page there, page four, we'll see Christianity. This is the one that has hope. I like to go over this one because it feels a whole lot better than the other ones.

The foundation, you'll see, is the God of the Bible. We talked last week about truth. We can say there's a God of the Bible and He is true, and then from there we've got somewhere to go. The first pillar on the left-hand side, Christ as the Redeemer. What were the issues before we had there is no God, we had chance, evil cannot be redeemed, In this case, evil has an answer.

There's a solution. It is Christ. And he dealt with it. Instead of not knowing anything absolutely, God reveals himself to us. And he has given us truth. Instead of dealing with man being free, man is sinful. That's a massive contrast. Instead of having freedom of the flesh, it's freedom in Christ. Because we've been redeemed. But otherwise, man is sinful. Now, the fourth pillar there you'll see is faith. Faith is pretty darn critical there. It has to do with you believing and having a relationship. Is there any belief or relationship in the other worldviews? The answer is no. It's me. I'm all alone. It's me with God.

The last thing there on the top is absolute truth. We have absolute truth. We look at that. It's one of our major points in the Christian faith that we can go, oh, I've got somewhere I can go with this. and I'm not alone. You'll see in the middle here, the bumper sticker or the t-shirt, a little slogan is, Glory to God in the highest. He is the measure of all things. And that's awesome. It gives us something outside of ourselves that we can evaluate things by.

Again, that verse 23 in Romans chapter 1 really nails where the human condition is. This has been an overview of these philosophical worldviews. Frankly, we could spend hours talking about where each one works itself out. I know that I have seen, in studying world history, waves of these various ideas and modifications of them throughout history being applied. Go ahead, Marilyn.

You don't feel like they fall into any of those categories? See, man is good, it falls under the humanism category. So the thing is that people will often get a blend of these, because if you don't have absolute truth, if you don't have revealed truth, you're going to probably try to pick and choose what makes you feel best or works for you. In general, people will have a core set of beliefs, though, in their worldview that will fit into one of these, but it's not an absolute. That's a good clarification to say that it's possible for somebody to be trying to find a balance between humanism and existentialism, or finding who they aren't in postmodernism, or various things.

Steve? I think, too, that these worldviews, philosophers, right? Yeah, that's true. books and systematic methods of applying all these things. By the time they get to the general public that will read their stuff. It builds her down into the culture. just ideas that really have no foundation or assumptions come from what these philosophers write and permeate popular culture without anybody really thinking about it, they just hand it back. I think a key example of post-modernism is not that you hear people say things like, well, it's a man thing, or it's a woman thing. What Steve said, I want to make sure that gets on the recording, is that Most of the philosophical things that I outlined here and definitely in more depth have been written in books and people often that you come in contact have not read those things. So that odds are saying this, you may not know somebody who fits into this in a stereotypical way simply because they've not studied it. A lot of our philosophy comes handed down to us from other people like Oprah. Am I allowed to say that in a recorded thing? Am I gonna get in trouble? No, anyways. Trust me, she wants that influence.

And the other thing he said that with postmodernism, truth becomes personal and it has no connection with other people. They will never understand truth because you have your own truth and it's personal. So that's postmodernism. I think that's a good definition there. I should have had that ready. Thank you, Steve.

Or would you place or call a person that is religious and believes in God, but not the God of the Bible? Are you referring to someone like a Muslim, or are you referring to somebody like my co-workers, some of them that do that? A person that would say, yes, I'm a Christian. He's a person that would attend probably a liberal church Okay, so somebody who's a Christian but doesn't necessarily believe in absolute truth. He calls himself a Christian but he doesn't believe in absolute truth and he doesn't embrace the Bible as their position of authority.

That could be... I'd have to probably know more than that because the thing is that that kind of a person is definitely still someone who is looking at themselves. In contrast to a Christian worldview, they've got possibly a mishmash of any number of things. So it's definitely a non-biblical and non-Christian worldview. I don't know where I would classify them.

You seem to have an answer to that. The question is an important one because the truth is that there are a lot of people who are Christians, or they at least call themselves Christians, that will embrace one or more of these secular forms that you've laid out. Postmodern churches or religious existentialism, liberal churches as you mentioned are frequently into a kind of Christian humanism. It's a hybrid. I was avoiding picking denominations for this. I can think of denominations that fit into these categories.

The idea, though, is that if Christ is not the focus, if you don't understand the principle of position and condition, identification, abiding, all of those things, then you don't have an answer from God, even though God has revealed it to us. Then you end up going to yourself. Well, God doesn't seem to be licking this. I've got to do it.

It's one of those things that At that point in time, you either become humanist and go, okay, I will do this, I will beat X, Y, and Z, or you just find yourself in despair, because I can't beat X, Y, and Z. So, I think, fundamentally, it really does tie into, you need to know who you are in Christ, so that your worldview can be much more, well, biblical, and also, it will be more effective in your life. Okay, so Nicodemus would be an example of somebody that you're thinking of. I think in his case, he was probably more of a humanist. The Pharisees were definitely oriented towards, we will do it. We will make laws for ourselves and we will do it. We will achieve righteousness on our own. In contrast... Well, that's what he's saying.

They believed in God, but they didn't understand the relationship aspect of it. They lacked the faith. It was... Yeah. It's definitely an issue where people have a religion of convenience, and it's not something that you want to take lightly. Go ahead, mom. When you have this religion of convenience, and people will say, oh yes, I'm a Christian, I believe in God, without a relationship with the Lord Jesus.

And then something happens in their lives that isn't to their liking. They lose a spouse, a child, go through divorce, bankruptcy, a flood. Anything. Whatever. And then they say, I don't like that. What kind of a God would let that happen? And then they reject God. They use looking at themselves as an excuse to reject God. Or they alter their theology to take on a position where God doesn't really know what's going to happen and God really isn't in control of things. If you are genuinely concerned about matching up your worldview with scripture, then you have to do some gymnastics to make it all fit together. That can be pretty frustrating and odd.

Next week we're going to talk about postmodernism. I promise to have a better definition ready. We're going to talk about relativism. Specifically, I think, Marilyn, honestly, I think that you're going to identify in your co-workers more relativism than these other ones. Relativism is definitely a newer trend in the sense that there was a lot of, at least in the United States, there was a lot of morals that were passed on by religious parents to their religious children, and then we run back into recent American history and suddenly you find as more and more people started going to college and getting educated, they were introduced to philosophical ideas that destroyed the religious moorings that were part of the culture. And so that's when relativism really set in in the United States. It's philosophical in that, well, if I were to summarize relativism, it's the statement, there is no absolute truth. Everything is relative to you. Obviously post-modernism fits in with that really well because my truth is my thing and you can't understand it.

It's a Randy thing. It's a Randy thing. That would be so screwy. That would just be so wrong. But anyways, we need to close in prayer and get started. Next week we will be talking about relativism and post-modernism, barring any strange events. I don't know that my daughter being born would be strange. It would be awesome. Anyways, let's go before the Lord and we'll be dismissed.

Heavenly Father, we ask that you would just help us to understand who we are in you, understand that as we address things in this world from your perspective, with your view, that we'll be edified and we'll be growing because that's your will for our lives. We pray that as we come in contact with those who disagree with us, that we would pay attention and lovingly respond and that your Holy Spirit would draw them to the truth. Lord, we lift up the events of this upcoming week and ask that you would give us opportunities to see these things so that we can learn them and understand them more clearly. In Jesus' name, amen.