Withing this past week, I have had a huge revelation about the way that our response to the small things in life indicate our view of the bigger things. Sometime in the past week, I finally stated following ALL the traffic laws. Let me give you a background of where I am coming from, and then I will tell you why this is so big.
When I was learning to drive, I was a hot rodder. I lived in a very small country town in California where cars were a big thing. I had grown up reading hot rod and street rodder magazines, and building car models. I took auto shop, and loved hot rods. When I first got my license, a whole new world opened up to me. I remember bragging to all my friends that between the time I was 16 and 18, I had been pulled over by cops at least 27 times, and never got a ticket. That all changed the day I turned 18, when I got like 6 tickets within the next 6 months. That got very expensive, but didn’t stop me or even slow me down. I thought that I was plenty safe at 90 miles an hour and I knew how to control my vehicle, and that rules like speed limits where “more of guidelines than rules”. I remember saying every time someone new would ride with me, “those signs are just suggestions, recommendations”.
That is how I viewed them. I also remember a friend of mine saying about stop signs, “No cop, no stop!” My philosophy on “California stops” was “The sign is red, just like your stop lights. It doesn’t actually mean that you need to stop, just that your stop lights need to come on. So if you step on the brake pedal just enough for the brake lights to come on, you’re good to go.”
The idea of laws being viewed as “guidelines” now makes me sick. I just realized that not only did I view the traffic laws this way, but I viewed all of life this way. The traffics laws are not guidelines, they a LAWS. A “law” is defined as follows: the system of rules that a particular country or community recognizes as regulating the actions of its members and may enforce by the imposition of penalties. It is not a suggestion, but a requirement to follow. It would be one thing if my views had stopped there, but they didn’t. I realized that this view of laws as suggestions has influences my entire view of life, and of God. I viewed all authority as making recommendations. I viewed the Bible as good ideas that I should follow, but where not truly necessary, and for sure not enforced.
This viewpoint has become for our generation a pandemic. An epidemic is a disease that effects a small group of people for a little while, and then goes away. A pandemic is a large scale illness that is very destructive, killing masses, and doesn’t go away. Our generation has lost all respect for God and his word. We see the Bible as suggestions or recommendations or guidelines. We do not submit to them as if we are under their authority. We interpret the Bible to fit our understanding. We define and interpret the Bibles to be relevant to our lives instead of letting the Bible interpret and define us.
This same view is infecting our generation, and most people don’t even see what it is that’s really going on. There is a philosophy being embraced largely by liberal christians right now called “trajectory hermeneutics”. Hermeneutics is simply the way you explain something. I know, big word for a simple concept. Trajectory is the direction of a thing. What the trajectory hermeneutic view of the Bible means is this: The Bible is a guideline, with helpful historical accounts and insight, but we have come a long way since those primitive times, and are higher evolved, therefore we don’t really need the Bible because we are higher than it, although it is still helpful. What this really says is that we are higher than God himself, and that we no longer need Him. It is all an attempt to glorify and embrace the original SIN of Satan. Our modern christian culture is falling fast for this concept because it appeals so much to our flesh. It means that we can do what we want, without having to submit to authority. It means that we have no restrictions because we reject that God has set rules that we will have to answer to. It, in effect, rejects that FACT that God is God, and makes us god.
The trajectory hermeneutic is something that is not touted by those who follow it. They would not ever proclaim that belief because they know that it is not right, it is sin. It is a sinful rejection of God’s authority. Yet many popular preachers and leaders these days are leading people this direction.
To be continued…………………………….
Oct 08th by josh