I ended my previous blog with this statement:    Not only do we not have to choose between “standing for the truth” and “promoting the good name of our neighbor;” WE MAY NOT DO THE ONE WITHOUT DOING THE OTHER.

I have recently been suggesting that telling the truth biblically involves considering and consulting the church and “giving due authority to the church.” There are problems when we try to do this and I want to try to address some of these problems.

Remember the point that I have been making  – we MUST tell the truth but we MUST do so in a way that “promotes the good name of the neighbor” about whom we are speaking.

In the middle of April, astronomers announced the discovery of a planet very like the Earth.  It’s called Kepler-186f.   Not the most romantic of names, but we can forgive that.  It’s named after the telescope that discovered it.

[Note: The item below expresses the views of the individual to whom the item is ascribed and does not necessarily reflect the position of the WRF as a whole.]

Let this be clearly heard and understood:  Speaking the truth as we perceive the truth is not an option. It is a requirement. Here is part of the admonition from the Westminster Larger Catechism,

Transcendental Pretense--now doesn’t that phrase get your attention, just hearing it? One of my favorite philosophers, Robert Solomon, is the one who made it up. It describes in two words the whole history of philosophy for the last three centuries: everything that’s really important is what makes a difference to me.

My mentor always tells me, “Don’t teach children songs you don’t believe in.”  We spend so much time selecting music for worship based on themes or their placement in services.   Yet how much time do we spend pouring over the texts to better understand the meaning behind common Christian phrases and metaphors

It’s disturbing.  Last week Brandon Eich resigned as CEO of Mozilla.   They are the company that operates the popular Firefox web browser.  Eich had been appointed to that position only a month before.  You can imagine his delight when he received the promotion.  And Mozilla was highly optimistic.

The news broke in the United Kingdom on March 24 that at twenty-seven hospitals they have been burning the remains of aborted babies to heat their buildings.  Fifteen thousand children tossed into the furnaces or waste disposal incinerators.

Sally and Stevie attend the same church, but they are not part of the same set. They greet one another in church and occasionally exchange a few pleasantries about some banal subject—the weather, the church picnic, or the general depravity of the nation. That’s about it. 

The other day former Mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg told the The New York Times in an interview, “I am telling you, if there is a God, when I get to Heaven, I’m not stopping to be interviewed. I am heading straight in…I have earned my place in heaven. It’s not even close.” 

Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn was the greatest writer of the twentieth century.  He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1970 for his novel, The Gulag Archipelago.  It told the horrifying story of the Soviet Union’s punishment of dissenters in prison camps during the rule of Stalin.