Right and wrong thinking
Dear Father Paul: I am a 46- year-old father who has begun to seriously ask himself, “Has this planet gone crazy?” Almost everywhere you look there is violence, injustice, lies and selfishness. Are there any rules any more? Any concern for others? Any of what my momma used to call plain old human kindness and good manners? There must be more people like me. Do all of us who bemoan the state of humankind in 2015 need to just move to some remote island someplace? What do you think is going on? — Steve
Dear Steve: You aren’t alone. I’m a few years older than you, but I have never seen the world, or America in such a sorry state. Who would have thought we’d ever come to the point where the President and the Congress aren’t even speaking to each other … or that some people on the planet would preach that it’s okay to cut off the heads of people who don’t see things just like they do?
I used to enjoy watching the evening news on TV, but today there is so much hate, blood, self centeredness and extremism on the television news that I skip it most nights. Poll after poll shows that a huge majority of people think that the country and the world are “headed in the wrong direction.” Truly, we could fill this entire edition of today’s paper with a list of our world’s problems and how we are, indeed, going in the wrong direction.
But you asked me what I think is going on, so here are a few of my thoughts.
Basically, in my view, by far most of the problems in the world today and in our nation have at their root (as the headline above says) Wrong Thinking as opposed to Right Thinking. “So what do you mean by Right And Wrong Thinking, Father Paul?”
Just this. A vast and growing number of people, starting with the so called “Enlightenment” period in the 1600s and the 1700s have come to believe that there is simply no such thing as absolute truth. This I believe is Wrong Thinking. To these people, who used to be just a few of the intellectuals in our world, but who now include perhaps the guy who fixes your car or the lady who does your hair, ”truth” is relative, not absolute, and not unchanging. Whatever truth there is today may be different next week. “My truth is every bit as valid as your truth,” they say. There are no absolutes … everything is relative. “Rules, if they exist at all, are for other people, not me. I can pretty much do whatever pleases me. ‘I’ am the god of my own life. ‘I’ decide for myself what is good and what is bad … what is right and what is wrong, and ‘I’ am accountable to no one but myself. It’s all about me.” Again, Wrong Thinking.
This kind of world view, is called “relativism,” or by some “humanism.” It has brought us everything from slavery, to wars, to the holocaust, to the “sexual revolution” of the ‘60s, to abortion on demand, to drug use and rampant crime, to same-sex marriage, to a dysfunctional government and yes, even to ISIS. The mantra, “If it seems good to you, then do it.”
This “Wrong Thinking” world view is growing. But it stands in direct conflict with what many call “a Biblical world view.” A Biblical world view, in contrast, is a view that says there is a creator of the Universe — God — and, just as this creator established rules of absolute and unchanging truth in things like math, science and music, (for mankind’s benefit) this same creator has also established rules of absolute truth for human living and conduct, which are also for mankind’s benefit. I’m talking about, among others, The Ten Commandments and The Golden Rule. Right Thinking.
It’s a no-brainer to predict where we’ll end up if we continue down the Wrong Thinking road of relativism and humanism. In the toilet bowl of history.
But what if instead, every single person on planet earth tomorrow morning began Thinking Right and living every day 24/7 by even the few absolute truths of the Ten Commandments and The Golden Rule? Wow! Think about it.
Do you have a question? Send it to me at [email protected] and I will try to answer it in the paper.
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[Father Paul Massey is pastor emeritus of Church Of The Holy Cross in Fayetteville, Georgia. Visit www.holycrosschurch.wordpress.com for information, service times, directions and audio of Sunday services.]
