Christ's Gifts of Peace, Truth, and Life

"But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” John 14:26-27 ESV

By Ray Dunkelberg, MD

PPL Board Member

Jesus Christ said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Truth is critical for human flourishing - lies stifle human flourishing. Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s 1974 essay “Live Not by Lies” pointed out that lies crush the human spirit and rain down chaos and horror in their wake. He critiqued the lies of communism which led to the totalitarianism in Russia that crushed the church, free speech, and indeed crushed all aspects of freedom that we enjoy in the western world. One of the gifts that Christ brought to mankind with his birth was his peace. His peace enables us to deal with the world's chaos. He said, "My peace I give you, not as the world gives you.” Navigating with Christ’s promised peace is by hearing with understanding and acting with God’s transcendent truth. We must share this gift of truth to encourage each other.

We must learn to speak truth into the culture with patience, wisdom,

and love; but we must do it without compromising the truth.

We must not “shilly-shally with the truth" as Pastor Steve Brown has put it. It is appalling that the truth is not preached from many pulpits. Even with the presidential proclamation stating that churches should dedicate one Sunday service in January to the sanctity of human life. Even with the knowledge of what Scripture says and Christianity has followed for over 2000 years, I have never heard a single sermon on the “Sanctity of Human Life, ” except those that I was privileged to give myself, or to assist in. Our people desperately need encouragement and sharing of truth from the pulpit, even if it results in pushback. But we ignore Scripture at our own peril. “The handwriting is on the wall.”

Western civilization by the numbers is walking away from Christianity - from biblical truth. We know that in other godless countries, such as Russia, totalitarianism rose and prevailed over their Orthodox Christian culture as Solzhenitsyn said, “because we forgot God.” What happens to a culture when it forgets God? Dostoyevsky said in his story The Brothers Karamazov that “without God, everything is permitted.”

Without God, there is no transcendent or absolute truth and subsequently there are no restraints, because whoever is in power controls truth.

Without God's truth, civilization devolves into chaos. In the United States, as biblical truth is ignored, a radical individualism has increasingly prevailed. Carl Trueman's book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, frames this clearly for us. Trueman describes it as "expressive individualism” which has taken center stage as the defining force in our culture. Expressive individualism is the expectation that society should conform to me, allowing me to express outwardly what I feel internally, no matter how immoral or irrational.

"Where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint."

Proverbs 29:18 ESV

If biblical truth does not prevail and God is rejected, people resort to becoming their own god. They become their own source of truth: people decide what gender they are (there are, by some counts, now more than 30 varieties in the popular culture!); marriage is no longer the cornerstone of our civilization, but is a social construct without real meaning; it has become acceptable and even empowering to have your unborn children killed for convenience; hastening your own death is acceptable in a culture that has no real hope; sex is detached from procreation and becomes recreational - for personal pleasure or even power.

For over two millennia, the literature of Christianity clearly labeled abortion as sin. Review of the writings of church leaders over the centuries document this. Much has changed in a single generation. In the 1950s, abortion was unthinkable; divorce was only a last resort and couples stuck with difficult marriages, working their way through it successfully in most cases; women and children were protected and motherhood appreciated if not revered. Sex before marriage and living together without being married were, by consensus, wrong and frowned upon. Coarse language was withheld except in certain situations. It has been noted by more than one person that crude language is the entrée into coarse thinking and behavior. Few people get up and walk out of the movie theaters anymore or stop watching pornographic scenes that they are viewing.

We have succumbed to society’s lies. We all pay a price,

but the unborn child pays with his life.

The unborn child represents everyone who has no voice. The greatest cause of death in the world at this time is abortion. In the absence of transcendent truth, evil easily finds a foothold. We ignore Scripture at our own peril.

Pexels photo - yankrukau