We live in a nation that once cherished absolute truth. Absolute truth is a sure guide for any society because it is grounded in God, who is the ground of all reality. Truth is absolute because God is absolutely true. Everything else in the universe, all physical objects, all spiritual beings and all laws governing the universe were created by Him. They have no claim to reality other than that God created them and would cease to exist apart from Him.
Among the many departures from absolute truth operating in our country are arguments about the nature of God and what He expects from us, why He created us, and why He commands us to love Him and obey Him. These important attributes of God help us to relate to Him, understand Him, and serve Him.
The world does not recognize God because there are rebellious angels in the world who are very active on earth. God revealed what He expects from human beings, but there are many contradictions about His revelation. If it’s important to God that we have a proper understanding of Him, it should be important to us as well.
United States Embraces Relativism
Religion has been splintered from absolute truth into thousands of conflicting opinions and practices all throughout human history. But there has always been an effort on the part of man to come to believe in absolute truth. Even so, humans are easily confused by the rebellious angels, resulting in multiple opinions about religious truth, sometimes resulting in whole nations that adhere to one opinion and discourage contradictory opinions.
What’s wrong in our country is a widespread, blatant rejection of absolute truth such that any opinion about religion held by one segment of the country is considered true for them while a contradictory opinion held by a different group is held as true for the other group. There is little to no search for absolute truth in religion which would lead all men to finally be united in truth.
This truth relativism has led to a major civil war in the past over the issue of slavery. Slavery is offensive to God who wants all of us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, with a warning from God that whatever we do to another person God will consider it as having been done to Him. This country was divided over that issue and could not resolve it peacefully because of relativism. It finally resulted in a civil war.
Evolution Misguided Anthropology
Relativism has made inroads into science as well. Real science, like celestial mechanics, is still based on the objective truths of science. If a group of American scientists want to fly a rocket to land on Mars, they have to know all the physical laws of gravity, acceleration, and momentum, to steer their rocket through 300 million miles of open space to reach Mars. They could then be justifiably proud that they did not only land on Mars but landed exactly where they wanted on the surface,
This is not the case with other sciences, often called “soft” sciences, especially anthropology where evolution has blindsided scientists’ understanding of how man appeared on earth. Of course, God created man just like He created everything else. Anthropology does not acknowledge any spiritual reality. This means that, since man has both a spiritual and a physical nature, anthropology cannot fully understand man.
Relativism in Gender
The concept of gender applies even to God who acts through three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit is sometimes called “Wisdom” and the Hebrew word for wisdom is feminine. I bring this up even though I know many people will argue that there are more than twenty genders.
In my youth, most Americans were aware of the danger of temptation by rebellious angels, but today there is hardly anything that most Americans would agree on. I am astounded that so many Americans succumb to the criticism of the political left such as the idea of “systemic racism”. I have been American all my life and have never been racist because I know that racism offends God. Americans should stick to absolute truth because they should know that’s what God endorses. They would be far less upset by unfair criticism and would stand firm in the face of unrighteousness rather than cave in like they are doing right now to satisfy the far left.
Holocaust in our Midst
I hope that if an evil group took control of our country and wanted, like the Nazis did, to slaughter all Jews, most Americans would refuse to comply. However, many people do comply with the slaughter of unborn babies because of the influence of theories that contradict what God has revealed about human conduct and the generation of new human beings. Abortion is a very serious problem in our country and is part of the implacable rejection of the concept of absolute truth in American today.
There are many more moral understandings that are dividing Americans today. Some of them remain moral and are very serious problems in our culture. But some of them have become political and are the problems that are causing me concern.
Political Hatred of Donald Trump
One of these is the hatred directed against Donald Trump. He is not the perfect Christian that most of us like to think we are, but he does not deserve the venom and hatred levied against him by a certain vocal segment of the American public. I have listened to almost all of his speeches, and I do not find him deviating much from the absolute truth in what he preaches.
His political enemies, the progressive Left, do not adhere to absolute truth. Pelosi and Biden both claim to be Catholic. I’m Catholic also, but I do not go along with their refusal to abide by the tenets of the Catholic Faith, especially their commitment to abortion and refusal to honor the Eucharist. It becomes very troublesome for me when they champion laws that are contrary to the Catholic Faith. It is a far cry from my youth at a time when this country was predominantly Protestant, but at heart they were still Christians. The progressive leadership in this country today is not Christian at all.
One of the first things Biden did when he entered office was to open the borders for immigration. He did this without any preparation to control who is entering our country and without any concern for the immigrants themselves who embarked on a dangerous and expensive journey to arrive in America. Biden has put migrants in extreme danger and failed to protect Americans from uncontrolled immigration, some of whom are already sick with the virus during a pandemic. This is going to become a big problem for Americans in the near future.
There are also extreme divisions in our country about the validity of the last election. These contradictory views need to be reconciled in the eyes of the American people; otherwise reacting to outright lies of one segment compared to the other segment could cause Americans, no longer connected to absolute truth, to take the matter into their own hands. This could result in civil war.
If our media and politicians do not bring out the facts in this matter, Americans will no longer have access to absolute truth instructing them. Their ignorance of truth runs the serious risk of civil strife. If it turns out that both sides in this conflict are resorting to fake news, who could blame God if He would finally give up on America and the human race and bring this present world to a conclusion, which He has been predicting all along?
Washington’s Vision of the Future of the Republic
There is a famous apparition that George Washington is said to have experienced when victory in the Revolutionary War seemed doubtful. The vision predicted three threats the new republic would have to endure: the first threat has been widely interpreted as the Revolutionary War; the second threat as the Civil War; and the third threat as one that is yet to come. The vision ends with George Washington being told “after the third threat, the world united shall not prevail against her (the new American Republic).”
The vision itself contains 5700 words. Below is the entire paragraph describing the third threat, but you can read the whole fascinating account here:
And again I heard the mysterious voice saying, “Son of the Republic, look and learn.” At this the dark, shadowy angel placed a trumpet to his mouth, and blew three distinct blasts; and taking water from the ocean, he sprinkled it upon Europe, Asia and Africa. Then my eyes beheld a fearful scene: from each of these countries arose thick, black clouds that were soon joined into one. And throughout this mass there gleamed a dark red light by which I saw hordes of armed men, who, moving with the cloud, marched by land and sailed by sea to America, which country was enveloped in the volume of cloud. And I dimly saw these vast armies devastate the whole country and burn the villages, towns and cities that I beheld springing up. As my ears listened to the thundering of the cannon, clashing of swords, and the shouts and cries of millions in mortal combat, I heard again the mysterious voice saying, “Son of the Republic, look and learn.” When the voice had ceased, the dark shadowy angel placed his trumpet once more to his mouth, and blew a long and fearful blast.
Conclusions
This vision has been widely read by many Americans, even Christians, especially Catholics over the years. If you adhere to the opinion that Americans are a disgraced people because of what some of our ancestors did, bear in mind that many Americans tried to do what is right and were guided by absolute truth.
I think we should leave judgement of Americans up to God and be proud of the many things our country did that were right.
8 thoughts on “A Sure Path to Civil Strife”
Regarding my dislike and hatred of trump. Is it refusal to disavow hate groups on a timely basis, his lack of a health care plan, infrastructure plan, his mocking of a disabled reporter, his trust of Putin over the US military intel, his refusal to read intel reports, his lack of a pre virus balanced budget creating a one trillion deficit a per for the next ten years, not having meeting with Russians transcribed, refusal to release requested staff and documents, refusal to testify himself, (why hide) refusal to release financial data, 30,000 documented lies and misstatements, the virus, .. I have more. Documented.
Regarding gender. When the physical body says you are one gender and the biology of the senses, mind, heart says your another gender, both from DNA & genetic influences, which one is right and who decides. thanks.
Decry should be “deny”
I think there is a misunderstanding of absolute truth and how it applies to the world as well as history. I believe there is an absolute truth. I also believe that I cannot prove many of the things that are absolutely true. And because they are not provable, other people will have different opinions on what those absolute truths are. All of this is as true today as it was many years ago.
The author claims that we have departed from absolute truth, but then claims the civil war happened because of relativism and a rejection of absolute truth. Slavery existed since before our country was founded. As a country, we never departed from agreement on absolute truth because agreement never existed. And these types of disagreements span countries and centuries. There was never a time where we all agreed on what is absolutely true. Today, there is a significant amount of disagreement because we can’t agree on the facts. This has nothing to do with unprovable absolute truths, but rather an inability to agree on what is actually happening. We can’t agree on whether racism is a major problem (despite the evidence) and we can’t agree that gender is more complicated than we used to believe (despite a mountain of evidence). We could have broad agreement on these topics in general if we agreed on the facts. We would certainly have disagreements on how to solve these issues or live with them, but we would at least have similar ultimate goals if we agreed on what the issues were. Instead, we seem to live in separate groups with separate sets of facts.
Hello Kyle,
Thank you for reading my article. And thank you for your comment.
You seem to be at a stalemate in your understanding of absolute truth. If you bought a used car that was described as having low mileage but later proved to have been driven a lot more miles, you would have a better understanding of truth. If you took the seller to court, you would not be so wishy washy on describing what truth is. He did not tell you the truth, and you want justice done.
There is too much of bending the truth is our society today. Many lawyers advise their clients to lie in their self-defense. I think Americans of earlier centuries were a lot more honest with others that we are today.
George Washington is famous for owning up to chopping down his father’s cherry tree when he said “I cannot lie; I did cut down that tree.” Abraham Lincoln earned the nickname: “Honest Abe” because of his honesty in dealing with others. These men were very much respected because of their honesty. And I think you would be disappointed if your friends were less honest.
If you ever appear in court (I hope you never are a defendant in a court case) but for an example, if you were, the judge would ask you to swear an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth because the court wants to judge each case wisely based of what really happened. Not too many years ago you would have been asked to take an oath with your hand on a Bible because then most people were Christian in this country, a Christian would think twice before calling on God to be a witness to his telling the truth when he actually lied,
Perjury is a very serious offense against God and most Americans were well advised not to commit perjury. Today not too many Americans are Christian and they no longer dreed offending God like they did in the past. But perjury is still a serious offense against law in any court in our country. Whether one believes in God or not, God is present in our lives. God’s presence is not supported only by those who believe in His existence and He disappears in the presence of those who do not believe. He is present all the time.
Your arguments that different people hold different beliefs and some are therefore excused from abiding by truth simply because they don’t know what truth is or disagree in its definition. I would like to point out that in criminal law, ignorance is no excuse. If one does not know the laws of the state, even in the United States, one had better learn them before one runs afoul of them.
One last point, the human race was always wicked ever since Adam and Eve’s first sin. Heaven was closed to them. God wanted them to struggle against evil in this life and win the victory that entitles them entrance into heaven. If they chose not to struggle and just go the way of the world, they will meet punishment.
Slavery is wrong. It was always wrong. God did not create some humans to be enslaved by others. He created all of us to be brothers and sisters in His heavenly kingdom: neighbors as He called it. We should love our neighbor as we love ourselves.
And don’t think that God wants us to live in separate groups with separate sets of facts. The only separation of humans and angles God will ever make is at the end of the world where He accepts one set into His heavenly kingdom and consigns the other set into eternal punishment.
Kyle, I wish you well and hope you are not offended by my vigorous defense of truth.
Maurice A. Williams
Hi Maurice,
Thanks for responding. I think we’re still at loggerheads over provable truth and unprovable truth. The bible is full of unprovable truth. It was written by men. And while it may be divinely inspired, that cannot be proven. And this is why I believe we need to have respect for others’ points of views on these matters. We can’t prove our side, just like they can’t prove their side. So we need to learn to work together and respect our differences.
The law is completely different. Laws are written down by men and are binding on earth. We know who wrote them, and we know what authority they had (human authority). Civil, human laws are provable. God’s laws are not. Christians cannot prove they are more right than Muslims, or Hindus, or Buddhists and vice versa. Religions are all beliefs and are therefore not provable. We can know that slavery is now illegal in the US, but we cannot know how God feels about slavery (although I am incredibly confident in my belief that He believes it is wrong).
In the public square, I think we need to make our arguments for policies based on principles and outcomes. Assuming you believe that we are made in the image and likeness of God, God’s laws should have plenty of sufficient reasoning behind them to stand on their own without the argument of “because God says so”.
I hope my arguments make sense, and even if you don’t agree with them, you can at least understand them. Thanks again for the response.
Kyle
You misunderstand progressives. People who reject the idea of “absolute truth” would be a real problem to our society. But progressives simply have different ideas of what is true and what is not. It’s not that they reject the idea of truth.
You would do well to read the previous essay here, “Misunderstanding Those Who Seem Different”.
Hello Capcrisis
Thanks for reading my essay and thanks for your comment. I don’t agree with your premise. If something is true, it is never untrue. Ancient people were convinced that the sun orbits around the Earth because they could plainly see it rise in the morning and set in the evening.
If the Earth itself was later found to orbit the sun while revolving on its own axis, then it is not true that the sun revolves around the Earth. If it was proven not true at that time, it was never true. I don’t think any sane person in the whole Earth still believe that the sun revolves around the Earth.
The fact that the sun does not revolve around the Earth is an absolute truth. God knew it all along; it took hundreds of years for us humans to discover it. One of the hallmarks of absolute truth is that God knows the truth.
Bringing the same logic to today’s world. If Gods commands us not to kill our children because it is wrong to do so, then Progressives are wrong in fostering abortion. Since God knows it is wrong, it is always wrong. If you argue that Progressives don’t believe the unborn are children for whatever reason, but God does know they are children, it is still wrong to kill children and it is stupid to go against the guidance of God. After all God revealed He is preparing heaven for those who obey Him and hell for those who refuse to obey Him.
And that brings the whole argument of absolute truth into focus. If you don’t know who God is, you better find out, and if you refuse to believe what God believes, you are headed for disaster.
Thanks again for your comment. I wish you well.
Maurice A. Williams
Thank you for referring to my article.