Politics

Main points:

1. Only Scripture is infallible.
2. Truth is more powerful than human leadership.
3. “Our” sources aren’t always right.
4. “Their” sources aren’t always wrong.
5. We should seek genuine understanding, even of what we reject.

In the midst of controversy, it’s often hard to tell what problems have been created and what problems have merely been revealed. Whatever we might say about problems the election and impeachment of Donald Trump has created, it has certainly revealed some!

One of the most serious Trump-revealed problems is that many Christians who claim to revere the Bible lack truly biblical habits for evaluating truth claims. As a result, they also aren’t very good at judging the ethics of situations that aren’t directly addressed in Scripture. This is important, not only from the perspective of citizenship and voting, but for Christian living in general: we face conflicting truth claims about all sorts of things every day.

Those of us who are involved in preaching and teaching ministries have an opportunity to help with this problem. We should teach a genuinely Christian (biblical) view of truth and how to evaluate truth claims. That view includes five principles.

Principle 1: Only Scripture is infallible.

Christians understand that God is completely reliable on the subject of reality, which is what I mean here by “truth”—what actually is.

In the spring of 1774, the British Parliament was debating the Intolerable Acts, as a response to the latest conflicts with the American Colonies—the Boston Tea Party in particular. On April 19, Rose Fuller moved that the tea tax be repealed. Edmund Burke delivered a speech in support of the motion. Excerpts appear below. The speech was more than twenty pages long and Burke had to pause at least once to recover his voice (full text of the speech).

Speech on American Taxation

Sir,—I agree with the honorable gentleman who spoke last, [Charles Wolfran Cornwall, who opposed the motion] that this subject is not new in this House. Very disagreeably to this House, very unfortunately to this nation, and to the peace and prosperity of this whole empire, no topic has been more familiar to us. For nine long years, session after session, we have been lashed round and round this miserable circle of occasional arguments and temporary expedients. I am sure our heads must turn and our stomachs nauseate with them. We have had them in every shape; we have looked at them in every point of view. Invention is exhausted; reason is fatigued; experience has given judgment; but obstinacy is not yet conquered.

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