The Truth About Post Modern Freedom
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Do not confuse personal expression with liberty.
Freedom is not the right to do whatever you feel; but the liberty to live right and the responsibility to discipline your behavior so it does endanger others or obstruct their liberties.
Jesus equated truth and freedom in His teaching. “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” John 8:31-32 The New King James Version.
Again, we arrive at the question, “Whose truth are we talking about?”
This is clearly a post-modern question conjured in the thinking of deconstructionism and the post-structuralism mind.
It was an unnecessary question to the pre-modernist and for most modernist minds.
They understood truth is not subjective any more than the laws of aerodynamics are subjective.
They knew words have meaning, that there are rules for parsing a sentence, and truth is not evolving.
Jesus equated truth with His words. “If you abide in My word… you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”
Truth is found in the Holy Scriptures, Old and New Testament.
The Apostle Paul made it very plain, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable…” (2 Timothy 3:16).
All of the Scripture is beneficial for our well being. The Old Testament is not outdated, no longer relevant, or inapplicable to your life because you are now under grace and not under law.
The same Apostle wrote, “Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come. Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.” 1 Corinthians 10:11-12 King James Version.
The context of 1 Corinthians 10 is about the Old Testament writings.
The Apostle Paul said they are written for our instruction. They are applicable to human being until the end of time, “the ends of the age.”
The Old Testament is truth for our life, today, just as much as the New Testament.
The Apostle said the Scriptures will make a person “thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
That is, it will make our life complete, filled out with every necessary component and completely furnished our life with everything necessary to live with moral excellence.
When truth, the Word of God, literacy, and the arts went behind the walls of monasticism in fourth and fifth centuries AD, the light went out in Western and Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
The truth was not only hidden from the general populace behind the walls of the monasteries, the Holy Scriptures were kept from the homes of the people and reserved for the clergy.
The preaching of the Word of God was only done in Latin, not the language of the people. Into that vacuum of truth and light, two powerful forces rose and enslaved the people, feudalism and Islam.
Truth and freedom are inextricable.
When truth is distorted or hidden, the freedom of people will diminish in equal proportion to the absence of truth.
The people will be enslaved to the sinful passions of mankind and the domination of tyrants and despots.
Can you see this is why the United States of America has had the greatest freedom in the history of mankind?
Those freedoms have been slowly diminishing as this nation has embraced more and more post-modern thinking and rejected the Word of God in equal proportion.
The pressure of political correctness, insistence upon cultural tolerance, and the insidious invasion of relativism and humanism into theology have distorted the Word of God in the pulpits.
This intimidation has caused the Church to hide the Word of truth behind the walls of the church buildings or the privacy of their homes.
Into this vacuum has risen a generation of children, teenagers and college students who have no basic knowledge of the truth.
They are enslaved to the passions of the flesh, various addictions, and openly embrace socialism that will enslave them to a despot government.
Did you notice, Jesus said, “If you abide in my Word, you are my disciples…”?
The Greek word for “abide” means to remain, to say with something.
The Greek grammar of this sentence carries the idea of continuing to stay with something; continuing to remain. In other words, it is not just that we give mental assent to believing God’s Word.
We must obey it and live it every day of our life.
The principles and precepts of God’s Word must be central in our life. They must be the core of our world view and the foundational truth by which we make our choices, establish our value system and guide our attitudes and behavior.
It is time for the true disciples of Jesus Christ to reject the deconstructionism and post-structuralism of this culture and embrace the reality that God’s Word has been established and settled forever.
It alone is the eternal truth by which we measure all other truth of science, medicine, law, politics, philosophy and moral behavior.
We must pass this truth and world view to our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren so the future generations of America will renounce and reject post-modernism and embrace the one absolute truth that will make them free.
