Since every truth is connected we should expect that receiving the truth at one point leads toward other truths. Truth is a united, flowing river, but so too is error. All truth holds together in a great system, yet the same dynamic is evident regarding any position. Hold firmly to the wrong understanding of economics, for example, and it will necessitate certain views of culture, science, sexuality, and ultimately of God. But if we have a Biblical view of humanity, for example, then that too will inevitably sweep us into certain views of evolution, global warming, overpopulation, multi-culturalism, socialism, and feminism. It all hangs together.
I’ve discovered a classic example in John Reader’s Africa: A Biography of the Continent, which introduces itself as a scholarly work written in a popular style but in reality it is a poorly disguised flying buttress for the weak façade of liberalism’s Top 10 most untenable theories. While writing like a journalist, Reader also squeezes in 50 pages of footnotes and nearly 40 pages of small print bibliography to impress all those who are awed by such literary trappings.
The first line of the book: “The ancestors of all humanity evolved in Africa.” So then, I anticipate that he should like socialism, global warming, and big government. Furthermore, he will look for ways to denigrate the accomplishments of Western culture, or which is to say the same thing, to raise the objectively sub-standard achievements of African culture in a weird effort to prove—again, just as an example—that Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos are only “relatively” beautiful.
And that train-wreck is exactly what unfolds throughout the book. In order to support evolution, he tosses out lines like, “Climatic change undoubtedly has a major effect on the distribution and population size of all living species…” (37, see also, 135) At the point he writes this line, he’s not arguing for climate change, he’s arguing for evolution, but he slips it in so that thoughtful readers would know he’s got a comprehensive view of things.
He writes of the “genocidal behaviour of European settlers…” (117) who “filched” whatever advantages they possessed (99). I have not found a positive reference to white people or Western culture in the book. But, of course, that is to be expected if he is to be consistent with his growing web of doctrines.
Then comes the chapter on the Nile and its effects on Egypt (193-199). Though he references a number of dates ranging from 2450 to 600 BC, he does not reference any Biblical evidences. He cites a stone “tablet making brief mention” of Egypt’s glory, but he couldn’t find anything relevant in Genesis or Exodus or the prophets? Over 700 references to Egypt and the Nile in Scripture, yet he’d rather not cite that ancient document.
Liberalism is like the guy who keeps wiring and blocking sections of his fence to keep the dog from slipping out, yet each morning, somehow it finds another escape route. They will continue to add to their list new ideas that they love in order to fence in the old ideas that they hate. Hierarchy, absolute truth, and the depravity of man imply an entire culture that the world cannot abide.
So their system will become increasingly complex to support the insupportable. They would say the same thing about Biblical Christians. If that’s true, then how do each of us explain the blindness of the other? We say they are blinded by sinful and wicked hearts. They can’t say that about us or else they put a huge whole in their fence by acknowledging the Biblical doctrine of sin. How can liberals explain the existence and tenacity of Biblical Christianity?
They can’t. And that is one more proof that they are trying to stop the unstoppable and ignore the beautiful.
