The Danger of Believing that the Bible is Mere Myth What impact is felt on a society when the Bible is discarded as a fairy tale? Oswalt looks back on previous cultures to make predictions about our own. When God and His Word are looked upon as mere fable, the prognosis Oswalt delivers is troubling and (sadly) representative of what is happening today: First and foremost, ethics as an internal compass will disappear from among us. Ethics will certainly remain as civic desiderata, and there will be various public attempts to enforce them, but in the society at large they will be meaningless. “Truth” will progressively be replaced by power, since there is no standard of reliability outside of each person’s own needs and wishes. “Right” and “wrong” will become increasingly useless terms as they lose any agreed-upon basis outside of those same wants and needs. The terms will continue to be used, but only as code words for those who can shout the loudest. There will be a dramatic upsurge in interest in the occult. Any attempt to control absolute freedom in any area and at any level will be labeled as “hate-mongering.” Individuals will be increasingly devalued at the same time that “individual freedom” is more and more loudly trumpeted. Altruism and other forms of self-denial for the good of others will steadily disappear. Acceptance of responsibility for one’s own behavior, accompanied by appropriate changes of behavior, will be a rarity. The study of history, except as an arcane antiquarian interest, will disappear. The possibility of a genuine transformation of one’s character from the worse to the better will be dismissed out of hand.[12] “These features,” says Oswalt, “in one form or another, are the common characteristics of those cultures where continuity thinking has prevailed.”[13]
Posted on: Sat, 10 Aug 2013 14:14:14 +0000
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