“Where there is no vision the people perish”
-Proverbs 29:18
This blog is about looking to Scripture to find out who God is, why we worship him, and how we flourish. It’s about what we must do, if we will live.
As a worship leader, I want to point you to God and his ways.
The more deeply we look at God’s words and deeds, the more we will glorify him in our own thoughts, affections, and actions. The life I want is one of knowing God, especially his goodness, justice, righteousness, and truth. These are major themes within Scripture. I want to guide you through a careful look at these themes: what they mean—and what they don’t mean.
I will challenge you. My goal is not controversy, but truth. The mainstream of Christian thought has radically misunderstood God’s goodness, justice, righteousness, and truth. As an example: In a sentence, can you explain what it means when we say that God is good? Is this important to you?
Here is the broad outline of my project:
I seek to show how Scripture clarifies four major errors related to these categories:
- Goodness is not a matter of subjective whim, nor is a thing good in, by, and of itself, nor is it good by arbitrary decree. The “good” is an aspect of reality in relation to the individual person.
- Moral judgment is proper. The God of the Old Testament is the God of the New. Jesus Christ will return to judge. He that is spiritual judges all things.
- Righteousness is motivated by rational self-interest. God’s good and righteous works are done for his own sake. He expects and demands that we act for our own benefit.
- Truth is available to us by evidence. God gave miraculous signs, and these are the reason to believe. Faith is based on reason. If we will live, we must treat rationality as an absolute.
The above conclusions cohere into a distinct worldview, which can be called Christian Individualism.
Value relates to individuals. Individuals are judged and should judge. The motivation of righteousness is individual and self-interested. Truth is a matter of individuals grasping particular factual observations. Post by post, we will explore these conclusions to see their origin in Scripture, their exact meaning, and their application to life. The result: a better, more biblical understanding of God, a better worldview, and someday a better world.
We must rethink our foundations.
What is your reason for living? Your motivation? What makes something right or wrong? What do you owe to others? Why do you worship God?
Scripture offers the following answers:
- Reality: God is good. God will judge.
- Reason: God is rational and expects us to be too.
- Values: God seeks his self-interest and expects us to do the same.
We live in an age of ideological destitution.
Our nation is possessed by the ghost of a communist named Karl Marx. His theory of goodness, justice, righteousness, and truth has infested of our society at all levels. It has infested the church. In every way I oppose Marx’s ideology. As our society slides further from its Constitutional ideals of freedom and individual rights, we need a clear and biblical alternative to Marx’s vision. Christian Individualism is that alternative.
Marx did say one thing that was true: “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.”
That is the plan.
Are you a Christian writer or thinker interested in Individualism? I’d love to hear from you. Please connect with me by email at [email protected]