Finding Truth: Part 2 - Cultural truth

What is the whole truth? As discussed before, the Bible declares itself as the truth. The sum of Gods words translated in perfect condition are true words indeed. The word of God is the written tradition that transcends any other tradition handed down in any culture it permeates.

Every culture has its own folklore. Its own history. The most wonderful thing in my opinion about the word of God is that it gives us guidelines for every culture on this planet Earth. The entire basis to build any culture on.

Every culture declares oral tradition as well as written to its initiates. Whether they be born into the society or be converts, defectors, or immigrants. The tradition handed down to United States citizens lies along the vein of George Washington, Daniel Boone, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr. and the like. But these traditional stories also hold cultural truths as well. Like the cultural truth that telling lies is wrong. (i.e. George Washington chopping down the cherry tree).

Every “ethos” as the Bible describes in the book of the book of Revelations chapter five, verse nine and again in chapter seven, verse nine; the word sets upon itself certain views of what is right and what is wrong. Here I am not referring to “laws”. I am talking about morals per se. I am talking about the complete ethos of what is true and what is false.

It is not fair to say that there is just one culture of the U.S.A. There are hundreds. Perhaps thousands of justifiable culture groups represented here. So, perhaps someone deep in the neck of some wood is raised with the ideology that people of a darker color are to be treated as animals. Morally, they can engage in murdering those people without breaching his moral code, whatsoever. On the same token, there are perhaps those who have been raised with the opposite views. That those of a lighter color are naught but monsters to be taken out of their supposed power. That person can engage in a violent act of what the rest of the geo-political country would agree to be wrong. However, morally these people are not committing a crime in their own mind. Morals. If “White Supremicy” or “Black Power” is your moral mindset, then you are free to act within it.

In the U.S.A., there is the “collective moral attitude” that these two extremes are wrong. What makes them wrong? What makes us decide that THIS is wrong or THIS is right. There are two main things in this country, The first was that it was founded on the word of God, and the second is the fact that there are so many diverse cultures here… It makes it very easy to find the middle ground of morality. Now you and I know that a “good balance” is no substitution for the word of God. You and I know that to have any truth or falsehood, we must first go back to the one who gave them to us to begin with. Back to God. Not just parts of him. Not the tidbits that fit you. But the entirety of Him.

One of the chief examples of not taking the sum of Gods word as truth is the example of Apartheid. Apartheid was the practice of racial segregation in South Africa from 1951-1991. The Afrikaners (Those white south Africans of predominantly Dutch and German descent) put into slavery those of the Zulu, Swazi and other black tribes. Apartheid reigned when the Afrikaners were in power. Part of what the Afrikaners believed at that time was that all blacks were marked for their sin, as mandated by God. This is a misrepresentation of the scripture when God marks Cain for his sin against Able.

What was the belief of this culture? How did they take one verse of scripture and determine what should be done from there to so many a people? Was it the “truth” that made them “right”? What I mean by that is that “right and wrong” are here (and oftentimes elsewhere) confused with “true and false”. These mix-ups have been the cause of many a Governmental error. There have been executions, beating, jailings, and many other atrocities for the incorrect perception of truth. Just because one truth is present, doesn’t mean that you exclude the contexts of the truths around it. You cannot pick and choose which truths are right for you. All the truth of the word of God is truth for you. Whether you agree or must force yourself to submit. It is true nonetheless.

The common but gross mistake is to take the Bible and fit it into your culture. What is correct is to have the culture fit into the Bible. The reliability of the Word is always there. Whenever you (or your culture as a whole) ever runs into a seemingly unsolvable predicament… you may always look to the word. On the converse, a culture that lets the Bible fit into the gaps and chinks of their cultural identity will surly crumble when stress comes. The Bible is not intended to be a patchwork to “fix-all” in your life. It was and is intended to be the very foundation of any existance… personal, as a culture, or as we have in this country, a network of cultures that make up our make-up.


Copyright 2003 by pauly hart

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