Sermon Tone Analysis

! “Judge Not!”

!! Notes taken by Keith Hassell from CD recording by Josh McDowell

 

 

I do not want to speak to your hearts tonight, I want to speak to your minds.

 

1 Chronicles 12:32  The sons of Issachar understood the times in order to know what to do.

This is my goal tonight.

The tragedy of the Twin Towers and the Pentegon.

I heard the President and pastors call this act evil.

The problem is that America has no right to judge what was done at the Towers.

The most often quoted verse today by young people is no longer John 3:16 but Matthew 7:1 taken totally out of context:  “Judge not lest you be judged.”

* People believe that we should never judge anyone.

* When we give up the right to judge, we give up the right to discern between good and evil.

We give up the right to discern the difference between Mohammed Attah and Mother Teresa.

Judge not lest you be judged!

We give up the right to discern between the killing fields of Cambodia and the wheat fields of Kansas.

For the first time in American history we live not only in two distinct generations, but we live in two different cultures.

The same words mean two different things.

* *Tolerance?* 

* For the old culture, there were absolutes and accepted values.

Tolerance meant acknowledging the contradictory values, beliefs, and lifestyles of others without accepting or embracing them.

* For the new culture, tolerance is the willingness to accept the values, opinion, and beliefs of others.

* All values, beliefs, and lifestyles are equal.

* All values, beliefs, and lifestyles have their value and worth.

* There is no intelligent way to discern between them.

* Anytime you say that one moral belief is higher than another, then you have created moral hierarchy and you are a bigot.

If you disagree, then you are a bigot.

* To say, “We are called to love the sinner and hate the sin” is considered a bigoted and intolerant statement.

You call what I do sin?

* Tolerance is the willingness to accept the ideas and beliefs of another as if they were your own.

* *Truth?* 

* For Adults, truth is external vs. internal and can be discovered and applied to your life.

Jesus said, /“You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”/

* To the new culture, truth is not discovered but created.

All truth is manufactured and produced.

Truth is a matter of personal perspective and opinion.

For them, the truth is that there is no truth.

* So how do you discern between Mohammed Attah vs. Mother Teresa?

* Dr. Kaputo: /“The cold hermeneutic truth is the truth that there is no truth.”/

* Richard Roerdie (University of Virginia): /“For the pragmatist, true sentences are not true because they correspond to reality.

No need to worry about reality.

No need to worry what makes it true.”/

Why?

Because all truth is manufactured.

All truth is personal.

* Decerto (French theorist):  /“When historians write, they are not recording history, they are manufacturing history.”/

* Haden White (Professor of History and Consciousness at the University of California in Santa Cruz):  /“Truth is produced, not found.”/

* Hans Kenart (Professor of Rhetoric Historical Discourse at UT Arlington):  /“I would like to clarify my position and say that truth ceased to be relation and has became a judgment.”

/ In other words, truth has nothing to do with a relationship with reality.

It has everything to do with your judgment, perspective, and choice.

* Thomas Helbrook (executive vice president of the national Lamba Kai Alpha fraternity) in describing tolerance and truth today said:  /“Every person’s individual beliefs, values, lifestyles, and perception of truth claims are equal.

There is no hierarchy of truth.

Your beliefs and my beliefs are equal and all truth is relative.”/

* Edwin Delatra (Dean of Boston School of Education) in describing today’s “Enlightenment” said, /“It involves the elevation of all values, all beliefs, all truth to a position worthy of equal respect.”/

Mohammed Attah?

Timothy McVeigh?

Osama Bin Laden?

* Judge Danny Boggs (Judge of the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeal) said, /“Not only do adherents of all faiths deserve equal rights as citizens, but all faiths are equally valid.”/

Mohammed Attah’s faith is equally valid?

* In the legislation regarding the National Endowment of Arts, the U.S. Congress declared, /“The arts and humanities reflect the high place accorded by American people to the nation’s rich cultural heritage and to the fostering of mutual respect for the diverse beliefs and values of all persons and groups.”/

* New York Board of Regents:  /“Each student will develop the ability to understand, respect, and accept people of different races, sex, culture, heritage, national origin, religion, political, economic, social background and their values, beliefs, and attitudes.”/

* Textbook for Sixth Graders, Economics Today and Tomorrow, asked, /“Can we say that the growth of government is good or bad?

Is there an answer to such a debate?

Not really.

Because the side that one takes depends on one’s values.

No right or wrong answers exist when values are at stake.”/

* Kenneth Stearns says, /“We need young people interpret our realities differently and there is no one perspective that defines the truth.”/

Then how can you judge Mohammed Attah and Alqeida?

* Dr. Robert Simon (Professor of History at Hamilton College in Indiana) says that he never met a student that had denied the holocaust happened.

What he sees recently is far worse.

He said that his students now acknowledge the fact of the holocaust but cannot bring themselves to say that the killing of millions of people is wrong.

He said that upwards of 20% of his students are reluctant to make moral judgments even about the holocaust.

While these students may deplore what the Nazi’s did and the terrorists, their disapproval is expressed as a matter of personal taste, of personal preference, not moral judgment.

One student said, /“Of course, I dislike the Nazi’s, but who am I to say that they are morally wrong?”/

* *Respect?*

I respect that your claim to truth is equal to my own and I mean that from the heart.

* *Acceptance?*

I accept you as you are without judging your values, perspective, or opinions.

* *Values Clarification?* 

* In the Values Clarification Handbook of Strategies for Teachers and Students, it says/, “Designed to engage students and teachers in the active formulation of values.

It does not teach a particular set of values.

There is no sermonizing, no moralizing.

The goal is involve students in practical experiences making them aware of their own feelings, their own ideas, their own beliefs, so that their choices and the decisions they make are conscious and deliberate based upon their own value system.”/

Then how can you judge Mohammed Attah?

* This is My Country, Teacher’s Guide (4th Grade), /“This section describes the goal of helping students progress to higher order skills in thinking…critical thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or what to do.”/

* A values clarification illustration commonly used today:  Ten people in a sinking lifeboat that can only hold six.

Students are invested with the authority to decide who lives and who dies:  the famous author, the pregnant woman, the rabbi, the policeman, the Hollywood dancer, etc. Students are taught in the book that there are no right and wrong answers.

“Whatever each student feels comfortable is right.

A student can determine different drowning targets or whatever for there are no right or wrong answers.”

So who will you kill and who will you let live?

Eric Harris and Dillan Clebo did this at Columbine.

Harris posted this on his internet web page:  /“My belief is that if I say something, it goes.

I am the law.

Feel no remorse.

Your children who have ridiculed me and chosen not to accept me who have treated me as if I am not worth their time, they are dead.

They are _______, _______, _______ dead.”/

According to values clarification that is acceptable.

List who you will kill and the order in which you will kill them and why.

This is what Mohammed Attah did.

* (Josh McDowell’s daughter’s class at school) Values clarification illustration of 11 people in a boat that can only hold 7. The instructions were /“You must kill four.

List them in the order that you would kill them, indicate the reasons for your selection, why you chose a particular person, why you chose a particular order.

There is no right or wrong answer.”/