Shownotes Transcript
The power of objective facts, and why the right to life is actually built on a much firmer foundation than opinion or religion or guesswork - the idea that just laws can be determined by observing nature and the principles revealed in nature is very much an assertion that even predates Christianity!
On Christianity’s arrival it confirmed that God has revealed His invisible nature through His visible creation so that no one has an excuse. (Romans 1:20) Everyone can seek to know what is truly just, and as long as they are willing to have their personal feelings and opinions challenged by those objective facts, they can come to a clearer understanding of the truth. (Romans 2:23)
But sadly, many Christians have not spent time thinking on these principles.
With the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, there is a renewed understanding in the American conscience that the purpose of the Supreme Court is to affirm laws that are truly just. It is absolutely essential that we have an understanding of what determines justice from injustice.
Brian quotes Martin Luther King, Junior in his letter from Birmingham Jail. King quotes from St. Thomas Aquinas, and St. Augustine in their demonstration from scripture that God has revealed, through His creation, basic principles of justice. God has revealed that there is a higher law to which individual man and governments must answer.
This ‘higher law’ premise is essential for justice and freedom and the right to life.
Even before the Christian Era, Aristotle and Cicero clearly described that there is a natural order to the universe and that the best laws that man can discern are laws that attempt to reflect these higher moral principles that apply to everyone, everywhere.
This principle of natural law has been known throughout the history of Western Civilization. It is the precise foundation on which America’s founders built the American experiment in freedom and liberty, upon “the laws of nature and of nature’s God.”
Brian asserts his alarm that many Christians themselves do not understand what is meant by these principles and the frequency with which the Bible instructs the earnest individual to look to nature. This is reflected in both the Old and New Testament. Christ’s injunction to “behold the lilies of the field,” the Psalmist’s injunction to consider the heavens the work of God’s fingers, the reminder in the parables - the very practical reality of every day life, of seeds in sewing of the workday world, God is revealing His principles. Jesus was very clear in His parables and He used every day life.
There are clear ongoing injunctions for God's followers to look at nature and understand the principles God displays there. Instead many Christians have erred toward religiousness.
One example was a pro-life group in the 90s that demanded that all American laws should conform to the laws of the Old Testament, requiring execution for all abortionists, but even the public stoning of rebellious teenagers. Fortunately, many had to re-examine this notion of “biblical voting“ and examine more deeply the significance of natural law, the laws of nature and of nature‘s God.
That is the job of the RTL movement - not to present our personal religion, but to present the objective facts. The facts are on our side and facts are terrible things to waste.