I Don’t Have to Believe a Lie

(by Jim Hughes, 2008-08-31)

I am a Christian who believes the truth that God presents in the Bible. This means that I don’t have to believe a lie. I don’t have to lie to myself about the nature of reality and I don’t have to lie to others so that I can be accepted as politically correct, among the popular crowd, or in tune with what is ‘hot’.

I don’t have to believe in cosmogenic myths like a super-dense singularity popping into existence by chance from a wrinkle in nothing. I don’t have to concoct theories that try to explain how, when that ‘infinitely’ dense point of energy-matter exploded in a big bang, it re-coalesced into galaxies, stars, and solar systems with radial motion. Rather I can state without embarasment, that the intelligent and personal God created all of physical reality—time, space, energy, matter, and life—instantaneously over a period of six days.

I don’t have to accept just-so stories as truth and have faith that non-living crystals generated living proto-cells, that self-organizing biological systems overcame entropy, or that chance formed the meta-information in DNA, regulating the application of genetic information. I don’t have to accept the impossibility that mutations are the source of increasingly complex species and that man is merely the sum of his biological parts—a ‘mechanical’ entity descended from a lemur-like creature. I can unreservedly declare the truth that God created separate animal kinds and that man is a unique creation.

I don’t have to swallow social science fabrications. I don’t have to pretend that man is innately good; rather I know that the intent of his heart is only evil all the time. I don’t need to treat men and women as identical in all aspects of their makeup—physically, psychologically and intellectually. I don’t have to park my brain defending an ‘equality’ that insists that women should play on the men’s PGA circuit, defend my country on the battlefield, or fight fires and rescue 90 Kgm men. I can rejoice that God created man in his image—Adam and Eve, to complement one-another in marriage, not ‘Adam’ and ‘Steve’ to cohabit in some form of ‘alternate lifestyle’. I don’t have to wallow in foolish ideas that claim there are more than two genders, that single-parent families are healthy, or that it is natural for Heather to have two mommies.

I don’t have to replace reality with fiction. I don’t have to bow before the Gaia hypothesis that makes the biosphere and the physical components of the Earth (atmosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere) into a ‘living’ organism. I don’t have to believe that mankind is a viral-blight even though, ironically, he is supposedly the by-product of evolutionary processes. I don’t have to fall for the fantasy of the Zero Population Growth fanatics. Rather, I can rejoice in God’s declaration that mankind is the pinnacle of creation—who is to be fruitful and multiply, for children are a blessing from the Lord.

I don’t need to listen to the scaremongering of ‘scientific’ quacks. I don’t have to join the environmentalist movement, which in the guise of protecting the environment for polar bears is seeking to impose socialistic controls and income redistribution through carbon taxes and reduced carbon-footprints. I trust that God knew what he was doing when he gave us a bounty of buried resources and intelligence to use them wisely as stewards of his creation.

I don’t have to believe religious fables – I don’t need to claim that truth is relative and that the quest for truth is more important than believing absolute truth. I can deny that all religions are equally good (or bad, as some professed atheists suggest) and that they all lead to God. I don’t have to pretend that Islam is a religion of peace or that Mohammed is God’s prophet. Instead I can declare, without equivocation, that detente with Iran, treating Al-Qaeda terrorists with the rights of our citizens, or introducing Sharia law will not bring world peace. I can also state, unashamedly, that Jesus is the Prince of Peace and that there is “salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”

I don’t have to follow the ravings of the lustful crowd. I don’t have to declare pornographic blasphemy to be art, that Morgantaller has helped women obtain freedom and dignity and deserves a medal, that abortion is a woman’s right, and that ‘free-love’ and ‘trial marriages’ build stronger families and a healthy society. I can, instead, call these actions by their real name—sin—and proclaim that all men have sinned and need to repent before God.

I don’t have to be bewitched by the belief that more government regulations and funding will solve society’s ills. I don’t need to accept the view that increasing the taxes of the rich or productive will make our economy more competitive. I don’t have to agree that youths commit murder, on an almost weekly basis, because we don’t have better gun control laws and don’t spend enough on publicly-funded education. Instead, I can unashamedly say that prohibiting teachers from punishing students has spoiled our children.

I don’t have to honour the concept that governments should provide cradle-to-grave security and regulate out of existence all risks and protect us from our own stupidity and profligacy. I can thank God that he created man as a morally and personally responsible creature and gave him direction in his Word—Old and New Testaments—how to regulate all social interactions.

What a relief! I don’t have to believe wilfully foolish lies!