During graduate school, for a short while I worked at a paint and wall covering store.  Of varied responsibilities, I performed the job of organizing the wallpaper books.  They filled the tops of two large tables and I kept them in some kind of order based on style.  I could at least direct someone according to the taste of a customer.

Philosopher Ernest Gellner wrote that under relativism choosing a religion is akin to choosing a wallpaper pattern.  In other words, considering faith or religion you can act on personal taste or feelings, like someone picking out a style of wallcovering.  In general, truth then doesn’t apply to faith or religion, not like the physics of airplane travel or the engineering of a bridge.

You can live in a house without wallpaper on the walls.  Wallpaper itself is a total convenience.  Are faith or religion or moral laws such a convenience?

Men have become convinced by many various ungodly means that religious knowledge, the truth as a basis for faith, is of a different, lesser quality.  First, you choose what you want to believe.  What you’ve chosen might be something different than mine.  I like something different, and it doesn’t matter that they disagree or even contradict.  People might treat scripture like it is just a vessel to conform to whatever they want, but it isn’t. However, they are doing this now.

Second, many varied religions compare in what’s important.  It’s better just to look for common ground. Everyone has free will and you won’t convince anyone by trying to force them.  These similarities, kindness, treating other people like they want to be treated, the golden rule, are what’s important.  Those are the common ground, hence the truth.  The Bible says nothing like this either.

Third, the truth is really just what you feel in your heart.  Follow your heart.  That feeling that you feel is something God wants you to know.  Are you going to deny that God doesn’t want you to know what you need to know?  God’s Word says to try these feelings, this intuition, using God’s Word.

Fourth, the very existence of so many religions says that it’s near to impossible to be certain on the truth.  So many people couldn’t all be wrong.  It’s proud to think you do know.

Fifth, two plus two equals four.  That’s knowledge.  Faith is categorically different, not knowing in the same way as math.  Math is real.  Twelve divided by three equals four.  If religion was the same as math, then you could say that you know it.  Religion, faith, has much more variation, because it isn’t so sure.  Whatever someone happens to feel or think about religious matters is as good as what anyone else says.  It’s very personal, unlike math.  Two plus two means the same thing to everyone.  Religion and faith are different, more like choosing a wallpaper pattern.

None of the reasons or explanations I’ve given here are true.  Man walks according to his own lust and his view of faith, religion, knowledge, and the truth conforms to that.  What’s real is what’s out in the world, the people he knows, his dreams, what he wants to do.  Faith and religion can be modified to fit that.  In the end though, God will still judge them to fall short of a biblical plan of salvation.

Burk Parsons tweeted yesterday (Sunday):  “Saying you’re a new kind of Christian with a new kind of Christianity is basically saying you’re an old kind of heretic.”  You can want people to include you in Christianity, but your new kind of Christianity isn’t really or truly Christian.

Not just the world, but churches today in rapidly growing fashion coddle relativism.