Editorial: Price Tags

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Dr. Gerald HarrisPastor Stephan Brown gives the illustration about the creative crooks who broke into a department store. He stated, “They entered the store unnoticed and stayed long enough to accomplish their mission.

“You may wonder what they stole, but that’s just the catch. They didn’t take anything. Instead, these thieves switched the price tags. The tag on a $395 camera was removed and placed on a box of stationery. The $5.95 sticker off a paperback book was attached to an outboard motor. Everything was shuffled.

“When the store opened the next morning, you would have expected total chaos. Surprisingly, though, the store operated normally at first. Some customers literally got some steals while others felt the merchandise was overpriced. Incredibly, four hours slipped by before the hoax was discovered.”

It appears to me that in America somebody has switched all the price tags. The socialization of values has turned right and wrong upside down. Our society is now guilty of promoting lies and evil and reproaching the truth and good.

In a 2008 interview with Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama was challenged to define marriage. Mr. Obama responded, “I believe marriage is a union between a man and a woman.” On Nov. 1, 2008 he stated, “I am not in favor of gay marriage.”

More recently in an exclusive interview on ABC television President Obama stated, “It is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should get married.”

Some have explained President Obama’s more recent affirmation of gay marriage as an “evolution” of his philosophy of marriage.

My purpose in this editorial is not to discuss whether or not same sex marriage should be condoned, accepted, legalized, and celebrated. My position on the subject is well-documented. My concern is whether or not truth evolves.

My firm conviction is that truth does not evolve or change. There are objective, absolute truths that are immutable and unalterable. Such is the case with God’s Word. The writer of Psalm 119:160 explains, “Thy word is true from the beginning, and every one of thy righteous judgments are true.” I doubt the writer was employing hyperbole with the words, “true,” “righteous” and “judgments.”

Furthermore, truth is very narrow. Billy Graham once told about a flight he took from Korea to Japan. They ran through a snowstorm and as they were about to land in Tokyo, the ceiling and visibility were almost zero. The pilot had to make an instrument landing.

Dr. Graham said, “I sat up in the cockpit and watched him sweat it out as a man in the tower at the airport talked us to the appropriate runway. I did not want this man to be broadminded. I wanted him to be narrow-minded. I knew that our lives depended on it.”

So truth is very narrow and it does not evolve.

My firm conviction is that truth does not evolve or change. There are objective, absolute truths that are immutable and unalterable. Such is the case with God’s Word.

Furthermore, you cannot separate God’s Word from himself. He is immutable. That means that He does not change. What God says is who He is. Doubting God’s Word is akin to questioning His character.

Evangelist Steve Hale, in his book Truth Decay, states, “Truth is not a subjective matter of taste, but an objective matter of fact. Truth is truth no matter where you live on the planet.”

Hale refers to Norm Geisler and Frank Turek’s book, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be An Atheist, and presents six unequivocal truths about absolute, objective truth. They are:

Truth is transcultural. If something is true, it is true for all people, in all places, at all times. (2+2=4 is for everyone, everywhere at every time.)

Truth is unchanging even though our beliefs about truth change. When we began to believe the earth was round instead of flat, the truth about the earth didn’t change, only our belief about the earth changed.

Truth is not affected by the attitude of the one professing it. An arrogant person does not make the truth he professes false. A humble person does not make the error he professes true.

All truths are absolute truths. If there is final objective truth, it is still true even when everyone else disagrees and even when it is outlawed by man.

Beliefs cannot change the truth, no matter how sincerely they believe something to be true. Someone can sincerely believe the world is flat, but that only makes him or her sincerely mistaken.

Truth is discovered, not invented. It exists independent of anyone’s knowledge of it. Gravity existed prior to Isaac Newton.

Some are of the opinion that Jesus’ loving nature and inclusiveness means that he overlooked or accepted certain behaviors the Bible clearly specifies as prohibitive and against God’s creative mandates. Jesus, indeed, loved everyone and associated with all kinds of people, but He was not “tolerant” of their sins and alternative lifestyles.

It is true that he forgave the woman taken in adultery in John 8, but He then told her to “go and sin no more.” Jesus would not have forgiven her had she not repented, but even then there was the admonition to cease from the sin that had brought condemnation to her soul. He forgave her because He loved her, but He condemned her sin because He loathed it with a holy hatred.

The truth of God is like a mirror that “shows us up” for what we really are.

God has always been intolerant toward sin! His Word says: “Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes. Cease to do evil…” (Is. 1:16).

Since truth is immortal and immutable why doesn’t the media, Hollywood, and the leaders of our nation stand up for the kind of truth that saves and the kind of righteousness that exalts a nation? (Proverbs 14:34)

I will tell you why. The truth of God is like a mirror that “shows us up” for what we really are. It is a book of love and compassion, but it also condemns sin and calls the sinner to repentance.

Most folks don’t want to be reminded of their sins. They want to cover their sins and the only way to do that is to keep the Bible out of the public square and prevent preachers from sharing their message outside their own pulpits.

We have lost our moral compass. We have perverted right and wrong to the extent that there are those who say adultery is acceptable, fornication is adventurous, marriage is prudish, abstinence is pedantic, imbibing alcohol is conventional, and homosexuality is just an alternate lifestyle.

Someone has changed all the price tags and worthless things have been given a false value and things of worth have been made to look cheap by a generation that has lost its way.

Editorial, intolerance, morals, truth, values