I have the occasion to engage in apologetical discussions pertaining to the Christian faith with a wide variety of anti-Christian antagonists — Muslims, witches, atheists. As a Christian apologist, one argument you are sure to come up against, no matter the persuasion of the person you are dealing with, is the reliability of the Holy Bible.
They all claim one or all of the following, without fail, the Holy Bible:
1) is not divine in origin, but rather the work of men;
2) is open to a wide range of interpretations with no Biblical view able to claim preeminence above the next;
3) despite an individual’s belief in the Holy Bible’s divine or mundane source or sources, it has been tampered with by unscrupulous men bent on using the text to further their own ambitions; for this reason, the Bible matters little today.
For the purposes of this article, I will focus on claim number three. This particular claim has always been the most amusing to me, as it is by far the silliest and easiest to overturn. Which brings us to the title of this article – “What Would Digital Publius Do?”
In keeping with the idea of man placing his own wisdom and morality above God's I am forced to ask the question, What would I do if I were an unscrupulous man bent on using the Biblical text to further my own ambitions? What would I change in the Holy Bible to help me meet that end? Well I sure as heck would do a better job than those who came before me!
If I were a powerful person capable of effecting changes to the Bible, given my natural predilection for attractive women, I’m fairly certain I would do away with the whole one man one woman thing and all those pesky rules eschewing adultery and fornication. Just being honest here!
I would certainly make it possible for powerful men like myself to be exempt from such restrictions, if not the hoi poloi. There would have to be some revelation given so at least I could do my thing!
This is the sort of thing we do find in extra-Biblical cults and false religions. Generally when someone wants to use “religion” to grasp power, they have their own revelation or “thus sayeth the Lord” moment. They don’t change the Bible, they change the brand. That's how the world got the Book of Mormon, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society and the Qur'an to name a few!
The problem in changing the Holy Bible is people would notice, even way back in the 4th century, the time most Bible critics point to when they make these assertions. But if you start your own brand, you’re good. You just claim that God is still in the revelation business and you are the new relay!
Liberalism, by it’s very nature, abhors rules against the causes they want to champion. The leftists don’t like phrases like “Congress shall make no law...” any more than they like “Thou shalt not...” No man does really.
The difference is in an individuals heart and discipline to overcome our baser instincts and accept what God wants to teach man about how we should live and treat others. Let me give you an example of liberal thinking. Aldous Huxley, the Author of “Brave New World”, makes a rather revelatory statement when rationalizing his acceptance of the idea of Darwinian evolution and the meaninglessness of life as had his grandfather, Thomas Henry Huxley (who was known as Darwin’s bulldog):
“I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning; consequently assumed it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption... The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics; he is also concerned to prove there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do…. For myself, as no doubt for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom..” Aldous Huxley, “Confession of a Professed Atheist,” Report: Perspective on the News, vol. 3 (June 1966), p. 19. From an article by Helming, “An Interview with God.”
It’s simple really; rebellion against God can always be summed up as man’s intrinsic selfish pursuit of self-gratification and expedience.
The Holy Bible contemporaneously still looks down on the sort of behavior that would aid in oppressing others for selfish reasons. It has still got a bunch of those troublesome “Thou shalt not's” giving fits to Huxley and his like-minded latter day liberals and that humanists of every kind find so distasteful. In fact, the Bible has a distressing habit of teaching service to others as the only true path to greatness.
“And there was also a strife among them, which of them should be accounted the greatest. And he said unto them, The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors. But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve. For whether is greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he that serveth? is not he that sitteth at meat? but I am among you as he that serveth.” Luke 22:24-27
Yep, that’s the kind of passage from Jesus Christ that would have to go! Not good if you are all about selfish power grabs and controlling masses with liturgical opiates. Yet it is still there! How do you, as a king, put this teaching to work placing yourself above other men, even above God when Christ, Himself says, “I am here among you serving you”?
No, my friends, when man seeks to abrogate the Living Word of God, he does it from the outside, by casting aspersions on the Holy Bible and placing human wisdom above what was revealed to man in Scripture. You don’t change God’s Word, you reject it!
You conform God to your idea of what He should be outside of the framework of who God says He is in His written Word. People reject not just the Bible, but also the Holy God of the Holy Bible. There are scads of people, like President Obama who say they believe in God—yet you find precious few who actually believe God!
This is why President Obama can claim to be a Christian, yet the White House says the President is “grappling” with his personal views on gay marriage as Obama orders the United States Justice Department to stop defending the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, the very law of the land defining marriage as a legal state consisting of one man and one woman in holy matrimony.
Is President Obama less powerful than the kings and leaders of old? Can’t the President do something about this outdated Bible our laws are based on? Well, the Democrats and the rest of the liberal left have been doing just that for decades now. The leftists have eliminated the Bible's influence in American society as much as they possibly can.
You don’t have to change the Holy Bible - just undermine it! God says He knew you in the womb, my President says that’s “above my pay grade”! God says marriage is defined as one man, one woman, my President says lets ‘grapple” with that idea!
Change the Bible? Why bother? Every time a King or President casts doubt on God’s wisdom by overturning the clear teachings of Scripture on matters of marriage and the like, does he have to literally take out a Sharpie and start redacting the Holy Bible? Of course not, especially when President Obama's own Democrat Party has put in the time and legislation to make sure that many don’t know what the Bible says to begin with — let alone feeling any accountability to the One who wrote it!
Digital Publius
