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Globalism and Relativism Run Amok in the Courts
Two Recent District Court Cases
Two recent United States district court cases provide a case study on globalism and relativism run amok in the courts of the United States. These offer another example of the disintegration of the West. I expect criticism for even addressing this issue, which dovetails with the actual issue itself. Globalism and relativism are biblical content to which scripture provides guidance. It is not out of my apparent area of expertise.
For the first example, the Trump White House invoked the Alien Enemies Act for removing alleged members of Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang members to an El Salvadoran prison. Washington DC district judge James Boasberg, Obama appointee, ordered the deportation planes turned around in order to give these illegal immigrants their due process rights. Legal experts call these injunctions. Courts have issued thirty of these injunctions so far, which is more than they issued against the first forty-two presidents of the United States combined.
In the second example, the U. S. government detained in New Jersey with the purpose of deporting the immigrant Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student activist, before it moved him to an immigration facility in Jena, Louisiana. Judge Jesse Furman in Manhattan, a district judge of the Southern District of New York issued a court order blocking Khalil’s deportation pending a ruling on his petition.
Immigration, National Defense, and the Executive Branch
Immigration Policy
The defendants in the two cases have in common that neither the alleged gang members nor the Hamas supporting Khalil are citizens of the United States. ABC News reports concerning the Khalil case:
The government has claimed that Palestinian protester Mahmoud Khalil intentionally misrepresented information on his green card application and therefore is inadmissible to the United States.
According to recent court filings, President Donald Trump’s administration said Khalil failed to disclose when applying for his green card last year that his employment by the Syria Office at the British Embassy in Beirut went “beyond 2022” and that he was a “political affairs officer” for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees from June to November 2023.
The executive branch of the United States enforces its immigration laws. Immigration policies directly impact national security by regulating who enters the country. Effective immigration control helps prevent individuals who may pose security risks for the United States.
National Defense
The establishment of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2003 was a significant restructuring of the United States federal government aimed at consolidating various agencies and functions related to national security, particularly in response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Following the events of 9/11, it became clear that there were gaps in communication and coordination among various federal agencies responsible for national security, immigration enforcement, and emergency management.
The United States Constitution assigns the power of the President for national defense. A Department under the President, the Department of Defense (DoD) is primarily focused on military operations and defense against external threats. However, its role in homeland security became increasingly relevant post-9/11. A key goal in forming the DHS was improving information sharing between agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and DoD regarding potential national security threats.
Rights of Citizens
Immigrants in the United States, who are even here legally, do not have the same rights of due process as American citizens. They have certain rights provided by the fifth amendment of the Constitution based on the precedent of decisions of the Supreme Court. No decisions of the Supreme Court have excluded the executive branch from deporting immigrants that are in the United States illegally and especially a threat to the United States.
A Supreme Court case in 1896, Wong Wing et al. v. United States made the simple ruling that protected aliens in the United States from cruel punishment. Another one in 1886, Yick Wo v. Hopkins, Sheriff, etc. and Wo Lee v. Same, said that the United States could not discriminate against aliens in law enforcement because they merely are here as immigrants. Most of you reading know that we should not treat non-citizens exactly the same as citizens.
The Viewpoints of Activist Judges Run Amok
From where or what does the viewpoint come, which would believe that aliens and even illegal ones have the same rights in the United States as its actual legal citizens? These two activist judges abdicate the authority given by the United States Constitution to the executive branch. You can see this occurring at an increased rate and only by a certain category of judges with a particular worldview. Two beliefs or concepts that undergird the injunctions or court actions of these activist judges.
Globalism
One, the above activist judges reveal their globalism versus and superior to nationalism. Globalism refers to an ideology that advocates for the interconnectedness of nations, economies, and cultures, prioritizing international cooperation over national sovereignty. In the context of judicial actions, a globalist agenda manifests when judges interpret laws or make rulings that align more with international norms than with domestic constitutional principles. This can lead to decisions that undermine the traditional separation of powers established by a nation’s constitution.
Nationalism asserts national boundaries, the United States versus other nations. For the United States to keep its national identity, it must protect itself against the intrusion of the rest of the world. The United States operates under its own unique standards and norms. Globalists, on the other hand, make decisions that eliminate national distinctions, opting instead for a broader, more inclusive culture. This also dovetails with multiculturalism, which deems every culture equal with the other, a political form of multiculturalism.
Outside Constitutional Framework
Judges operating outside the constitutional framework interpret laws in ways that extend beyond their original intent. They adopt expansive interpretations of laws that align with global standards or human rights conventions, even if such interpretations conflict with national statutes. They also reference international law or foreign legal precedents as authoritative sources, which can dilute the application of domestic law. When judges prioritize globalist perspectives, it leads to erosion of national sovereignty.
International norms then take precedence over national laws. Based on global standards, courts assume roles traditionally reserved for either the executive or legislative branches. The separation of powers is designed to prevent any one branch of government from becoming too powerful. When judges operate under a globalist agenda, they create policy rather than simply interpreting existing laws. Judicial decisions influenced by globalism challenge executive actions, especially those related to immigration and foreign relations, thereby disrupting the balance intended by the separation of powers.
Moral Relativism
Two, the above activist judges embrace some form of moral relativism. They are unwilling to distinguish between Venezuelan criminal gangs and a Hamas supporter. Without objective truth, a judge cannot judge between lies and truth. Truth, goodness, and beauty is merely in the eye of the beholder. These judges make these issues about power. Something is true, good, or beautiful because the powerful say it is and make it to be so. They must use their own levers of power to reconstruct their own opinions or feelings.
Enforcing the borders violates globalism and moral relativism. A government that stops someone’s admission into its country is asserting its national distinction. This offends a globalist view. It also says it can judge something to be better than something else. One culture is worse than another one. But truth and goodness are a construct of power, not absolute and objective. If these judges can continue to act in this way to irrationally stop the rightful function of the nation, this will disintegrate the nation further into chaos.
The Moral Nature of God (Part 4)
God’s Goodness
Imagine a deer running through the woods at the very time a dead tree falls, trapping the deer helplessly alone. The deer starves to death in solitary confusion. An agnostic might ask and say, “If there is an all powerful, good God, why or how would He allow this to happen? This is immoral.”
In and with His sovereignty, God created and sustains heavens and earth. Everything was perfect and then man sinned against God. God allowed Adam and Eve to sin. Sin is wrong, but allowing them to sin is not. God does not sin and He does not tempt anyone to sin James writes (1:13):
Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man.
James says many other things in chapter one of his epistle that indicate the moral nature of God, that with God is only good. On the other hand, sin ruined men and all men sin. Paul writes in Romans 3:12 that there is no man that does good. Goodness does not characterize man, even as Jesus says in Matthew 19:17: “There is none good, but one, that is God.”
The Nature of the Fall of Man
An agnostic, again elevating himself above God, might question the Fall of man through sin. What did he do? He ate of a tree. It was worse than that. He disobeyed God, rebelled against Him, and put his self and even Satan above God.
God, the Lawgiver and Judge, commanded man not to eat of that tree. God would not have man to know evil. Later in Genesis 3:22, the Father speaking to the other two members of the Godhead, said, “Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil.” The agnostic again attacks the moral nature of God, as if God selfishly did not want man to become like Him. That’s not what God is saying in Genesis 3:22.
Adam and Eve are God’s creation. With His knowledge of good and evil, God has no ability to sin. Adam and Eve did. They became as God, but this does not mean they became identical to God. No. They knew evil internally and experientially. God is holy and separate from sin. He knows evil, but on the outside, not in a personal experience. The only future plan for eternal life must include redemption from sin and that would not occur with and to everyone.
The Morality of the Curse on Earth
The Single Eye of God
God does not see the heavens and the earth through a dark or evil lens, such as men do. The eye of God is single and He allows only light through it (Luke 11:34-36). The eye of man is by nature evil and so also is full of darkness. This incapacity and ruination disallow man from the same moral judgment as God. With God is no variableness nor shadow of turning (James 1:17). God sees everything in an untainted, single eyed, enlightened manner. He sees everything past, present, and future and with complete moral clarity, unfettered by sin.
As right and good punishment for sin, God cursed the earth that He created. It would no longer be the same until a later date when God would reverse all of this through Jesus Christ. This curse includes the animals.
Cursed Ground and Its Consequences
When God cursed the ground in Genesis 3:17-19, animals received and continue receiving the effects of that. Animals experience the consequences of the Fall, the fact that God has cursed the ground. All animals as a result of the Fall will decay. They get diseases, age, and die in many various fashions. The whole animal kingdom changed. In an uncursed state, Isaiah 11:6 reports:
The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.
Furthermore, Isaiah 65:25 says:
The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock: and dust shall be the serpent’s meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the LORD.
Natural predators no longer predatory, the lion or the wolf not killing lambs any more. This new condition characterizes the earth with the curse lifted.
Creation Groaning
Romans 8:20-22 say that God’s creation groans under the impact of sin. An agnostic might say, “That’s not fair to the animals.” This is a moral judgment from a fallen creature on a holy God, who knows all things with perfect clarity or light, not impeded by darkness. God expresses the conditions for the animals in Jeremiah 12:4:
How long shall the land mourn, and the herbs of every field wither, for the wickedness of them that dwell therein? the beasts are consumed, and the birds; because they said, He, shall not see our last end.
John Gill comments: “Wickedness is the cause not only of the withering of the grass and herbs, but of the consumption of birds and beasts.” In this moral realm where God is Lawgiver and Judge, animals along with the rest of God’s creation suffer under the results of the entrance of sin. The purpose of God is pure in His inclusion of effects on everything. His grace still works in a manner that it is not as bad as it could be. This is the mercy of God. However, God is just in His dealings and judging God is not the right moral reaction to Him.
The Morality of God
The morality of God is morality. His assessment is the right assessment. His judgment is just.
Another aspect of the judgment of God is that He knows all possible outcomes. He can even answer the question, “What’s the alternative?” He knows every alternative. The one God chooses in fitting with His nature.
God is pure good with zero variableness. He gives every good and perfect gift. Humans enter and interact with whatever earthly scene with very limited perspective and context. One could ask, “What is the greatest good in every situation?” People don’t know that. God knows what will benefit the most people and He judges evil in an untainted manner related to its past, present, and future. Whatever He allows or causes is the greatest good for the most people.
In a sin-cursed world, no one deserves life according to the morality of God, but even with that outcome of sin, God allows or causes the greatest possible good for the most people. He also knows when no one or even just a few in a particular culture will turn from their wicked ways and He spares those who deserve sparing in this lifetime. God spared Rahab in Jericho, indicating this truth.
Deserved Outcomes
A cycle of life and death resulted from the Fall of sin that impacts all of creation. Everyone and everything suffers because sin is very bad. Sin is deserving of the outcome it receives, even as God governs morality.
A future new heaven and new earth will starkly contrast with this present age of doom and destruction. Why? Sin is gone, so the results of sin are gone.
The same agnostics most often justify immorality in a multitude of ways. They expect God to wink at sin and then continue winking at it. This manifests their immoral nature. They have a different set of expectations than God and for God, skewed by their own depraved nature.
More to Come
The Moral Nature of God (Part 2)
Heaven and Earth Necessitate a Cause
God is holy. God is good. He is righteous. He is love and more. Moral attributes are the essence of God.
We know that the heavens and the earth have a beginning. Since they do, they must have a cause. The cause of the heavens and the earth — space, matter, time, and energy — must arise from an uncaused cause, or else an eternal regression of causes.
Infinite, Powerful, and Personal Creator
To cause the heavens and the earth necessarily requires an infinite and powerful creator. No natural cause could precede as the first cause of the natural world. It must, therefore, exist outside of the natural world.
The natural world also demands a personal creator or else the cause would be just another natural thing. Related to something that begins to exist, causation comprises agency. For something to come into existence at a particular moment, a personal agent chooses to bring it into being. Only a personal cause can make that decision.
Tracing Back the Moral Attributes in Man’s Nature
Mankind is part of what God caused and moral attributes in man’s nature trace back to God in their origination. People accept, recognize, or acknowledge the reality of morals. Men judge between good and evil. A worldwide recognition of moral law points to one that transcends human opinion.
If all that exists is matter, space, and time, like naturalism says, then there is no foundation for objective moral values. The one and only God, Who alone created the heavens and the earth, is a moral being. No standard for morality exists outside of a transcendent God, separate from His creation.
Objective Moral Values
When witnessing a crime such as robbery, the act is not deemed wrong solely based on personal feelings or societal consensus. Robbery is recognized as objectively wrong because it violates a moral standard that exists independently of individual perspectives. Theologian John Frame compares two potential sources for absolute moral authority: impersonal and personal.
According to Frame, if moral authority were to stem from an impersonal source, such as a universal law or fate, it raises questions about obligation. For example, if fate dictates certain outcomes, individuals may feel no inherent obligation to adhere to this impersonal law. In contrast, if moral authority is derived from a personal source — specifically God — then there exists a clear obligation to obey divine commands because God is viewed as a supremely wise and authoritative figure.
Moral Authority from God
Without God, morality would devolve into mere subjective preferences or cultural relativism. This leads to the conclusion that true moral obligations require a grounding in the character and will of a personal God who embodies these absolute standards.
Since moral standards start with God, men should look to God for theirs. This is God’s world. Everything operates according to the confines and scruples of His nature.
Moral authority proceeds from the personal God. This means a clear obligation to obey His words, sayings, and commandments. His will is the basis for which to judge and by which He judges everything.
The Fundamental Root of Division in the United States
United States History
In 1607, English settlers landed on the East Coast of America and formed the Jamestown colony. That began a colonial period until 1776 and a Declaration of Independence of the original thirteen colonies from England. They became states of the United States of America. After those states ratified the Constitution in 1788, they seated the first Congress in 1789. By December 15, 1791, three-fourths of the states had ratified the Bill of Rights.
Before states ever united under one Constitution and Bill of Rights, division began according to ideological positions termed, federalist and anti-federalist. The Federalists were a political party and supported a strong centralized government. On the other hand, another party, the Anti-Federalists argued against expanding national power and advocated individual liberties, states rights, and localized authority.
Before the ratification of the Constitution, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay debated federalism versus anti-federalism in the Federalist Papers, first published in New York newspapers between October 1787 and May 1788. Division along the lines of these two general positions continued in the early history of the United States. With the addition of other issues, like slavery, this division grew and then fomented into a Civil War.
Since the Civil War
The completion of the Civil War in 1865 did not end division in the United States. That continued. Some of the disunity founded by the early disparity between Federalists and Anti-Federalists persisted. Those seeds still germinate and rise in various iterations of the original ground of division.
The United States is no kingdom of Jesus Christ under the unifying power and discipline of the words of Christ. Its form of government cannot sustain oneness like that between God the Father and the Son expressed in John 17. The superstructure of this nation doesn’t portend toward biblical unity. Discord is baked in. The United States doesn’t possess the tools or instrumentation necessary to ward off significant division, even though United is its first name.
Paul taught Timothy to pray for rulers and those in authority so that the church can live peaceably (1 Timothy 2:1-3). Peaceably stands for a manifestation of unity. The government agrees not to imprison and kill believers for merely practicing scripture. It doesn’t mean the government supports the church or its positions, just allows it to operate freely.
Greater Division
Out of the soup of Federalism and Anti-Federalism comes the present and even greater division in the United States. It stems to a certain degree from the original division, but it grew in magnitude. The founders of the United States did not, maybe would or could not, put in the necessary preventatives against massive division in the country. They compromised at the beginning to hold everything together, which meant not providing the crucial deterrents for division that first turned into a Civil War and now we’re where we are.
A popular Democrat and media talking point is that Donald Trump is the number one cause of division in the United States. Their point argues that Trump operates in conflict with established political norms, which creates chaos and a very uncomfortable environment. People will describe this situation dividing families, making for an uncomfortable time at Thanksgiving and Christmas.
The Cause of the Division
Trump didn’t cause the division seen in the environment heading into election on November 5, 2024. Very often today people will call this clash a culture war. It already existed before Trump, but his rise reveals its existence. Trump embodies the division in the country, doesn’t cause it. It represents two completely diametrically opposed views of the world. Not everyone voting for Trump falls neatly into one of the two sides of this dispute. Some just like his policies better. The heatedness and underlying threat of war emanates from the fundamental root of the division.
The separation between the two major factions goes back a long ways, even preceding the time of the founding of the United States. It relates to epistemology, how that we know what we know. The printing and publication of scripture in people’s language took nations out of the dark ages. Arising from this was modern science and a return to the cultural mandate of Genesis 1:26-28, especially seen in Isaac Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. True science started on a good trajectory, but splintered finally for various reasons (important ones to understand) into modernism first in Europe and then on to the United States.
Modernism arose in the United States after the Civil War parallel with the industrial revolution. Instead of God and scripture as a starting point, modernism shifted to human reason, rationalism, or “evidence.” Premoderns began with a bias toward God, what Stephen Meyer calls the “God hypothesis.” They believed in a transcendent, which is objective, basis for truth, goodness, and beauty. Modernism came into major institutions, influenced their leaders, and changed the culture.
Further Explanation
The insufficiency and inadequacy or failure of modernism finally led to a total rejection of objective truth, goodness, and beauty. This transformed the culture. Pragmatism in churches led to compromise, capitulation, and then cooperation with the cultural changes in the United States. The right side of the two major factions does not necessarily embrace the reality or necessity of objective truth, but it understands the suicide of not living or acting like it exists.
Many if not most would ask, “Why Trump?” That requires a long answer that many won’t accept even if it is the right answer. The country is divided and taking Trump out of the equation will not change that. It comes from deep philosophical and even theological differences and an unwillingness at least for now with either side to accept the other. Some still won’t vote for Trump even though they also don’t accept the other side.
Over a year ago, I called this a “slow moving car crash.” The cars have about arrived now. We’re days away.
A True View of the World: Inside or Outside?
Anthony Kennedy and Casey
In the Supreme Court decision “Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania V. Robert P. Casey” in 1992, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in his opinion:
At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.
Is that statement by a Supreme Court justice true? Can someone define his own concept of existence, of meaning? Everyone defines his own meaning? I say “no” to that, but it relates to how anyone obtains an accurate understanding of the world.
Anthony Kennedy wrote that personal preference, which originates from a person’s feelings or opinions, arising from the inside and not the outside, would override objective meaning. Therefore, objective truth contradicted freedom and essentially then America itself. Something is true as long as it corresponds to someone’s desires.
Authenticity and Relativism
Even more so, when truth is your truth, then it’s also authentic. Count that for goodness and beauty too. Stephen Presser writes about Kennedy’s line:
It undoubtedly owes a lot to Freudian psychology, to Rousseau’s notion that civilization places us in chains, and, most of all, to the concept usually associated with Abraham Maslow, “self-actualization.” The core of this philosophy seems to be that each of us has an authentic “self,” and the goal of life ought to be to maximize individual opportunities to express and develop it.
I read someone, who called the statement, “the epitome of relativistic thought.” Obviously, when applied to abortion, to which the Casey law was written, a baby is anything the person feels it to be, who wants the abortion. It is an invader of the mother or just a clump of cells or cancer.
Outside, Not the Inside
Before the 19th century in the United States, almost everyone saw truth as received from the outside, not the inside. God was separate from His creation. Truth, goodness, and beauty, which came from Him, outside of His creation, were transcendent. Hence, people called them the transcendentals.
On the outside was evidence. Revelation is the declaration of God. This is premodernism. Everything starts with God. But even modernism said evidence on the outside was necessary. As Ben Shapiro very often says, “Facts don’t care about your feelings.” Man’s observation falls below revelation though. Modernism assumed that absolutes existed, but their testing came through man’s reasoning.
Predmodern, Modern, Romanticism, Postmodern
Between Christ and the 19th century, this very long period is premodern. Sure, 1500 to 1800 is an early modern period. I don’t want to get into when modernism started. It depends on how you define it. Theological modernism started in the 19th century. That’s the time of the worldview shift reflected also in the Romantic Movement of the 19th century.
Modernism connected truth to man’s experience, his observation. Romanticism moved modernism all the way to the inside, where truth, goodness, and beauty were not longer transcendent, but completely immanent. New religions exploded in the 19th century. Truth lost objectivity. People’s opinion, their feelings, increasingly become more important to decide truth, goodness, and beauty. The movement toward truth is your truth is postmodernism.
God’s Word is the final arbiter of truth, but it isn’t the only one. 1 Timothy 3:15 calls the church the pillar and ground for the truth. Still, however, that’s outside of your opinion, your thinking, and your feelings.
Even modernism depends on man’s thinking or reasoning. This continues to influence even conservatism in the world. Modernists confirm God’s revelation to man’s thinking, what one could call, rationalism. Scripture stands above man’s reasoning, what Peter calls the pure mother’s milk (1 Pet 2:2). It circumvents man’s observation and reasoning, coming directly from God, that is, from the outside. What it says is true, good, and beautiful.
Textual Criticism Related to the Bible Bows to Modernity
Christianity is old. There is no new and improved version of it. It is what it started to be. Changing it isn’t a good thing. Let me expand.
Modern and Modernity
Right now as I implement the term “modern” I am using it in the way it is in the word “modernity” or “modernism.” I think modernism is a perversion of something good that occurred, which is the advancement proceeding from the printing and vastly greater distribution of the Bible after 1440. It fulfilled a cultural mandate lost with the domination of Roman Catholicism, “subdue and have dominion.” Feudalism went by the wayside. Quality of life improved.
In Judges in the Old Testament, Israel turned away from God, which resulted in bad consequences both indirect and direct from God. Israel cried out to God. God delivered and Israel then prospered again. Prosperity led back to turning away again, the bad consequences, and the cycle begins again.
The prosperity brought by the printing, distribution, and reading of the Bible brought the modern life. With all the massive new amounts of published material to read, people saw themselves as smarter than they were. They thought they could take that to God, the church, worship, and to the Bible. In essence, “let’s take our superior knowledge and apply it now to the Bible.”
Evidentialism
Modernism included evidentialism. Something isn’t true without exposure to man’s reason and evidence. No, the Bible stands on its own. It is self-evident truth, higher than reason and evidence, at the same time not contradicting reason or evidence.
Modern textual criticism arose out of modernism. The prosperity from the fulfillment of the cultural mandate proceeding from publication and distribution of scripture brought this proud intellectualism. Like in the days of the Judges, it isn’t even true. It isn’t better.
People have cell phones today, but who right now thinks that we are superior to when men believed the transcendentals? Objective truth, objective goodness, and objective beauty? We have a 60 inch television with a thousand channels, but we lost the greater transcendence. Modernists put the Bible under their scrutiny, undermining its objective nature.
Sincere Milk
The Apostle Peter called the Word of God “the sincere milk,” which is “the pure mother’s milk.” Like James wrote and identical to God, the Word of God is pure with neither “variableness, neither shadow of turning” (James 1:17). This is why true believers of the gospel message of scripture are begotten “with the word of truth” (James 1:18). God inspired His Words and He preserves His Words using His means, His churches.
Modernists came to the Bible to improve it with their humanistic theories. They would say, textual variants prove its corruption. They would restore it to near purity using modernistic means of the modern academy.
The text of true churches, they believed “God . . . by his singular care and providence, kept pure in all ages.” They received that text. The modernist academy came along saying, that text is not the oldest, so not the best. The better text is shorter for ideological reasons. Therefore, everyone has a basis only for relative and proportional confidence, not absolute certainty in the Words of God. Scripture became subject to modern intellectual tinkering.
Proud Intellectualism
Even in an evidential way, the critical text, a product of critical theories, is not superior. It allured the proud intellect of modern academics. It shifted scripture into the laboratory of the university and outside of the God-ordained institution of preservation.
Textual critics cherry pick words and phrases, attacking the text received by the churches, saying, this is found in only one late manuscript. Meanwhile, 99% of their text comes from two manuscripts. A hundred lines of text have no manuscript evidence. They admit themselves educated guessing. They elevate the date of extant manuscripts above all criteria, including scriptural presuppositions.
Call to Consider Former Things
I ask that we reconsider the spoiled or poison fruit of modernity, arising from a corruption of the prosperity of the printing and wide distribution of the Bible. God through Isaiah in 41:21-22 says:
21 Produce your cause, saith the Lord; bring forth your strong reasons, saith the King of Jacob. 22 Let them bring them forth, and shew us what shall happen: let them shew the former things, what they be, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare us things for to come.
“Former things” relate to the present and to the future, “the latter end of them.” To understand the present and the future, we need to look to the past. When did we go off the rails into modernism and now postmodernism? I call on churches to turn back the clock to former things in a former time. See the cycle of the Judges, repent and cry out to God. Like James wrote later in chapter one (verse 21):
Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.
Perverting Beauty Perverting Truth and Perverting Truth Perverting Beauty
Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four
God and Beauty
God is one. All truth, goodness, and beauty proceed from God. Since God is one, His truth, goodness, and beauty are one. You can’t take away from one of these three without taking away from the other two. Each of those relate to God, so their perversion perverts an understanding of God, creates a false god or false gods, and/or takes glory from the one and true God.
God is beautiful and beauty itself also issues from Him. He defines beauty both in His essence, in His acts, and in His creation. Man made in God’s image, functioning according to His likeness, produces or generates beauty and beautiful works. Of course, sinful man operating in his flesh does not do that; only his performing according to the image of God. This requires regeneration. After conversion, he can, and should generate only beauty and beautiful works, but still must submit to God to do so.
The production of beauty and beautiful works means the skillful formation or formulation of what reflects God’s nature and achievement. One judges the formation or formulation according to standards aligned with revealed truth about God and what He does. A believer can know beauty. He can know he forms or formulates it. He can know when someone else does. How does he know? He knows based on the testimony and application of God’s Word.
How Do You Know Beauty?
Scripture states in a sufficient manner truth, goodness, and beauty. A believer then applies these to the world. God enables believers to do that. I call this truth, goodness, and beauty in the real world. Believers don’t just know these three in the Bible. They know them also in the real world.
God’s Word says a truth such as “flee idolatry,” “flee fornication,” or “let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth.” It assumes that you will understand the application of that truth in the real world. You can’t say that you didn’t know that. You can also understand and apply, “think on whatsoever things are lovely” or “worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness.”
When Proverbs 7:10 says that a young man met a woman “with the attire of a harlot,” the passage doesn’t explain the attire of a harlot. It assumes you know already. People are still responsible for things that God does not explain. Lack of explanation does not permit dressing like a harlot.
Like many other applications of the Bible, music and art require honesty and setting aside lust or self-will. God gives the necessary capacity for judgment. As is so often the case, the problem isn’t with intelligence, but volition.
Departure from Beauty
The Standard for Beauty
Does someone leave the truth when he departs from beauty? Or does a departure from beauty stand alone, totally isolated, disconnected from the truth? Does leaving beauty start with a flight from the truth?
The view that beauty was neither true nor false, that it made no pronouncements about the world, that it just reflected the mind or feelings of an artist was a completely novel view when it appeared with the origins of modernism in the late 18th to the early to mid 19th century. Truth was true in itself, goodness, good in itself, and beauty, beautiful in itself, separate from the judgment of any man. All of this came from God. If someone can criticize beauty, it could only be because there is some objective standard outside of the object by which to judge it.
Absolute beauty requires principles by which to judge them. If not, then beauty is meaningless. Beauty must be beautiful in itself, not from a mind or feelings, Its judgment comes from external criteria. The standard of beauty transcends the beautiful thing. For something beautiful to exist, something not beautiful also must exist.
Kant and Mill and Beauty
Immanuel Kant in his 1790, Critique of Judgment, introduced the concept of subjective beauty, beauty in the eye of the beholder. He said concerning beauty, that it was
a judgment of taste . . . not a cognitive judgment and so it is not a logical judgment but an aesthetic one, by which we mean a judgment whose determining basis cannot be other than subjective.
John Stuart Mill, English philosopher, later in the 19th century popularized the notion that art was nothing more than the intrinsic personal feelings of an artist. Beauty was just an expression of subjective emotion. An assertion of a thing as beautiful described the state of mind of the one asserting. Beauty did reflect reality, but now only a person’s perception of reality.
You can see how that man dethrones God when he decides what is beautiful. Man becomes final arbiter of beauty. Value becomes subjective based on his thinking or feelings.
Beauty Doesn’t Care About Your Feelings
God and Science
Some might say subjective beauty is a matter of freedom. You can say what you like or don’t like. You’ve heard the phraseology, especially made popular by Ben Shapiro, “facts don’t care about your feelings.” How does that relate to beauty?
Isaac Newton, believer in God, and others like him stand as the foundation of scientific progress of the last three hundred years, which started with God as the standard. God’s Word inspired science. It did not disregard man’s senses. In accordance with God’s Word, Newton and his colleagues recognized the place scripture gave to man’s reason, his senses, and evidence. This was different than elevating man’s thinking and his feelings to the only source of truth. They must function in subjection to God within His world.
Empiricism: Senses as the Source for Beauty First and then Science Second
Kant and Mill established a secular approach to beauty. They elevated man’s senses as the sole source for beauty. Empirical beauty. Not long after, empirical methods became the sole source for truth, a philosophy called empiricism. A secular approach to knowledge and truth followed a secular approach to beauty. Sensory experience formed the basis for both and it started with beauty.
Very often today, Christians say that truth is objective with the Bible as final authority, but they judge beauty with their feelings as the standard. They might confuse the feelings with a mystical experience from God or the moving of the Holy Spirit. Long ago many churches ejected to various degrees from objective beauty. Today we see many of those churches capitulating in objective truth and goodness. This follows along the pattern of the first effect of empiricism on the arts with Kant and Mills and the second with science.
View of Beauty Shapes View of God
When someone starts with God on beauty, he will have the right view of beauty. He will produce, support, and endorse only the beautiful. However, the opposite is also true. Someone’s view of beauty shapes his view of God. He might have God in his doctrinal statement, but his imagination of God will accord with his depiction of beauty. The view of beauty and the view of God will both match.
Easily the world deceives on beauty to pervert the imagination of God. The non-beautiful or what is ugly will draw someone away from the true God. At the same time, he thinks he has or sees God. The two views cannot coexist.
Two people might say they are Christians. They should be similar, shaped by the transcendent view of truth, goodness, and beauty. Their standard is the same.
If two professing Christians’ thinking on beauty is different, their Christianity will seem like two different religions. They are. One has the true God. Very often, depending on the extent, the other does not. He has God on his doctrinal statement, but he imagines a different God, not in fitting with the God of the Bible. What I’m explaining occurs today by far more than it ever has in my lifetime.
So Which Is It, Truth or Beauty? Authenticity
One can say that truth is beautiful and beauty is truthful. When you look at beauty, actual beauty, it is true. It is real. If it is not beauty, it is not true or is in error.
If it is beauty, it is not just someone’s imagination or feelings. Very often today, when it is feelings, people call that authentic. They say it’s authentic, because from the perspective of the performer, it is how he feels. However, it may not and probably does not represent the truth, which mean it is not authentic.
I think I can say the following is ironic. Authenticity isn’t authentic anymore. Authenticity is now a lie.
In the past, authenticity meant true. It wasn’t leather. Instead, it was naugahyde. It wasn’t a diamond, but it was cubic zirconia. If it is not beautiful according to the nature of God, then it is not authentic. In this way, it is not true.
If the lie starts with beauty, treating the non-beautiful as beautiful, that spreads to the judgement of truth. This is where our world is today. You can’t say something is true, but that started with eliminating objective beauty. Today your truth can be your truth, but for a longer time, your beauty is your beauty.
The Prime Directive Isn’t a Biblical Directive
The Star Trek series began in 1966, when I was four years old. In my home in a small town in Indiana, I grew up watching our black and white tube television set. I became a “trekkie” with Captain Kirk, Spock, Scottie, and McCoy. If someone held up his hand with only his middle fingers separated, I knew that meant, “Live long and prosper.” It isn’t unusual in this country. Many watch and read fantasy and science fiction.
I’m not endorsing Star Trek or even the genre of science fiction. I lay down a full disclaimer. I would argue for disinterest as the superior position.
Star Trek shows a naturalistic world view. It imagines that everything came about by accident and evolved, producing whole other galaxies full of living creatures and intelligence. Having progressed in technology to the extent that people can travel at light speed to get to those galaxies, the science fiction of Star Trek says this is how good things should be. None of this mirrors a Christian worldview, which is the only true one.
Christianity, of course, reveals the best possible outcome for people. God wants people to have it and it could not be better.
In the Star Trek imagination, the future sees very evolved, sophisticated people visit less evolved ones. They study them like scientists, almost like humans watching an ant farm. The speculation is that this is bound to happen. All these different creatures evolved in their separate locations.
When the main Star Trek characters visit, they cannot interfere with development or evolution. Some of you reading know the law. They call it the “prime directive,” which “prohibits Starfleet personnel and spacecraft from interfering in the normal development of any society, and mandates that any Starfleet vessel or crew member is expendable to prevent violation of this rule.”
While traveling, my wife and I used a laundromat (also called a launderette some places). At one location, while I went to get cash for change, she started into evangelism with a woman, who was a secular humanist. I didn’t hear the first half of the conversation, but the woman was arguing against Christianity interfering with indigenous people. Why should Christians see their point of view superior to tribes with subsistence living and their accompanying religions?
I had walked in to hear the woman say this to my wife. I smiled to myself, because it sounded like the prime directive. Just leave people alone. Just because they’re different doesn’t mean they’re inferior. I also recognize this as multi-culturalism. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says:
While the term has come to encompass a variety of normative claims and goals, it is fair to say that proponents of multiculturalism find common ground in rejecting the ideal of the “melting pot” in which members of minority groups are expected to assimilate into the dominant culture. Instead, proponents of multiculturalism endorse an ideal in which members of minority groups can maintain their distinctive collective identities and practices.
The prime directive says “don’t assimilate” the minority culture. This philosophy further associates with “cultural relativism.” Foundational to this thinking is the absence of objective truth, goodness, and beauty. With cultural relativism, one people cannot say that they are better than some other people in their beliefs, practices, and aesthetics.
If there is objective truth, goodness, and beauty, which there is, you help a culture when you intervene with the truth, goodness, and beauty. There is one God, no other. He is also the judge of the world. Every person, whatever culture he’s in, will face the same God.
The Bible teaches the polar opposite of the prime directive. Something is better than something else. One culture is superior to another.
Multiculturalism, the prime directive, or cultural relativism reject the truth. Satan wants men going down the broad way unaware that it sends them to eternal death. They think they’re fine, because no one can say with certainty what the truth is.
Cultures are different dependent upon their relationship to the truth. The closer to the truth, the better they are. If they aren’t following the truth, someone can help them by preaching the truth to them. God requires the violation of the prime directive.
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