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The death of absolute truth

10/29/2019

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Silly me. Since my conversion to Christ in 2000, I’ve been obsessed with the modern world’s refusal to even acknowledge God – let alone to repent and trust in Him for eternal life. I’ve thought of it as a special kind of stubbornness reserved exclusively for Him, a Satan-driven love of sin that blinds the majority of people to the truth about where we came from, what we’re doing here and where we’re going.
 
“If we can only get these people to consider Christ,” I’ve thought time and time again, “then the Holy Spirit can point them once and for all to God and His word. Absolute truth will win!”
 
Now I’m wondering how I could have been so blind to the flaw in this strategy: Because in today’s world, absolute truth no longer exists.  
 
What woke me up was reviewing a Family Policy Institute of Washington video in which a short white guy interviewed students on the campus of the University of Washington.
 
To set the stage, he asked them about the current debate over the accessing bathrooms and locker rooms based on “gender identity” and “gender expression.”

Their comments were eye-opening. “Bathrooms should be gender neutral,” said one, and the others agreed, using frighteningly similar language.
 
The interviewer then turned it up a notch.

“What would you say,” he asked each student, “if I told you I was Chinese?”
 
The consensus? “Good for you.”
 
And so on.
 
“How about if I told you I was seven years old?” the interviewer said.
 
“If you feel seven at heart,” replied an oh-so-tolerant co-ed, “so be it.”
 
The interviewer was clearly looking for something that would cause someone to say “No, that’s not true!” He tried this, noting elsewhere that he is actually 5’9”: “If I said I was 6’5”, what would you say?”
 
“If you truly believe it,” replied one student, “that’s fine.”
 
“It’s not my place to say someone is wrong,” said another.
 
And there you have it. Faced with an obvious lie, these college students are unwilling -- perhaps unable -- to expose it. Whatever you say, buddy; who am I to tell you you’re wrong? It doesn’t hurt me if you want to think that.
 
It’s true that there are other contemporary influences shaping people’s thinking these days – most notably, the suppression of competing ideas in the public square and, increasingly, even in private conversation. Perhaps that’s why the world has been so quick to embrace false narratives on everything from Marxism to climate change to gender liberation – all while celebrating tolerance as the ultimate good.
 
But at the heart of such Orwellian “goodthink” is the persistent rejection of absolute truth.
 
And if you reject absolute truth, you are by definition rejecting the One who is “the way, the truth, and the life.”
 
I guess our only hope, if the Lord tarries, is that something will cause a future generation to cry out to Him in repentance and faith. After all, it happened repeatedly with the children of Israel in the days of the judges, when everyone “did what was right in his own eyes.”  And the Lord was faithful to forgive them, and deliver them from whatever evil threatened to destroy them.
 
Maybe it’s not too late for us.
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Got questions? Get the right answers right here.

10/23/2019

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It was in the summer of 2001 that a very godly woman brought me to a life-changing realization about truth, and where to find it.
 
Here’s the scoop.
 
I’d joined the choir in the church I was attending in those days. The director put me in the tenor section with the guys; rightfully so, since I have a range of about five notes and they’re all below middle C.
 
Usually, we stuck to fellowshipping in our own sections. But one evening during practice, I somehow found myself chatting with our star soprano, a beautiful little redhead named Gail. Still a baby Christian in those days, I asked her a silly question or two or three about the faith. Can’t remember what those queries were, but she suggested we have coffee together to discuss them.
 
I will never forget sitting in a booth in Baker’s Square with this woman, lobbing very tough questions at her. At least I thought they were tough, perhaps even unanswerable.  
 
But Gail didn’t hesitate. She responded to every query by flipping to a new section in her Bible, reading me a verse or two, explaining it when it wasn’t quite obvious to a novice, and showing me additional passages whenever necessary.
 
I was blown away. Using only her Bible, she had answered all the questions I’d brought to the table that morning. We met several more times in the weeks that followed. Each time I brought her a slew of challenging new questions. And each time, she found the answer to every last one in the pages of her Bible.
 
Not that every answer incorporated the specific details that had prompted my questions, or outlined a simple course of action. For instance, I asked Gail if I should continue seeing atheist friends who were mocking my newfound faith. She showed me what the Bible said about loving our enemies, sharing the gospel and shining our lights for God’s glory. She also showed me its warnings about, for instance, what bad company can do to good habits and how we are to keep ourselves unspotted from the world.
 
So unlike the Magic 8 Balls of our childhoods, the Bible’s response isn’t always a simple “yes” or “no.” But as this godly woman demonstrated for me in those early days of my walk with Jesus, there’s not an issue in our lives that the Bible doesn’t address for anyone with ears to hear and a heart to obey.
 
I lost touch with Gail years ago. But I look forward to seeing her again one happy day in heaven, and to thanking her for her life-changing investment in me. The Lord used her to open my eyes to His word. And I will be forever grateful. 
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Hear the hisssss?

10/15/2019

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Encounter any interesting euphemisms lately? There certainly are plenty of them around these days. 

There's the "certified pre-owned" car that's really simply used.

Or the "tipsy" fellow who caused such a scene at the wedding last week, who was just plain drunk.

Or the "physical" linebacker who's actually a dirty player. 

But euphemisms like these are relatively innocent compared to some of the whoppers we're exposed to today -- the ones that are delivered by wolves in sheep's clothing. 

Most notably, "self-deliverance." Have you heard that term yet? 

It means "suicide." 

It means "killing yourself." 

It means deciding that your life might become an unbearable burden to someone else -- or quite possibly to yourself.
 
It means "taking the easy way out."  

It is making the supreme sacrifice to the gods of comfort and convenience -- the same gods that have claimed the lives of tens of millions of babies in American wombs over the the last four blood-spattered decades. 

I've read about "self-deliverence" here and there and have finally taken the time to look it up. 

Yup, there it is, presented as an act of courage, of selflessness, of supreme self-sacrifice. 

Satan has apparently been working overtime since the first strains of Zionism were heard in the 19th century, when he began inventing false religions to satisfy every taste. He has stepped it up since the restoration of Israel in 1948. And now that the final pieces of biblical prophecy are falling into place -- those presented in Ezekiel 38, for instance -- he has gone hog wild with deceptions that would take any marketer's breath away. 

Just consider his track record.

He repositioned "infanticide" as "choice."

He transformed "selfishness" into "self-actualization." 

He changed "greed" into "financial responsibility."

And now he is succeeding in repositioning "suicide" as courageous and sacrificial "self-deliverance," something that we do as the ultimate expression of love for family, country, and culture. 

He has even raised up generations of "professionals" to make it easy on everyone concerned, complete with well-funded associations and beautifully designed web sites to talk our legislators into legalizing it, and to talk us into taking this route ourselves when the time comes. 

God help us. 
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Are you trusting in the real Jesus?

10/8/2019

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​Several years ago, I received a starchy email from an acquaintance whose God is all love and nothing else. She refused to believe that He’d ever judge anyone for “just being human,” and she accused me of blasphemy for implying that He would.
 
“He understands why we do the things we do,” she wrote. That much is true. But then she added, “He is love. That means He loves everyone and we are all going to heaven.”
 
I replied with the truth: Of course He is love, I said. But He is also perfectly holy, just, merciful, omniscient, and omnipotent; He is the way, the truth and the life; He is the good shepherd; He is the resurrection and the life; He is infinitely more than even a million words could convey.

Was she convinced? Beats me -- I never heard back from her. Guess we're no longer acquaintances.
 
But hold on, Foth-Regner. What difference does it make if she wants to limit her understanding of Him to a single word?
 
Just this: In the Bible, God has told us all we need to know about Himself. Yet many people – including this woman, apparently – are singularly disinterested in Him.
 
What does that say about her love for Him? And what impact will it have on her for all eternity?
 
Fact is, the Bible tells us repeatedly what's required of us: We must repent of what the Lord says is sin, and trust in Him to have paid the penalty for that sin on the cross.

Is that really asking so much? Apparently so, for some people. 
 
I wonder what will happen to this woman if she continues to reject this truth, and instead clings to her “God is nothing more than love” theology?
 
When she stands before Him in judgment, will He say “Well done, good and faithful servant”? (Matthew 25:21)
 
Or will she hear “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness”? (Matthew 7:23)
 
If the latter, will she argue with Him? Will she say, as she said to me, “I’ve been a good person, I never hurt anyone”? Or will she finally be forced to acknowledge that our good works are not what gets us into heaven, and that His standards are higher than our own?
 
I’m glad I’m not the judge. After all, the Lord knows our hearts better than we do; it could be that hers is more submitted to Him than anyone else’s, and that she’s merely the blameless victim of some faulty instruction. 
 
But her email really made me think about how important it is that we seek and trust the real Jesus – not some idol that we have created in our own imaginations, or that some self-proclaimed prophet has imagined for us.
 
He’s the only One who can save us. Why take a chance on trusting in anyone, or anything, else? 
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What's in your closet?

10/1/2019

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Have you taken a close look at Revelation 18 lately? This key chapter from the last book of the Bible talks about the sorrow of the world’s kings and merchants who have not become children of God through repentance and trust in Christ. Specifically, it describes how they mourn the destruction of Babylon the great, symbol of all the world’s wealth, greed and pleasure.
 
“The kings of the earth who committed fornication with her and lived luxuriously with her will weep and lament for her … And the merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her, for no one buys their merchandise anymore: merchandise of gold and silver, precious stones and pearls, fine linen and purple, silk and scarlet … and bodies and souls men.” (Revelation 18:9a, 11-12a, 13b)
 
Does this make you even a little uncomfortable?
 
It does me. I certainly have more than my share of clothing stuffed in an eight-foot closet; in fact, in winter, it’s so jammed with heavy duds that it’s hard to get at anything. But my closet is nothing like the walk-in versions I admire in even low-end dwellings featured on HGTV. And I know a few women who have dedicated entire rooms to their wardrobes.
 
I hadn’t really thought about this until last night, when, trying to fall asleep, I took a virtual tour of the house I grew up in.
 
It was a magical house, an old brick Victorian with graceful rooms, lovely natural woodwork, elaborate newel posts, a mysterious basement, leaded-glass pocket doors, built-in cabinets and lots of closets – albeit very small closets, by today’s standards.
 
I pictured my mother’s. It was perhaps six feet wide. It housed all her cold- and warm-weather clothing very comfortably, leaving plenty of room for hiding Christmas presents every December.
 
My dad’s closet contained his entire collection of suits. Even though he was a civil engineer with his own company, and even though men of the ‘50s and ‘60s wore suits everywhere, even on vacation, he must not have had many; the closet was only about four feet wide.
 
The closets in my bedroom and my sisters’ featured pull-out poles, each accommodating no more than four feet of hangers.
 
Curious, I revisited the closets in various apartments I rented over the years. They weren’t much larger, although they became increasingly jammed. Somewhere along the line I picked up a used dresser to expand my storage possibilities.
 
Could an American adult survive with so little closet space today? I doubt it.

So what has happened to us over the last half century?
 
Perhaps the root of the problem is our nationwide abandonment of the Bible and its unmatched wisdom, thanks at least in part to the ‘60s-era destruction caused by Madalyn Murray O’Hair and her fellow atheists.
 
Consider how different our closets might look today if we’d only ignored Madalyn and instead listened to Jesus’ advice in Matthew 6:28-33:
 
“So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.  Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
 
“Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.”
 
Of course, it’s not just our wardrobes that would be entirely different if we Americans had clung to our Bibles instead of giving the thumbs up to rebels like Madalyn. But they’re certainly a good indicator of where we are as a nation, spiritually speaking.
 
They may also be a pretty good predictor of the devastation many Americans will experience, perhaps fairly soon. After all, one of these days, all the material things we so prize will vanish, along with the impressive closets that house them.
 
It could happen on the day that the angel proclaims, “Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and has become a dwelling place of demons, a prison for every foul spirit, and a cage for every unclean and hated bird!” (Revelation 18:2)
 
If you’re not looking forward to that day, I hope you’ll take a few moments to consider how you might avoid it -- and instead assure yourself of joy forevermore.  
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    Kitty
    Foth-Regner

    I'm a follower of Jesus Christ, a freelance copywriter, a nursing-home volunteer, and the author of books both in-process and published -- including Heaven Without Her. 

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