OK, this is going to be a real short blog on a phrase you hear church people say a lot:
THE BIBLE IS THE ANSWER!
That’s what I learned when I went to church. I learned it in Babble college. You hear church people say it all the time. BUT DOES ANYBODY KNOW WHAT THEY MEAN WHEN THEY SAY THAT? I fear not! But I’m sure everybody has an idea of what it COULD mean, that is, what their minister told them it means. But how many churchians know what it means from REAL LIFE EXPERIENCE? I’m not talking about how they FEEL about the Bible, or how the fond WORDS of the Bible make them FEEL. No. I’m talking about WHAT DOES THAT PHRASE MEAN IN REAL LIFE TERMS? OK, here’s MY OPINION on that:
First thing you have to realize is that ALL HUMAN GOVERNMENTS ARE CORRUPT. Some are more corrupt than others. But they’re ALL corrupt. The reason is because THE DEVIL CONTROLS THEM. Don’t ask me to explain that in this blog! OK, even if the devil doesn’t control them, PEOPLE DO. And PEOPLE ‘have issues’. In other words, people do WHATEVER THEY CAN GET AWAY WITH when they sit in the seat of POWER. And the more people like that that occupy the government OFFICES, the more they can ‘get away with’. By ‘get away with’, I mean DO WRONG with their power. Now, they themselves may be so accustomed to DOING WRONG with their powers, that they don’t see it as DOING WRONG. Whatever! Fact is, POWER BREEDS WRONG-DOING. And because GOVERNMENT = ORGANIZED POWER (“organized violence” – Bastiat), you can EXPECT government to be ABUSIVE. Not that we WANT government to be abusive, and not that we DESIGNED government to be abusive, but YOU CAN EXPECT IT (at least eventually).
You may wonder what exactly makes government abusive? THE PEOPLE, that’s WHAT! Think about it. You can take ANY government system, even the most oppressive (like military dictatorships), and if ALL the people FOLLOW MORALS, then you can pretty much guarantee that MOST of the operations of the government will NOT be oppressive, abusive, etc. But when you have people wielding the powers of government from a MORALLY CORRUPT worldview, you have TROUBLE with a “Capital T”!
So, we see that governments are INHERENTLY given to abuse and wrong-doing. And we see that the AGENTS of abuse and wrong-doing are THE PEOPLE working as the government. And the reason the people do wrong and abuse power is because they LACK MORALS. And the greater the moral depravity (that’s a theological term), the more abuse and wrong-doing you get out of them. Mind you, do not hurt their feelings, because if you do, they’ll come down on you like a ton of bricks (even if you don’t deserve it)! But why? Because they CAN!
Now, if you’ve read the Bible, especially the Old Testament, you can acknowledge there are many ‘stories’ of POWER STRUGGLES between people and groups of people (such as families, tribes and nations). There’s a lot of DIVINE COMMENTARY in the Prophets on this CORRUPTION and these POWER STRUGGLES. In fact, you find a lot of commentary and commandments in the New Testament about it too. When you analyze the ‘stories’ and sayings in the Bible about the events and persons involved in the CORRUPTION, you find that EVERYTHING ANYBODY COULD COOK-UP IN TERMS OF CORRUPTION AND ABUSE IS RIGHT THERE IN THE BIBLE. You also find THE ANSWERS TO THE CORRUPTION in the Bible. Sometimes it comes in the form of PROMISES which God made or makes to people or groups of people. Other times it comes in the form of COMMENTARY on the events and persons doing the WRONGS (aka: SIN, TRANSGRESSION, INIQUITY, etc.).
So here’s my proposition to you about the Bible:
THE BIBLE IS THE ANSWER!
In other words, THE BIBLE IS THE ANSWER TO TODAY’S POLITICAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS, AS WELL AS PEOPLE’S LIFE-PROBLEMS.
The reason?
MORALITY IS THE ROOT CAUSE OF THE PROBLEM.
If you fix the MORAL CAUSE, you will get the right result. And as everybody knows, the Bible is all about MORALS. But it’s not just about MORALS, it’s about GOD’S MORALS. That is, it’s about MORALS which ALMIGHTY GOD handed down to the human race many generations ago, so we could have a record of what GOD thinks about HUMAN MORALITY.
Conclusion: Since nearly all of our political and social problems have MORALITY at their root cause, we can truly say that THE BIBLE IS THE ANSWER to our political and social problems, because THE BIBLE is THE ANSWER to all our MORAL PROBLEMS. It’s also the answer to our PERSONAL problems, because ALL MORALITY BEGINS WITH YOU (and me), PERSONALLY!
Are you getting this??
See you in the next blog!
Reality Bible 